Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024.
Halil Sagilskaya | Anadolu | Getty Images
as sales force As the company welcomes tens of thousands of people to San Francisco for its annual Dreamforce conference, its CEO Marc Benioff has found himself at the center of a local controversy about a national issue.
In an interview with The New York Times published Friday, Benioff seemed eager for President Donald Trump to send federal troops to his hometown, inserting himself into the national debate over whether the president should send the National Guard to various Democratic-led cities that Trump has maligned.
The Trump administration recently deployed the National Guard to Portland and Chicago, sparking protests and lawsuits.
“We don’t have enough police officers, so if they can become police officers, I’m all for it,” Benioff told the Times.
Benioff later softened his comments, writing in Sunday’s X that safety is “first and foremost the responsibility of city and state leaders.” But a heated conversation had already begun online.
tesla CEO Elon Musk, who moved to Texas from California, said federal intervention is needed to address crime in San Francisco. In a post on social network X on Sunday, he said this was “the only solution at the moment” and that “nothing else will work and nothing else will work.” A day earlier, Musk, who has come under fire for his drug use, characterized downtown San Francisco as a “drug zombie apocalypse.”
Mr. Musk still has a big business in and around San Francisco. His artificial intelligence startup xAI, which owns X, has a large office in the city, and his brain-computer interface company Neuralink recently leased a large property in South San Francisco. Tesla has moved to Texas, but the automaker’s technology headquarters remain in Palo Alto, just south of San Francisco.
Musk’s call for the U.S. military was in response to a social media post by Tom Wolfe, who describes himself as a “former homeless recovering addict in San Francisco” and “addiction recovery advocate.”
“If you want to keep federal troops out of San Francisco, get rid of organized drug traffickers and you’ll solve 80 percent of the problem,” Wolf wrote. “If you don’t, you will reap what you sow.”
Musk shared Wolf’s post to X’s more than 227 million followers.
Neither Benioff nor Musk immediately responded to requests for comment. CNBC reached out to Tesla, xAI, and Salesforce for comment, but did not receive a response.
Local officials loudly opposed the idea of bringing in federal troops.
“We can no longer remain silent,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins wrote in X magazine after Benioff’s interview.
Jenkins accused President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of turning “so-called public safety and immigration enforcement into a form of government-sponsored violence against American citizens, families, and ethnic groups.” When someone uses excessive force or unlawfully harasses our citizens, “I will not hesitate to do my job and hold them accountable every day, just like I would any other lawbreaker.”
“Crime is down 30% and tent encampments are at an all-time low,” San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who defeated incumbent London Breed in November on a promise to clean up the city, wrote in Sunday’s X. He did not mention Benioff or Dreamforce directly, but noted that tens of thousands of people visit the city for concerts, Fleet Week and other activities, and public safety is important.
“San Francisco is growing,” he wrote.
In Mr. Benioff’s follow-up comments after his interview with the Times, the Salesforce CEO praised Mr. Lurie’s efforts to hire more police officers and maintain law enforcement.
Started in 2003, Dreamforce starts on Tuesday and runs through Thursday. The event will be held at the Moscone Center, a large part of San Francisco’s downtown neighborhood.
“We don’t need the National Guard,” Garry Tan, CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator, wrote on X, but he used the post to go after Chesa Boudin, a frequently targeted local technologist, and progressives.
Boudin was San Francisco’s district attorney until 2022, when he was ousted in a recall election after critics criticized his lack of willingness to prosecute violent criminals. Now, the question is the judge, Tan said.
“We need new judges who are not die-hard Chesa Boudin-style activists working to keep drug traffickers out of prison, even though the police, district attorney, and San Francisco residents want them behind bars,” he wrote. “It’s surprisingly simple in science fiction.”
Attention: President Trump to deploy National Guard to Washington DC
