So, if he’s not running for president, what exactly is Zuckerberg doing? Nathan Hubbard, a former executive at Twitter, recently posted a series of tweets outlining his theory for what Zuckerberg has been up to during the last few months—and it’s a theory that a lot of people in Silicon Valley subscribe to. “Zuck isn’t running for President. He’s trying to understand the role the product he created played in getting this one elected,” Hubbard wrote on Twitter. “Zuck woke up on Nov 9th acutely aware that FB had facilitated a new shift he didn’t foresee or understand; that’s terrifying to a founder.”

I’ve spoken to several Silicon Valley executives and tech journalists about this theory, and it makes a fair amount of sense. People at Facebook have also privately told me how they were caught completely off guard by the role that the social network played in the election. But while this sounds entirely plausible, it doesn’t explain why Zuckerberg would amend Facebook’s proxy statement. In the updated S-1 filing, this provision is invoked several times, explicating that Zuckerberg can take a “Pre-Approved Leave,” which translates as “any leave of absence or resignation of the Founder that is in connection with the Founder serving in a government position or office.” One person who interacts with Zuckerberg on a regular basis theorized that maybe Zuckerberg is leaving open the option to run for office one day in the very distant future, or that he could try running for lesser office to better understand how government works. But again, this is all just conjecture and speculation. No one really has the faintest clue what Zuckerberg is up to, which all amounts to fairly genius politicking for a political neophyte. Mike Pence, in fact, might want to give it a try.