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Prior to last week, only highly specialized political insiders knew the extent of David Sacks’ influence in the Trump White House: tech policy hawks, lobbyists, reporters, and right-wing operatives infuriated that the billionaire venture capitalist was turning Donald Trump toward artificial intelligence and against the interests of the MAGA base. A deeply reported New York Times article published on Sunday pulled the curtain back further, revealing that the podcaster-turned-“special government employee” had hundreds of conflicts of interest due to his undisclosed investments in AI and crypto companies, and yet has become Silicon Valley’s best backchannel to Trump.
Below, I talk to Ryan Mac, one of the Times reporters who worked on the story, about how Sacks managed to get this close to Trump, why AI heavyweights are eager to protect Sacks’ status, and what’s made it hard for MAGA factions to push him out. When it comes to understanding the tech mindset, I’ll cede authority to Mac: I’m fairly confident that most Regulator readers will immediately recognize his byline from his coverage of Silicon Valley over the years, including his reporting on Peter Thiel’s lawsuit against Gawker and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Sacks’ brazen power grab may have shocked Washington, but as Mac put it, the Valley views it as just another version of moving fast and breaking things: “You’re seeing what happens when tech realizes that something is influenceable.”
But I am an expert on the art of political clout farming, and watching Sacks’ response to the Times article has been utterly fascinating. Though he has yet to dispute the actual facts in the story, Sacks has threatened to sue them for publishing it, demanding that they “abandon” the story and “reconsider” the story’s premise. These are not actual things that one could legally compel a publication to do, but that hasn’t stopped Sacks from hiring a defamation firm to make those claims on his behalf or from voicing MAGA-ish grievances about unfavorable press coverage to an audience on X. And the more he talks about those grievances, and the more that his fellow tech titans tweet their support of him, the more people pay attention to the Times’ story, which paints him as — gasp — a tech billionaire with significant political influence.
Before all this, if you had 30 seconds to write a list of the most influential tech billionaires in politics, Sacks probably wouldn’t have made it — not because he objectively has the least influence, but because you’d immediately think of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk first. Sure, Sacks has a very popular podcast, and if you dug deep enough into All In lore, you might have seen his appearances at the White House, or watched his speech at the Republican National convention, or known that he’d held a fundraiser for Trump in 2024. But Thiel and Musk were famous public figures long before Trump entered politics — long before social media put culture in an internet chokehold, even — and a single interaction between them and Trump could generate a week’s worth of headlines and memes (especially the memes).
All I’m saying is, Sacks has an awful lot of aura farming to do in order to catch up.
This week at The Verge:
“You’re seeing what happens when tech realizes that something is influenceable”
This interview has been edited for clarity.
As someone reporting out of Silicon Valley, what has it been like watching the universe of people you covered suddenly enter the White House and the MAGA dynamic?
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