President-elect Trump has announced that David Sacks will serve as his “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar,” according to a post from his account on Truth Social. Sacks is a venture capitalist and host of the “All-In” podcast known for being an outspoken Republican in Silicon Valley with views that have drawn condemnation in the past. Among those, Sacks has said that Russia reasonably attacked Ukraine for moving to join NATO, which he called a redline and an affront to Russian sovereignty. He has called for cutting support to Ukraine and alleged corruption in the country.
Some have noted it’s a bit on the nose for a Russia-sympathizer to be appointed as a ‘czar’.
“I am honored and grateful for the trust you have placed in me,” Sacks said about the appointment to the special government role. “I look forward to advancing American competitiveness in these critical technologies.” Sacks was a co-founder of PayPal in the ‘90s and later founded Yammer, which was a sort of Facebook for internal corporate communication that was sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. He more recently has used his wealth and online influence to steer Silicon Valley away from liberalism and paint a dark picture of America. Undergirding it all is a need for the U.S. government to allow more mergers and acquisitions in order for his VC business to thrive (VCs often make returns when their companies sell to the incumbents).
On his podcast, Sacks is known as the combative conservative with tough stances on everything from immigration to regulatory policy, and has been a harsh critic of the current administration’s stance towards the tech industry (such as blocking acquisitions by big tech) and his buddy Elon Musk, who has made regular appearances on Sacks’s podcast. He has not always been full-on MAGA, however. Following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Sacks said that Trump was “clearly” responsible for the insurrection and had “disqualified himself from being a candidate at the national level.” He campaigned heavily for Trump in the last leg of this election, including hosting a fundraiser at his home in San Francisco which has clearly paid off handsomely. ”
Considering Sacks’s divisive views on geopolitical issues, it’s perhaps a positive that he hasn’t been given a role overseeing issues of national security or foreign policy. Some on X have derisively called his new role a “fake job.”
congrats to czar @DavidSacks!
— Sam Altman (@sama) December 6, 2024
The role Sacks has been given is as a special government employee, which allows him to work for the government for 130 days per year. SGEs are supposed to avoid conflict of interest or self-dealing that could benefit them personally. But Sacks will nonetheless have Trump’s ear and could pose a threat to competitors of Musk, who is currently locked in a battle against OpenAI to be a leader in generative AI. Sacks has long denounced the Biden administration for excluding Tesla from a 2021 White House electric vehicle summit.
Tesla has long received significant tax credits from the U.S. government, and NASA is a major client of Musk’s SpaceX. But Musk hasn’t gotten many invites to the White House in recent years, and it seems it has bothered him quite a lot.
Sacks has often spoken about his belief that big tech companies have colluded with Democratic administrations to, among other things, silence conservative voices on social media. This despite the fact that internal emails from Twitter demonstrated that executives debated vociferously whether they should take down content flagged by the Biden campaign, and didn’t just take down whatever was asked as conservatives suggested.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been a vocal proponent of working with the government to develop regulations around the development of artificial intelligence, which some see as a thinly veiled attempt to entrench OpenAI’s dominance. Sacks will no doubt be interested in investigating Altman’s activities in Washington and cooling those contacts.
On the crypto front, Sacks sees recent enforcement actions against industry players as another affront against personal liberties. He has previously cited a trucker protest in Canada during the COVID pandemic, in which protesters’ bank accounts were frozen, as a reason crypto is necessary. Crypto has soared on the back of Trump’s reelection, even though it’s still not practically useful for much.
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