Meta has continued its trend of employing Trump-aligned staff to senior leadership roles, with former Republican staffer Dina Powell McCormick joining the company as President and Vice Chairman.
Powell McCormick has been on Meta’s Board of Directors since April last year, giving her a level of experience in seeing Meta’s shift towards AI development. And now she will take a more direct role in enacting that shift, with her new responsibilities set to put her at the forefront of negotiations over AI infrastructure acquisition and development.
As per Meta:
“Dina will be a member of Meta’s management team, helping guide the company’s overall strategy and execution. She will partner with the compute and infrastructure teams to ensure our multi-billion-dollar investments execute against our goals and drive positive economic impact in the communities where we operate around the world. And, she will drive an effort to build new strategic capital partnerships and find innovative ways to expand our long-term investment capacity.
Powell McCormick has worked in senior leadership roles for many years, including a long stint at Goldman Sachs. She also served as Senior White House Advisor and Assistant Secretary of State for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and as Deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump in his first term as president.
Which is what’s going to get the most focus here.
As noted, Meta has appointed several former Trump staffers to senior leadership roles over the past 12 months, including Joel Kaplan, who’s now Meta’s global affairs chief, and Kevin Martin, who’s its vice president of global public policy. Last week, Meta also appointed C.J. Mahoney as its new chief legal officer, with the external view being that Meta is actively seeking people with connections to Trump in order to gain favor in regulatory concerns.
Though Meta is seemingly also investing in Republican-aligned staff for the long-term, beyond the Trump Administration, when such connection would seemingly be of most value. But then again, with Trump looking to maintain a hold on power, by any means that he can, maybe this is a smart bet by Meta to keep the pressure on, by gaining favor with the Republican party.
Either way, it could be a clever tactic, for now at least, with Trump clearly willing to assist those that he sees as allies, and punish those opposed to his rulings.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lauded the announcement, saying that:
“I'm excited to work with Dina to make sure we deliver personal superintelligence in a way that benefits the billions of people who use our products, as well as the communities, states, and countries we're investing in.”
While President Trump has also weighed in, noting that Powell McCormick is “a great choice by Mark Z.”
Zuckerberg has further announced that Powell McCormick will play a key role in Meta’s new “Meta Compute” project, which aims to expand energy infrastructure to power its expanding AI push.
In order to get these major projects through, and limit regulatory pushback, Meta will need government support, and appointing friends and associates of the President could be a means to do just that.
