Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has made a stunningly abrupt about-face, now saying he no longer supports bringing the National Guard to help enforce safety and order in San Francisco.
“Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” Benioff wrote on X (opens in new tab). “ (opens in new tab)My earlier comment (opens in new tab) came from an abundance of caution around the event, and I sincerely apologize for the concern it caused.”
Benioff’s statement marks a 180-degree turn for the tech leader, who last Friday told the New York Times (opens in new tab) that the National Guard could fill a shortage in police officers.
In the interview, he complained about the company being forced to pay for additional security for Dreamforce, its annual conference held at the Moscone Center. The annual event is the biggest business gathering in the city and drew roughly 45,000 visitors to San Francisco this week.
Benioff’s reversal comes after high-profile philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs admonished him in a Wall Street Journal essay on Friday, calling the billionaire’s comments about his giving being a competition, of “quiet corruption corroding modern philanthropy.”
“In his eyes, generosity is an auction — and policy is the prize awarded to the highest bidder,” she wrote.
The essay was published one day after Benioff’s longtime associate and billionaire investor, Ron Conway, stepped down from the board of the Salesforce Foundation, sending a blistering email addressed to Benioff on the way out.
“San Francisco does not need a federal invasion because you don’t like paying for extra security for Dreamforce,” Conway wrote.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, whom Benioff specifically mentions in his new X post apologizing for his previous comments, said he personally spoke with Benioff after his initial incendiary comments were published.
“Those are private conversations, but what I said to him is what I’m saying to you all now, and that is that we are working relentlessly every day at public safety,” Lurie said.
“I’m not trying to change those people’s minds,” Lurie said about San Francisco’s naysayers. “They’re entitled to their own opinions, but they’re not entitled to their own facts.”
At the federal level, Trump renewed his rhetoric about cleaning up San Francisco with federal personnel at a press conference on Wednesday.
“I’m going to be strongly recommending at the request of government officials, which is always nice, that you start looking at San Francisco,” Trump said at an event with FBI Director Kash Patel. “I think we can make San Francisco — one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and now it’s a mess.
On Thursday, A-list comedians Kumail Nanjiani and Ilana Glazer abruptly canceled their performances at Dreamforce.
No word yet on whether Benioff’s had second thoughts about deploying AI robocops in his erstwhile hometown — another unsettling idea he seemed pretty insistent about (opens in new tab) in a Dreamforce panel earlier this week.
Though the Salesforce CEO reversed his rhetoric on sending federal troops, his company continues to work closely with the Trump administration.
Internal records obtained by the New York Times (opens in new tab) earlier this week show that Salesforce has offered to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ramp up mass deportations.
In one such document, an Aug. 26 memo issued in response to an ICE query, Salesforce pitched itself as an “ideal platform” to turbocharge the agency’s recruitment as it tries to hire 10,000 more immigration agents.