Most of the biggest names in tech who are scheduled to meet with Donald Trump Wednesday in New York are keeping quiet about why, or even whether they’re actually going. Their silence has prompted a lot of talk — and criticism.

Do the people who run Apple and Google and Amazon and Facebook — tech’s big four — have to come running when the president-elect calls? Tim Cook, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos and Sheryl Sandberg are reportedly among the tech executives who have been invited to Trump Tower for what is expected to be a discussion about jobs.

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Trump to hold tech ‘summit’ with Cook, Page, other tech leaders Prominent tech journalist Kara Swisher writes in a column in Recode that the execs “should be ashamed of themselves for lining up like sheeple.” After all, she says, among other things Trump has attacked the tech industry in different ways.

“Realize you have untold money and power and influence and massive platforms to do what you think is right,” Swisher writes.

Chris Sacca of “Shark Tank” fame, a venture capitalist who has invested in Twitter and Uber, agrees.

“If Trump publicly commits to embrace science, stops threatening censorship of the internet, rejects fake news and denounces hate against our diverse employees, only then it would make sense for tech leaders to visit Trump Tower,” he told Swisher.

Pierre Omidyar, eBay founder, immigrant, philanthropist and a prolific tech voice against Trump, tweeted Monday night that “now, more than ever, tech leaders must stand up for human dignity, and examine their role in public discourse.”

But Dave Pell, tech investor and NextDraft newsletter writer, points out that we’re talking about Trump. The president-elect has helped wipe billions of dollars of market value from both Boeing and Lockheed by tweeting about them. And for all their power, Apple et al are publicly traded companies.

“They fear he will purposely take action to punish their companies if they don’t heed his wishes,” Pell wrote in a Medium post. “And that fear is wholly reasonable, and unlike most things associated with Trump, fact-based.”

It’s hard to imagine the execs will suddenly be more forthcoming after the big meeting. For example, what will Bezos, who once offered to send Trump to space on a rocket, and criticized Trump’s behavior as “not appropriate” for a presidential candidate, have to say? He and the others might hold their noses and say some diplomatic things afterward, if at all. But continued silence probably means continued criticism.

In other words, kiss (up?) and tell.

Meanwhile, some tech employees are pledging to resist one of the promises of the incoming administration. Dozens of engineers and workers from Google, IBM, Slack and others have pledged never to build a Muslim registry. Their pledge comes on the heels of a report that Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley’s biggest Trump supporter, is likely to benefit from such a registry. Thiel’s data-mining company, Palantir, has been helping the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency build a complex system that could help with the registry, according to the Intercept.