Following President Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday to ban transgender people from entering the military, many leaders of the tech industry have voiced their criticism.

Trump’s rationale for the move was that allowing transgender people to serve would burden the military with “tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender people would entail.”

Since the announcement, intense criticism has been aimed at the White House, not only because of how discriminatory this looks to many people, but also because his reasoning behind it doesn’t seem to add up. A RAND Corporation study on the “implications of allowing transgender people into the military” in 2016 came to no such negative conclusion.

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 26 กรกฎาคม 2560

In terms of tech executives expressing their concern, the focus has been on discrimination, rather than the alleged costs. Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was one of the first to speak out. On his Facebook page he wrote, “Everyone should be able to serve their country – no matter who they are.”

A swath of tech leaders joined in the criticism, signing off with #LetThemServe. Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook tweeted, “We are indebted to all who serve. Discrimination against anyone holds everyone back.” Microsoft Corp.’s President Brad Smith also took to Twitter, saying, “We honor and respect all who serve, including the transgender members of our military.”

Venture capitalist Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, took a more cynical tone, tweeting that the “estimated cost of trans service members is less than a couple of Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago.” In a statement to Axios, Uber Technologies Inc. was more formal: “These patriotic Americans deserve to be honored and respected, not turned away because of who they are.”

Among the many more voices against the ban was the American Civil Liberties Union. It dismissed that Trump could even make the ban happen. “Military rules and regulations allow trans people to serve their country. Even the commander-in-chief cannot change those,” it said. Simply because of a tweet, trans people will not be leaving the military, the ACLU added: “Until those rules are changed, trans people, all 15,000 of them in the military, can serve openly. If those rules are changed, we stand ready to take legal action.”

The ACLU’s number of transgender people serving in the military was higher than the aforementioned RAND study, which said there are between 1,300 and 6,600 trans people in the military. As Bloomberg points out, if that were the number, the so-called “tremendous medical costs” would be minuscule. It would be “about 0.0014 percent of Trump’s total defense budget proposal,” said Bloomberg.

The move has provoked the ire of industry, the public and also transgender people who have served in the military. Speaking to the New York Times, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, Amanda Simpson, called the move “abhorrent” and “disrespectful.” She added, “He’s picked on the most vulnerable people to create a distraction, but he’s picked on the wrong people — he’s picked on service members.”

Image: torbakhopper via flickr