After winning the presidency in 2024, Donald Trump sent a loud signal about his interest in the artificial intelligence revolution by choosing Sriram Krishnan as senior policy adviser for AI.
Within hours, Krishnan, an immigrant from India with a distinguished career in Silicon Valley, was subjected to a storm of attacks from the online right. “Did any of y’all vote for this Indian to run America?” one person wrote on X beneath Krishnan’s photo. Laura Loomer called the appointment “deeply disturbing” and said that America was built by “white Europeans” and “not third world invaders from India.”
Two days later Vivek Ramaswamy, a onetime biotech entrepreneur who endorsed Trump after quitting the Republican presidential campaign in 2024 and is now running for Ohio governor, defended Krishnan by saying that the influx of foreign-born engineers at U.S.-based companies was the result of America having “venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” Ramaswamy, born in Cincinnati to Indian parents, was then savagely attacked, too.
