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?
Ryan Mac: I think about it from the perspective of 2016. Back then I was a younger reporter at Forbes covering Peter Thiel, and I remember when he endorsed Trump. I had just broken a series of stories about him funding the Gawker lawsuit, when he did a very odd move and announced himself as a delegate for Trump at the Republican National Convention. Everyone was like: Huh, Thiel’s an eccentric guy. This might be another eccentric move. I can't remember what the sequence of events was now, but he makes this strange move to become a delegate, and then is announced later as a speaker at the RNC, and he shows up in Cleveland, gives a speech. It's a very “rah rah” speech. But at the time, he was a pariah [in the tech world] for going for and supporting Donald Trump. Even someone like David Sacks, who was very much a Thiel acolyte, supported Hillary [Clinton] in that election cycle.
I say that story now because fast-forward eight years later, and seemingly everyone in tech has fallen in line with Trump, or is outwardly supporting him, or has joined his administration. It's just bizarre. It’s really weird to see that change in dynamic. And in some ways, it makes sense. I mean, they're protecting their businesses, they're protecting their interests, and they're going to do everything they can to protect those things. They've learned over the years that the best way to do that is praising Donald Trump and being close to him and essentially tying themselves to the administration.
Here’s another example: I covered Sergey Brin at the Muslim ban protests at San Francisco Airport at the very start of the Trump administration, and now you get him standing behind Trump at the inauguration. Bizarre flip. He's not unique in that sense. Name anyone standing behind Donald Trump at the inauguration, and they probably said something about him in 2016 or disavowed him in some way. Now we get this kind of political moment where they're all aligned with him. And in some ways, there's no better representative of that than David Sacks.
So when you're talking about their alignment with the president, do you find that there's any aspect of an ideological match between what they want and what Trump represents?
To some extent, I think it's opportunistic. It's more advantageous for them to stay quiet, or to massage his ego, or to compliment him, because at this point, they've learned that there's really no path forward with resistance. There's really nothing to be gained. You see companies like Google, YouTube, and Meta settle these cases with Trump and the administration, and pledge money to his library. There's more opportunity for fealty.
The White House has always been known for factionalism, and my assumption at the beginning of the year was that there would be a stronger MAGA presence in the White House: more populist, more protectionist. The fact that they turned on AI was astonishing, but the fact that they haven't been able to completely divorce Trump from the presence of these tech billionaires is also astounding. What do you think accounts for their longevity?
You make a great point. In our story, we quote Steve Bannon, who is very vocal against some of these tech billionaires. I think Trump is attracted to success. He's attracted to wealth and power, and the tech industry offers him all that. These are the most successful people in the world, judging by their net worth and the power they hold and the companies they run. If these people are going to pledge their loyalty to Donald Trump, I think he's going to view that as a win. He gets to now be very influential when it comes to AI, and that speaks to him. I mean, sure, there are some elements of the MAGA base that are going to be upset by that, but by and large, they've kind of fallen in line, or are at least kind of moving forward with that.
Another disagreement that they had even before this administration took power, was over H-1B visas. Laura Loomer and Bannon were criticizing the approach to H-1Bs, and Loomer went specifically after Sriram Krishnan, who’s David Sacks’ number two. But eventually Trump said he's in favor of them. There are inconsistencies seemingly with the rest of his policies, but it just shows the extent by which the tech set has influenced him and gotten their way. That's the case with H-1Bs and that's certainly the case with AI now.
So, about David Sacks specifically: Once upon a time, there were two South African tech billionaires in the White House with a lot of influence. Currently, there is only one.
Well, there used to be a previous one in 2016.
Ha, yeah, Thiel was one, too. Elon Musk’s falling out with Trump was engineered by MAGA people: earlier this year, you and other Times reporters wrote about how [White House staffer] Sergio Gor put together this massive file on Elon's people who might be disloyal to Trump. Now that you mentioned that David Sacks was a Hillary supporter, why is it that Trump hasn't outed him for disloyalty?
Great question. I think he has met the right people, said the right things, and been able to maybe shield some of that past away. So you’re referring to Jared Isaacman [Musk’s pick for NASA administrator whose nomination was withdrawn by Trump]. Isaacman was dinged supposedly for donating to the Democrats. Well, David Sacks has done the same. It's just that it hasn't been focused on, at least to my understanding, as publicly as Isaacman’s was, where it was brought against him as a kind of a black mark.
But if you just look at his recent history, Sacks has not been a full-time Trump supporter. Going into the 2024 election, he was a DeSantis guy. If you remember, he held the event on X with Ron where they announced DeSantis' candidacy, this very troubled livestream that was mocked widely for failing. It wasn't until a year out from 2024 that, with DeSantis unviable, he moved to Trump. He also held a fundraiser for Vivek Ramaswamy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but at some point, he held a massive fundraiser for Trump at his home in San Francisco. And it kind of went from there. He spoke at the RNC, and he's moved up the ladder to the point where it seems like Donald Trump trusts him to some extent.
The question of “why this guy and not the others that have voted for Trump's enemies in the past” is a very interesting one. I've never been able to wrap my head around why some guys work [in Trumpworld] and why some guys don't. I don't understand the MAGA logic there.
What do you make of the way that Sacks has responded to the Times’ story?
I'm frankly surprised. I mean, I don't think the same amount of people would have read or engaged with the story if he hadn't brought attention to it. It's kind of a classic Streisand effect, in a way. It is interesting to see the extent to which they and every AI leader responded: Sam Altman this morning just tweeted something in support of David Sacks and I'm like, "Where is this coming from?” I guess they all feel strongly about him being their guy in the White House, and that surprised me, that they've come out very strongly.
But still, no one's been able to interrogate the actual content of the story in itself or find any inconsistencies or inaccuracies, and that's because I think our reporting is pretty sound.
We point out that he holds hundreds of stakes in AI and crypto companies that are ostensibly going to be affected by these very pro-AI, pro-crypto policies. No one's really engaging with the material of this article itself, they're just saying David Sacks is a great guy, we love him kind of thing. And you know, they're entitled to say that, but I've just been interested in the vigor in which [that feeling has] come across my feed on X.
This is a much larger thematic question about this new administration: Regulator’s thesis is that people in government with the political power were having a hard time understanding the technology, and the people with the money and the technology were having a hard time navigating politics. But what is the tech world attitude when it comes to Washington now?
I think it's one where they see that they can clearly influence. You have groups like the Hill and Valley Forum, for example, which is very close with Sacks and his group through that AI summit with them, and they realize there is real influence they can have in Washington, if they can corral the right people. Some of these tech folks felt shut out by the Biden administration. They felt like the Biden administration went too hard at their companies or these industries as a whole, especially with regulation — Lina Khan has obviously been mentioned as the bogeywoman in a number of instances. They've found, I wouldn't say a political home, but an alliance with Trumpism and the Trump administration, and they're realizing that they can get a lot of wins. You look at something like the GENIUS Act, for example, which really benefits the crypto industry, or the White House's AI action plan. I know you specifically wrote about the Sacks initiative to kill the attempts to have states regulate AI. These companies see an opportunity to have influence in that way, and they're taking it.
It's far more aggressive than anything I've ever seen in Washington, but then again, Washington is, like, behind a lot of the times.
I've never covered Washington to the extent that you have, but I always kind of thought that was kind of part of the game, I guess? But maybe not. Maybe these guys are taking it to the next level.
There’s this idea in Washington that you have to persuade people to agree that they should do a specific thing, which takes time. I think the speed in which the tech industry is moving to codify things in law is really taking lawmakers by surprise. Like, when the preemption bill came up in the Senate, I don't think the AI industry understood how furious the Republican lobbying against it was going to be.
That's the tech mentality. It's always been to move fast, break things. And now you have the element of the amount of wealth that has been created — whatever paper wealth you want to talk about in terms of these AI companies raising hundreds of billions of dollars, or crypto as wealth — now you have those two combined, and you’re seeing what happens when tech realizes that something is influenceable.
