Salesforce CEO Clarifies Remarks on President Trump’s Suggestion to Deploy Troops to San Francisco

Posted on October 22, 2025 by

Greetings! Welcome to TechScape. I’m your host and editor, Blake Montgomery. Here’s what we’re focusing on this week: South Park’s caricatures of Peter Thiel and his fascination with the Antichrist. Check out our report on Thiel’s odd off-the-record lecture that inspired the show. Now, let’s get started.

Marc Benioff Catches President Trump’s Attention

Last week, the co-founder and CEO of Salesforce suggested that Donald Trump should go ahead with his threat to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco, even amidst local opposition. Even Benioff’s public relations manager was reportedly shocked by his remarks, as per a New York Times article.

Benioff is a well-regarded figure in San Francisco, being the city’s largest private employer. His comments coincided with Salesforce’s flagship conference, Dreamforce, which was set to take over the streets of the city. With a net worth of around $9 billion, according to Forbes, he plays a significant role in the political landscape, particularly within Democratic circles, though his wealth is dwarfed by that of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

His statements contradicted his liberal persona and previous declarations, as well as Salesforce’s operational philosophy. The remarks have divided opinions among tech leaders; in fact, one of Salesforce’s board members resigned in protest, while Musk reportedly supported him. My colleague, Dani Anguiano, noted, “Trump megadonor David Sachs, appointed by the president as AI and cryptocurrency czar, remarked that San Francisco could be swiftly eliminated with a ‘targeted operation,’ while Benioff suggested the military could aid police efforts.”

Mr. Benioff issued an apology on Friday, stating, “I have heard the voices of my fellow San Franciscans and local officials…I do not think the National Guard is needed to address security in San Francisco.” He mentioned that security concerns for Dreamforce fueled his comments.

It seems Mr. Benioff managed to provoke discussion without burning too much political capital, having shown a degree of empathy toward the Trump administration. On Monday, President Trump seemed to affirm his “unquestionable authority” to deploy federal troops to San Francisco.

“We’re going to San Francisco. The difference is, they want us in San Francisco,” Trump remarked in an interview.

Read more: President Trump vows to send troops to San Francisco, asserting ‘unquestionable authority’

Amazon Web Services Outage Highlights the Dangers of Centralization

Photo: Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters

My colleagues Dan Milmo and Graeme Wearden report on a significant outage that occurred yesterday in Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud division:

A technical glitch in Amazon’s cloud service resulted in the disruption of applications and websites globally on Monday.

Platforms impacted included Snapchat, Roblox, Signal, Duolingo, and several Amazon-owned businesses, among others.

According to internet outage monitoring site Downdetector, over 1,000 companies were affected around the world, with users reporting 6.5 million issues, including more than 1 million in the U.S., 400,000 in the U.K., and 200,000 in Australia.

Experts have raised concerns regarding the risks of depending on a small cohort of companies to manage the global internet. This failure underscored the inherent dangers of the internet’s reliance on a limited number of tech firms, with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google being pivotal players in the cloud sector.

Dr. Colin Cass Speth, the head of digital at the human rights organization Article 19, remarked, “We urgently need to diversify cloud computing. The infrastructure that supports democratic discourse, independent journalism, and secure communications cannot rely solely on a handful of companies.”

OpenAI’s Sora Creates Dolls of Historical Figures

Photo: Argi February Sugita/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

OpenAI’s Sora, an AI-driven video generation app, has been thriving since its release, primarily due to its capability to create videos featuring your or your friends’ faces. For instance, I made a jogging-themed version of Ratatouille starring a friend preparing for the New York City Marathon.

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Sora also enables users to create videos featuring the faces of late celebrities. A significant and controversial case was Martin Luther King Jr., whose likeness appeared in many AI-generated videos since Sora’s launch, until the company decided to cease using it following complaints from his estate.

As Niamh Rowe noted, “Videos circulating in my feed show Dr. King making monkey noises during his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Other clips depict Bryant reenacting the helicopter crash that tragically claimed his life and that of his daughter.”

Other celebrity estates have echoed similar grievances. Malcolm X’s daughter stated that a video involving her father was “extremely disrespectful and hurtful.” Moreover, the daughter of comedian George Carlin described his AI-generated clip as “overwhelming and depressing” in a Blue Sky post, while Robin Williams’ daughter shared on Instagram that the AI-generated video of her father was “not what he wanted.”

Zelda Williams articulated, “Witnessing real people’s legacies reduced to this… is both horrifying and infuriating, especially with TikTok’s careless puppeteering.”

This trend has repeatedly surfaced with OpenAI. The company tends to be less cautious about reputational risks compared to rivals like Meta, which rolled out an AI-powered video app lacking the ability to deepfake friends concurrently with Sora. Google also withheld its version of ChatGPT for similar reasons; meanwhile, OpenAI’s audacity has allowed it to eclipse Google in this race. They even had to temporarily shut down their image-generating app when it was used to create diverse representations of Vikings. It’s alarming to consider the implications had they let MLK Jr.’s likeness run rampant.

Read more: ‘A legacy of AI missteps’: Video of OpenAI Sora’s death alarms legal experts

Wider TechScape

Source: www.theguardian.com

Salesforce evades activist pressure and attains stability in 2023

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

The company started the year with a lot of turmoil.

That was the case this year It wasn’t a great start for Salesforce, with an unusual level of turmoil and uncertainty surrounding the company. However, as the end of the year approaches, Salesforce’s financial situation turns out to be surprisingly strong, with the stock up more than 96% since the beginning of the year. At the beginning of this year, such an outcome would have been unimaginable.

Bad news even before the new year started when co-CEO Brett Taylor, who many had speculated was being groomed to be Marc Benioff’s successor, suddenly announced he would be leaving the company at the end of November. started flowing. A week later, Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield announced he was also stepping down. Losing two key executives within a week would be a huge blow to any company, but it’s likely just the beginning of an onslaught of bad news for the CRM giant.

As the year began, we found that activist investors were quite active within the company. These include Elliott Management, Starboard Value, ValueAct Capital, Inclusive Capital, and Third Point. When activists emerge, they usually have strong opinions about how to “fix” corporations, and this is no exception.

First, we learned that Salesforce was hiring three new board members, which felt like a way to placate activists. Especially because one of them was Mason Morfit, his CEO and chief investment officer at ValueAct, one of his fellow activists.

Activists typically pressure companies to cut costs, which, in corporate parlance, usually means cutting jobs. Sure enough, Salesforce soon announced that it would cut his 10% of its workforce, or 7,000 people, on January 4, 2023. The excuse was that there was over-hiring during the pandemic, which was a fix, but could also have been problematic. Activists are the backbone of cost-cutting.

Either way, reports say the company is having trouble handling layoffs, engineers are under pressure, Benioff preaches about returning to the office after accepting work from home, and what Salesforce says is I started doing it. digital headquarters in the middle of a pandemic. The company’s reputation as a progressive and employee-friendly organization grew. big hit.

Source: techcrunch.com

Spiff, an automated commission management platform, acquired by Salesforce

Posted on December 19, 2023 by Igor Mitreski

sales force is announced plan to obtain Spiff, a platform that automates commission management for sales teams. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 2017, Spiff provides a low-code interface designed to help companies easily create sales compensation plans that automatically update based on talent meeting pre-agreed goals. . Native integration with popular enterprise CRM and ERP systems allows you to handle the most complex commission structures, including any conditions to trigger a payout, while giving sales reps the ability to see in real-time the commissions owed. He Spiff says.

The Salt Lake City-based startup invested in Spiff’s Series B round in 2021, including a cash infusion from Salesforce’s own venture capital firm Salesforce Ventures, which previously led a $50 million Series C round. , which has raised more than $110 million in its six-year history. this year.

Spiff image credits: Spiff

Once the acquisition is complete (expected within the first few months of 2024), Salesforce says it plans to bring Spiff to life internally. Sales performance management The software is a CRM connectivity product that connects customer and sales team data.

It’s worth noting that both companies have a history that goes beyond stock investments. Spiff becomes available It has been available on the Salesforce AppExchange for several years.

The deal is also the latest in a series of ecosystem companies that Salesforce has ultimately brought in-house. Back in September, Salesforce acquired Airkit, a low-code platform for building AI customer service agents. Airkit’s founders have previously exited Salesforce by selling a big data startup called RelateIQ for his $390 million in 2014, as well as Salesforce Ventures, which he founded in 2017. Since then, I have invested in Airkit several times. And like Spiff, Airkit was also available. On AppExchange.

So it’s clear that Salesforce continues to view proven ecosystem companies as a safe option for its M&A efforts, and that “low code” is also a key element.