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.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 all of the Republican candidates, and Dean Phillips, on the All-In podcast. And we saw him become increasingly closer to the MAGA right.How did Trump and Sacks end up getting involved?Sacks hosted a fundraiser for Trump in June of 2024 at his home in San Francisco. And it seems like that dinner really cemented the deal. There were a lot of crypto entrepreneurs, and Trump just loved it. Sacks has a very nice home on Billionaire’s Row in San Francisco. When Trump came on the All-In podcast afterward, he was like, “I love David’s house.” Sacks is very deferential towards him.They talked about what was happening to the crypto industry in a way that really resonated with Trump. They were talking about being persecuted by SEC chairman Gary Gensler, how hard it was for crypto entrepreneurs to bank, and what the Trump administration could do for them and for this empowering technology. And keep in mind that Trump has previously called crypto a scam.We’ve seen this very quick evolution on that since the inauguration. There’s another quote in that episode where Trump talks about how Sacks introduced him to all the tech geniuses. That ends up being the start of this faction of the tech industry that helps bring Trump into the White House for a second term.David Sacks goes from outside of the Washington, DC, establishment into a role in the Trump White House. What is he doing for Trump now and how serious is this job?We weren’t sure how serious it was going to be. His title is the White House AI and crypto czar. Trump and Sacks have a very close and mutually respectful relationship, and he has ended up playing a extremely pivotal role in these two technologies that he has been put in charge of.We’ve all witnessed the power of the AI industry through this post-ChatGPT boom. So it ends up having a lot of geopolitical significance in terms of how we think about national security in China. All of that is tied in with GPUs and chips that are needed by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, chips that are built by Nvidia, a trillion-dollar company. So his profile is just so much higher than it used to be.States want to regulate AI. Governors want laws on the books protecting people from artificial intelligence. The Trump administration says, “No, you can’t do that.” Where do you think David Sacks fits into the executive order that says: States, you don’t get to make laws around AI?He played a very instrumental role in this executive order, doing a lot of work behind the scenes, talking to the populist wing of the Republican Party, trying to get them on board, emphasizing that this would not affect those laws that would keep their constituents safe. They tried to make it clear: We’re not trying to stop you from protecting teens in your district or what have you. We just want laws that are not onerous, that won’t slow down the development of the AI industry.And that very much matches what you are hearing from the VC crowd that worked in the Trump administration, that was aligned with the tech right when they came into office. It was like: We want rules of the road for crypto, and we want no hindrance for AI. This executive order definitely reflects their interest in making sure that there’s not a patchwork of laws that a startup has to abide by.So the stakes here are very high. David Sacks is a rich man who is powerfully connected in the White House, and he does not want there to be AI regulation. On the other hand, you have Americans who are concerned about AI. So which side of this do you think is going to end up winning?Just in the last couple months, we’ve seen this particular question really gear up for a fight because you have increasing concerns from parents who are reading these stories about chatbots encouraging teenagers to die by suicide or manipulating them in ways that look extremely uncomfortable when you start reading the chats. And at the same time, you have people pushing back in an organized way against having more data centers in their neighborhood, and the idea that we’re going to literally change the landscape of the country and other countries in order to power this technology that CEOs say is going to put everybody out of work.Maybe before some of the chatbot pushback, you would’ve had the industry get its way. And I think that the industry will still be able to win. And I think that [there’s some] ability to do little carve-outs for child safety, for issues that are kitchen-table issues or things that just sound terribly bad, like encouraging a child to commit suicide, you might be able to get some restrictions on that. But the thing that will really shape how the tech industry has to behave is any checks on its ability to grow.I am not saying that it’s futile. I think drawing attention to these issues could hopefully, potentially, change the outcome towards what voters want, what people want. But I think that we should watch for that distinction between some of these little safeguards that nominally seem like they’re going to protect people or carve out a safe space for them and some of the bigger, more existential factors.