What does Trump’s AI czar want?

This summer, as President Donald Trump signed a new industry-friendly “Genius Act” for cryptocurrency, he deferred to White House “AI and cryptocurrency czar” David Sacks to explain why crypto companies need a hands-off regulatory framework. What does Trump’s AI czar want? David Sacks, Trump’s go-to adviser on all things tech, may help decide who wins the AI race between the US and China. When Trump introduced an executive order this month that limits states’ ability to regulate artificial intelligence, Sacks was at his side again , insisting that government needs to get out of Silicon Valley’s way if the US hopes to beat China in the race for superintelligence. Sacks has had a meteoric rise to become Trump’s point person on all things tech. Sacks was an early friend of tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel. The two met at Stanford, bonded over their conservative leanings, and co-wrote The Diversity Myth , a polemic against political correctness and campus liberalism. He then became part of Thiel and Elon Musk’s “ PayPal mafia ,” started a company that sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion, and founded a venture capital firm with big stakes in SpaceX and xAI. Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Nitasha Tiku, tech culture reporter for the Washington Post, about how Sacks went from Silicon Valley investor to DC heavyweight. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts , Pandora , and Spotify . How do most people know about David Sacks? David Sacks has a very popular tech podcast , All-In , that he co-hosts with three of his “besties.” They’re all investors, and one of the other co-hosts was also part of the war room as Elon [was] taking over. And they cheered a lot of his ideas: fire your trust and safety department, get rid of DEI, fight for free speech. The idea is that you’re getting an unfiltered, candid look from people who are in the game, “in the arena,” as they like to say on the podcast. But increasingly they started talking about politics and David started out as the conservative foil. His co-hosts were much more like centrist Democrats. And the evolution of their worldview, of their political stances, is pretty close to what we see from the tech supporters of Trump’s second term. What do we learn from All-In about David Sacks’s politics? We learn that he is conservative. He has also been politically involved in previous election cycles, giving to different candidates. He’s given to Hillary Clinton. He mostly gives to Republicans. He spoke out against the January 6 insurrection. He was actually backing Ron DeSantis. He asked his buddy Elon to host Twitter Spaces with DeSantis back when they were still calling it Twitter, if you remember. It was an audio disaster . And he hosted a fundraiser for Vivek Ramaswamy. Not only that, but they had...

Preview: ~500 words