YouSaid · the spoken record

David Sacks

lines on the record: 107
first: 2026-07-16
most recent: 2026-07-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thank you. Well, thanks. I appreciate what you guys have done as well. So, thank you for. Your support, everything you're doing, so appreciate it.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Daniel had a good conversation with the president and asked him to hold back and the president agreed and is giving him time to implement his solutions. And look, if Daniel and his team can keep making progress and fix the problems without the National Guard having to come in, then so much the better. We'll just see if, and I know he wants to. And like I said, he's the best mayor we've had in decades. It's just a question of whether he'll be too constrained by the other powers that be in the city. David, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Yeah, good to see you guys.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I just wonder is Daniel up against too many constraints and therefore I know he doesn't want the president to send in the National Guard, but maybe ultimately it would be helpful. But in any event, I think the president has agreed to kind of hold off on that out of...”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So basically, alienate San Francisco and Chase and Managed be so far out there that he alienated even San Francisco. And yet, I don't know why Tori McAllister isn't Senator Ready in jail for 20 years plus, but his case is still pending through the courts, never ending, and there's a left-wing judge who's considering just giving him diversion. Basically means you just get released, maybe with an ankle bracelet or something. That's insane. So, I mean, that's what we're dealing with in San Francisco. I mean, like crazy left-wing judges who want to release all the criminals. And, um,”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he was arrested four times in the year before that he ended up killing these two people and he had a very, very long criminal history. He had committed armed robbery before. stolen many cars. And he should have been in jail. He should not have been released, but he was basically released thanks to the zero bail policies of Chase Aboudin. He was then the district attorney who we got recalled. There was a huge outcry. I mean, even in San Francisco, for there to be a recall of, I mean, you got to be seriously left-wing to.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Daniel Lurry is the best mayor we've had in decades. So I think he's doing a very good job within the constraints that San Francisco presents. So the mayor job, unfortunately, we have a weak mayor in San Francisco. I don't mean him. I just mean like the way it's all set up, the board of supervisors has a ton of power. And over time, they've been able to kind of transfer power from the mayor to themselves. And then, of course, you've got all these left-wing judges. I mean, it's just amazing to me that there's a case right now. This is a case that galvanized me several years ago, the case of Troy McAllister, who was a repeat offender who killed two people on New Year's Eve. I think it was like 2020.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If it weren't for Donald Trump, I think in a way we might already be there. But we have to make sure that this. The Trump Revolution continues.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But yeah, that's where, I mean, it does appear that's where the Democrat Party is. I don't completely get it. I mean, other people have made this observation, but they do seem to be on the 20% side of every AD-20 issue. You know, opening the border on the soft on crime stuff, releasing all the repeat offenders. And just sort of this anti-capitalist approach. Which I think will be disastrous for the economy. I mean, but this is kind of where the party's at right now. It's a little scary because it does mean that if we lose elections in places where we do lose elections, it's like, you know, you could end up with something really horrible, not just like, you know, we're not just playing in the 40-yard lines anymore in American politics. And that is a little bit scary. I do think that”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's where their base is at. I think partly it might be a misread of it sort of, it could be kind of like a partial reaction to Trump where they feel like establishment politics kind of failed. And so they need a populism of the left to compete with a populism of the right. And so I think that's maybe part of the calculation for why they're going this direction. I don't, you know, I fundamentally don't think it works. I don't think socialism works. I don't think defund the police, empty all the jails policies work. So I think we're about to get another case, a teaching moment in New York. Unfortunately, it's not going to be good for the city. But, you know, we've seen this movie before.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It certainly seems to me that I'm Donnie and I don't know, like the woke socialism seems to be the future of the party. I mean, that's where all the energy is and their base. I mean, I don't want that to be the case. I'd rather have a rational Democrat Party. But that seems to be where their base is, where the energy is. And you don't really hear Democrats within the party trying to self-police and distance themselves from that. You saw, I mean, all the major figures in the Democrat Party have endorsed Mamdonni. So yeah, I mean, that's where that party seems to be headed. I think that”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If a different result had been reached, we would have against it will figure at the SEC, the founders would still be getting prosecuted, we wouldn't know what the rules are. Elizabeth Warren would be calling the shots. So President Trump's election made everything possible, and it's his commitment to the industry. And his commitment to keeping his promises during the election that's made all of this possible. But also, I mean, he got directly involved in making sure the Genius Act passed. The legislation was declared dead many times. I saw it with my own eyes that, you know, he was able to persuade recalcitrant votes and twist arms, cajole, and charm. And, you know, he ultimately got it done. And I think that clarity will be a similar result. People always prematurely declaring these things to be dead or whatever. There are a lot of twists and turns in the legislative process. It's definitely true that you don't want to see the sausage getting made.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know two thirds of the number are Democrats we got for genius, then we'll be fine on clarity. But this will provide the regulatory framework again for all the other tokens besides stablecoins. And I think it's just a critical piece of legislation. And yeah, this would ultimately, I think, kind of complete the crypto agenda where we've kind of, you know, moving from Biden's war on crypto to Trump's crypto capital of the planet. And then, you know, I think the industry will have the stability it needs and can just focus on innovating. And there'll be, you know, rule updates and things like that. But we'll fundamentally have the foundation for the industry in place. On Genius Act, President Trump really made that bill possible. I mean, first of all, it was his election that completely shifted the conversation on crypto. We would still be, you know,”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're negotiating with a dozen or so Democrats. We have to get to 60 votes. So that's the hard part is under the filibuster we got to get to 60. But we're negotiating with about a dozen Democrats and I do think that we will ultimately get to that number. By the way, we ended up having 68 votes in the Senate for Genius, including 18 Democrats. So I do think that even if we just get”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, I think it's very important to canonize the rules that first provide the clarity and then to make sure there's enough stability around them and sort of canonize those rules in legislation. That's the only way that you provide that long-term stability. I think that we will get the Clarity Act done. Like you mentioned, it passed the House with about 300 votes, about 78 Democrats. So it was substantially bipartisan. I think it will ultimately, it's now going through the Senate. I think it will ultimately get done.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's extremely important. So, as you mentioned, we passed the Genius Act a few months ago, but that was just for stable coins. Stablecoins are about 6% of the total market cap in terms of tokens. So 94% are all the other types of tokens. And the Clarity Act would apply to all of that and provide the regulatory framework for all those other crypto projects and companies. If we could be sure that currently we have a great SEC chairman, Paul Atkins, and if we could be sure that Paul Atkins and a person like Paul Atkins was always at the SEC forever, then we wouldn't necessarily need legislation because they're already in the process of implementing much better rules and providing regulatory clarity. But the truth is that we don't know for sure. And if you're a founder who's trying to make a decision now about where you're going to build your company, you want to have certainty for 10 years out, 20 years out. You know, we want to encourage long-term projects. And so.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are moving in a direction that I think they are very different than what they thought, let's call it the first year after the launch of ChatGPT.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think it's just been kind of one revelation after another in which we've learned that a lot of their preconceptions and belief were wrong. And we've talked about the fact that the markets ended up being much more decentralized than they ever could have predicted. And I'd also say one other thing, which is they also believe that there'd be imminent catastrophes that haven't, so this is kind of like the equivalent to the global warming thing where we're all supposed to be underwater by now. They were saying that models trained on, I think, I don't know, like 10 to 25 flops or whatever were like way too risky. Well, every single model now at the frontier is trained on that level of compute. And so they would abandon us from even being at the place we're at today if we had listened to these people back in 2023. So just a couple of years ago. So that's like really important to keep in mind that there are predictions of imminent catastrophe have already been refuted. And so things.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that narrative really started to fall apart with Deep Seek at the model level back in April, Huawei launched a technology called Cloud Matrix in which they compensated for the fact that their chips individually are not as good as NVIDIA's chips by networking more of them together. So they took 384 of them. You used their prowess in networking to create this RAC system cloud matrix. And it was demonstrated to show that yes, Nvidia chips are better. They're much more power efficient. But at the rack level, at the system level, Huawei could get the job done with these Ascend chips and cloud matrix. And so again, I think that showed that we're not the only game in town on chips, which means that if we don't sell our chips to our friends and allies in the Middle East and other places, then Huawei certainly will.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leadership in this technology, why wouldn't we? But this is what they said. And, you know, when the Biden executive order on AI was crafted, there was no discussion whatsoever of the China compete. It was just, again, assumed that we were so far ahead that we could basically do anything to our companies and it would just ben't really affect our competitiveness.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this narrative really started to fall apart with the launch of Deep Seek, which really happened in the first, I don't know, couple weeks of the Trump administration because, you know, if you ask any of these people what they thought of China during this time when they were pushing all these regulations, they basically, you know, and specifically, well, wait, if we shoot ourselves in the foot by over-regulating AI, you know, won't China just win the AI race if you were to ask them that what they would have said, they did say, is that China is so far behind us it doesn't matter. And furthermore, and this was said completely without evidence, that if we basically slow down to impose all these supposedly healthy regulations, well, China will just copy us and do the same thing. I think it was absurdly naive you. I think that if we shoot ourselves in the foot, China will just be like, thank you very much. We'll just.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, that's exactly right. And I mean, literally the minute the Biden administration was over, all the top Biden AI employees went to go work at Anthropic, which tells you who they were working with during the Biden years. But no, but this was very much the narrative. You sort of had this imminent. Superintelligence. And then one of the refrains you heard was that AIs like nuclear weapons and GPUs are like uranium or plutonium or something. And therefore we need the proper way to regulate this is with like an international atomic energy commission. And so again, everything would be sort of centralized and controlled and they would anoint two or three winners. And now.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They told us that explicitly. And they told us exactly what you just said. They told us they're going to ban open source. And when we challenge them on the ability to ban open source, because it's, you know, we're talking about math, like mathematical algorithms that are taught in textbooks and YouTube videos and in universities. They said, well, during the Cold War, we banned entire areas of physics and put them off limits and we'll do the same thing. Yeah, and that's the, yeah, that was the, and you'll be happy to know that the guy who actually said that is now an anthropic employee.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The free market will solve those coordination problems, find those companies, and we'll be able to control this whole thing and prevent the genie from escaping the bottle. I think it was like this totally paranoid version of what would happen, and it's already being in the process of being refuted. But this vision is fundamentally what animated the Biden executive order on AI. It's what animated the Biden diffusion rule. I mean, you've talked about how you were in a meeting with Biden folks and they were going to basically ban open source and they're basically going to anoint two or three winners and that was it Um...”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's existential risk The idea being if there's like a 1% chance of AI ending the world, then we should drop everything and just focus on that because you do the expected value calculation. And so if it ends humanity, then that's the only thing you should focus on, even if it's a very small percentage chance. But they really reorganize behind this with all of it. And they've got quite a few advocates. And actually, it's an amazing story about how much influence they were able to achieve largely behind the scenes or in the shadows during the Biden years. They basically convinced all of the major Biden staffers of this view, of this imminent superintelligence is coming. We should be really afraid of it. We need to consolidate control over it. There should only be, you know, ideally two or three companies that have it. We don't want anyone in the rest of the world to get it. And then what they said is, you know, once we make sure that there's only two or three American companies, we'll solve the core nation problems. That's what they consider to be the, you know.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some degree. If you can regulate AI, then that kind of gives you a lot of control over lots of other things. And like I mentioned, AI is kind of eating the internet. It's like the main way that you're getting information. So again, if you can kind of get your hooks into what the AI is showing people, now you can control what they see and hear and think, which dovetails with the whole with the left censorship agenda, which they've never given up on, dovetails with their agenda to brainwash kids, which we, you know, which is kind of the whole woke thing. So, I mean, this is going to be very desirable for the left. And this is why, I mean, look, they're already doing this. This is not like some prediction on my part. Basically, after scam bank run fraud did what he did with FTX and got sent to jail. He was like a big effective altruist. And he had made pandemics like their big cause. They needed a new cause and they got behind this idea of X risk.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So people have been taught to be afraid of this. And then there's enough kind of pseudoscience behind it, you know, kind of like, you know, with you've got all these contrived studies that the one where they claimed that the AI researcher got blackmailed by his own AI model or whatever. Look, it's very easy to steer the model towards the answer that you want. And a lot of these studies have been very contrived, but there's this Patina pseudoscience to it. It's certainly technical enough that the average person doesn't feel comfortable saying that this doesn't make any sense. I mean, it's more like you're not an expert. What do you know? And even Republican politicians, I think, are kind of falling for this. So, yeah, I mean, it's a really desirable narrative. And of course, you know, as AI touches more and more things, more and more parts of the economy, every business is going to use it to.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the left needs a central organizing catastrophe to justify their takeover of the economy and to regulate everything. And especially to control the information space. And I think that you're seeing that kind of the allure of the whole climate change doomer narrative has kind of faded. Maybe it's the fact that they predicted 10 years ago that the whole world would be underwater in 10 years and that hasn't happened. So it's like a certain point you get discredited by your own catastrophic predictions. I suspect that's where we'll be with AI doomerism in a few years. But in the meantime, it's a really good narrative to kind of take the place of the climate doomerism. There's actually a lot of similarities, I would say. You know, you've kind of got a lot of kind of pre-existing Hollywood storytelling and pop culture that supports this idea. You've got the Terminator movies and the Matrix and all this kind of stuff.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, again, our view is that, first of all, we have to win the I race. We want America to lead in this critical area. It's like fundamental for our economy and our natural security. How do you do that? Well, our companies have to be successful because they're the ones who do the innovation. Again, you're not going to regulate your way to winning the AI race. I'm not saying we don't need any regulations. But the point is just not what's going to determine whether we're the winners or not.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I shouldn't beat on them too much, but I just did like it. I've always been proud to be an American, but particularly now, because the fact that it really feels like we're recentering on core American values in a lot of the things that we're talking about, which is just really great.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Ronald Reagan had a line about this, which is if it moves tax it, if it keeps moving regulated, if it stops moving, subsidize it. The Europeans are definitely at the subsidized stage.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Well, I mean, the Europeans, I mean, they have a really different mindset for all this stuff. When they talk about AI leadership, what they mean is that they're taking the lead in defining the regulations. It's like, that's what they're proud of is that like they think that's what their comparative advantage is, is that, you know, they get together in Brussels and figure out what all the rules should be. And that's what they call leadership.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gas turbine bottle next been alleviated. And then eventually you get to nuclear. So that would be very good. I think the issue there is just there's a whole bunch of insane regulations preventing load shedding. So, for example, you can't use diesel. And this Chris Wright is the Secretary of Energy, is very good on all this stuff, and I think he's working on unraveling all of this so we could actually do this.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is the grid is only used about 50% of the capacity is used throughout the year because they have to build enough capacity for the peak days, like the hottest day in summer, the coldest day in winter. Those are your peak days. And they don't want to commit to a bunch of the capacity being used. And then you find out that you have a really cold day in winter and people can't get enough heat for their homes. And so they can't overcommit to, say, contracts or data centers, things like that. But if you could, again, just like. Could shed that like 40 hours a year of peak load to backup, then you'd be able to free up 80 gigawatts, which is a lot. And that would definitely get us through the next.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“However, I do think that in the next two or three years, we could get a lot more out of the grid. So I've had energy executives tell me that if we could just shed 40 hours a year of peak load from the grid to like backup generators to diesel, things like that, you could free up an additional 80 gigawatts of power, which is a lot because I guess the way that it works is, um,”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Build out of this infrastructure. In terms of power, so my understanding is that nuclear is going to take five or ten years. This is not something that we're going to be able to do in the next two or three years. So in the short term, it really means that gas is the way that these data centers are going to get powered. And the issue with gas is the shortage there is not, I mean, America has plenty of natural gas. It exists in plenty of enough red states where you could just build out data centers like close to the source, which would be smart. The issue is there's like a shortage of these gas turbines. There's only like two or three companies that make these things and like there's like a backlog of two or three years. So I think that's probably the immediate problem there that needs to get solved.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, well, so there are definitely people who are much more knowledgeable about energy than I am and are experts in the space. But here's what I've been able to kind of define is, so first of all, the administration, President Trump has signed multiple executive orders to allow for nuclear, to make permitting easier. We've even freed up federal land for data centers to hopefully try and help get around some of these state and local restrictions. And obviously the president has made it a lot easier to stand up new energy projects, power generation, all of that kind of stuff. I still think, though, that we have a growing NIMBY problem at the state and local level in the US that is becoming a little bit worrisome. And if we don't figure out a way to address it, then it could really slow down.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But there you have it. So, in any event, I'll stop there. Those are kind of some of the major pillars of what we've been advocating.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is hurting China. No, it's like it's helping China. I mean, it's basically just handing them markets. And our products are better. But if you don't give these countries a choice to buy the American tech stack, obviously they're going to go with the Chinese tech stack. And China's out there promoting deep-seek models and Huawei chips. And they're not wringing their hands about. Whether exporting chips for a data center in UAE is going to like create the Terminator and all these ridiculous narratives that we've invented to, you know, reasons we've invented not to sell American technology to our friends. So that has ended up being, I think, surprisingly maybe the most controversial part of what we've advocated for.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know all of these rules basically just create pent up demand for Chinese chips and models, and it creates a Huawei Belt and Road. And we are hearing that Huawei is starting to proliferate or diffuse in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia. And I just think it's a really counterproductive strategy. We're completely shooting ourselves in the foot. And the greatest irony is that the people who've been pushing this strategy of driving all these countries into China's arms have called themselves China hawks, you know, as if what they're doing.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, the Gulf states, you know, I'm talking about countries like Saudi Arabia, UEE, longstanding U.S. allies. They weren't allowed to buy chips from the US. In other words, they weren't allowed to set up data centers and participate in AI. And here we are telling all these countries that AI is fundamental to the future. It's going to be the basis of the economy, and yet we're excluding you from participating in the American tech stack. Well, it's obvious what they're going to do. The only play we're giving them is to go to China.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, we just called it usage, but we understand that getting the most users is how you went. So there's like a fundamental culture clash going on right now. And, you know, the way I kind of parse it is that what we decide to sell to China is always going to be complicated because, you know, there are competitor and our adversary and there's the whole potential of dual use. And so the question of what you sell to China is nuanced. But what we sell to the rest of the world, that should be an easy question, which is we should want to do business with the rest of the world. We should want to have the largest ecosystem possible. And every country we exclude from our technology alliance, we're basically driving into the arms of China and it makes their ecosystem bigger. And what we saw under the Biden years is that they were constantly pushing other countries into the arms of China, starting with the Gulf states in October of 2020.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think all of us in Silicon Valley understand that the way that you win a technology race is by building the biggest ecosystem, right? You get the most developers building on your platform. You get the most apps in your app store. Everyone just uses you. I mean, those are the companies that typically win are the ones that get all the users, all the developers, and so on. And so we in Silicon Valley have a partnership mentality. We want to just publish the APIs and get everyone using them. Washington has a different mentality, right? It's much more of a command and control. We want you to get approved. We kind of want to hoard this technology. Only America should have it. And this was really fundamental, I think, to the Biden diffusion rule where the point of that rule is to stop diffusion, right? Diffusion is a bad word. But in Silicon Valley, we understand that diffusion is how you win. I mean, I don't think we ever called it diffusion before. That was a new word.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out of the way so that AI companies can build data centers and get power for them. And we can talk about them more if you want. But I think that that's a second really huge part of what it's going to take to win the AI race. And then the third area is around exports. And maybe this has been the most controversial one. And it really speaks to the cultural divide between Silicon Valley and Washington.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of win the whole world. So we have to preserve that. And I think we will eventually get some federal preemption. I think the question will just again be whether we preempt heavy or preempt light. Second big area is infrastructure and energy. We want to help this amazing infrastructure boom that's happening. And the biggest, I think, limiting factor there is just going to be around energy. I think President Trump's been incredibly far-sighted in this. I mean, he was talking about drill baby drill many years ago. He understood that energy is the basis for everything. It's definitely the basis for this AI boom. And we want to basically get all these unnecessary regulations, the permitting restrictions, a lot of the”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different times to 50 different agencies about 50 different things. People are going to realize this is crazy and they're going to try to federalize it. And then the question I think is whether we get preemption heavy or preemption light. Do we think everyone's going to ultimately be in favor of a single federal standard? Because I think one of America's greatest advantages is that we have a large national market, right? Not 50 separate state markets, like kind of Europe before the EU wasn't competitive at all on the internet because 30 different regulatory regimes. And so, you know, if you're a European startup and even if you won your country, it didn't get you very far because you still had to figure out how to compete in 30 other countries before you could even win Europe. And then meanwhile, your American competitors won the entire American market and's ready to scale up globally. So the fact that we have a single national market is this fundamental to our competitiveness. And it's why winners in America then go on to.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's very important to support the private sector because they're the ones who do the innovation. We're not going to regulate our way to beating our adversary. We just have to outinnovate them. I mentioned, I think right now the biggest obstacle is the frenzy of over-regulation happening at the States. I desperately think we need a single federal standard, a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes is going to be incredibly burdensome to comply with. I think even the people who support a lot of this regulation are now acknowledging that we're going to need a federal standard. The problem is that when they talk about it, what they really want is to federalize the most onerous version of all the state laws. And that can't be allowed either. So, you know, there's going to be a balance to come. I think as the states become more and more unwieldy, you know, as it becomes more of a trap for startups that they now have to report into 50 different states at 50.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With our competitors or adversaries. I think whether we win or not will mostly have to do with the decisions we make about our own technology ecosystem, not about what we do vis- ⁇-vis them. And so the president in his July 2030 speech on AI policy, I think, mentioned a few of the key pillars of how we win this AI race. And by the way, I'm not saying it ever ends. It might be an infinite game, but we want to be in the lead at least. And I do think that there could be a period of time where take the internet where, I mean, the internet's still going on. It's happened, but we understand that kind of who the winners are is kind of baked now. So there could be a period of time in which, you know, it's kind of baked to the winners in AI are. But in any event, in terms of how we win this race, I mentioned a few of the key pillars. Number one is innovation.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so when we talk about winning the AI race, sometimes we say we're in a race against China, sometimes we just leave it a little bit more vague. Because I don't think we should become overly obsessed.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Peter Thiel equipped many years ago that he thought crypto would be libertarian or decentralizing and that AI would be communist or centralizing. And I think one thing perhaps we've learned that technology isn't deterministic and that there are a set of choices that determine whether these technologies are decentralizing or centralizing. And maybe we could segue that as a segue to go deeper into the state of the race with China. Maybe Dave, you could lay out the sort of what's most important to get right, you've already indicated, open source is one example you alluded earlier to sort of our strategy as relates to chips. Some people say that yes, it's a good idea to do what we're doing because it'll limit domestic semiconductor production. Other people say, oh, well, some of these companies say chips are their biggest limiting factors. And so are we enabling them in some way? Why don't you talk about the sort of state of play and then our strategy?”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's really good to hear. I mean, I think if we assess kind of the state of the AI race vis- ⁇-vis China, this is the only area where we appear to be behind is in this area of open source models. I think if you don't care whether it's open or closed, I think we have the lead. I think our top model companies are ahead of the top Chinese companies, although they're quite good. But just this narrow area of open source seems to be where they have an advantage. So it's great to hear that you guys are seeing. A lot more efforts coming to market.”
2026-07-16 · a16z Podcast · Replay 2025: David Sacks on AI, Crypto, and America's Technology Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source