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- Opinion | What Really Happened at the White House Lunch That Marc Andreessen Say...
Since the election of Donald Trump, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has told one podcast after another of a May 2024 lunch in the Biden White House where he claims we and our colleagues shared a secret plan to effectively ban AI startups, which he and his partner Ben Horowitz found so alarming they left the West Wing telling each other, “Yep, we’re for Trump.” For two years, we’ve held our tongue. We don’t know whether Andreessen has simply misremembered our discussion or purposely misrepresented it. But as the AI policy debate once again centers on questions of corporate power and government oversight, it’s time to set the record straight. Far from a revelation about AI policy, most of that 2024 meeting was about other issues and largely amounted to two businessmen airing financial and regulatory grievances. Behind closed doors, their loudest rants focused not on AI, but on the more likely reasons they supported Trump: Biden’s proposed billionaire minimum tax and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s oversight of cryptocurrency. Andreessen was adamant that Washington was choking the crypto industry, in which his firm is a leading investor. He demanded the administration change course on both fronts. Andreessen has since told Ross Douthat on his podcast that we said government regulation of AI would mean “there will be no startups,” only two or three large AI companies. But we said no such thing. The experience he describes as essential to his political conversion simply never happened. For the record, here’s what did when we talked about AI. First, Andreessen warned us to watch out for “the sex cult that wants to run America’s AI policy.” This appears to be a reference to instances of polyamory in the effective altruism movement, many of whose adherents believe AI poses existential risks to humanity. Effective altruism is a philosophy we and the Biden administration did not share. Second, we discussed the most significant action in the Biden AI executive order: requiring leading AI companies to share safety test results with the government — an action Trump would later revoke, then revive. We emphasized that to avoid harming startups, we crafted our policy to apply only to the largest firms. Third, Andreessen was under the mistaken impression that the Biden administration had banned, or would soon ban, open-weight AI models — models for which developers publish the model weights that enable others to refine them… [TheTopNews] Read More.4 weeks ago - America Is Losing Its Mind. This Governor Wants You to Put Down Your Phone.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Gov. Spencer Cox is not running for president. Or at least that's how he opens his new book, Off Ramp: How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt. Put aside, for a moment, how that went over with Cox's publisher. And whether he'd keep that pledge if he eventually has a more obvious political home than he does in today's MAGA-fied Republican Party. Cox's book is worth reading for anyone who loves politics but hates what it has become. It's also for anyone who hates themselves every time they reach for their phone like it's a pack of Marlboro Lights. The Utahn amasses a Wasatch Mountain-sized body of evidence, dutifully sourced, about why our democracy is turning rancid. Cox also offers some suggestions about how to improve the discourse, and it turns out you, the citizen, carry the burden. He even borrows the old Clintonism that "there's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America" (consult your trademark attorney, Mayor Emanuel). So if he's not testing material for a future White House bid, what's Cox doing with this book? Well, for starters, his term ends in 2028, and the 51-year-old would be an obvious prospect to join the next administration, whether it's led by a fellow Republican or one of his fellow governors who happens to be a Democrat. But it's also the writing of someone still working through recovery from a Twitter addiction, someone who's done the reading and has something important to say about these times. Yet how candid is he about the role President Donald Trump plays in our corroding politics? Not enough, by my lights, which is why I asked him about how much he spares Trump in a book that, in another section, emphasizes how vital elite signaling is to improving public dialogue. Over chips, salsa and superb mole at the Red Iguana 2 in Salt Lake, we discussed his effort to forge a relationship with Trump, who Cox didn't vote for in the president's first two elections. The governor doesn't deny his political imperative much — he needs Trump's help for local projects like saving the Great Salt Lake. We also talked about perhaps the hottest story in Utah politics (Sen. Mike Lee's current and more cringe Twitter addiction), what Trump told Cox about the prospects for pursuing immigration reform in the… [TheTopNews] Read More.4 weeks ago - ‘Very Hard to See How This Ends’Canada’s hefty new counter-tariffs on U.S. goods came into effect early Tuesday morning, pushing the ongoing trade war with the United States into uncharted territory. Talks broke down late last month, and Ottawa and Washington have been blaming each other ever since. So, what happens next? How much pressure is on Prime Minister Mark Carney, and what, if anything, will get President Donald Trump back to the negotiating table? We put these questions to four of POLITICO’s reporters who have most closely followed the twists and turns of this saga: Zi-Ann Lum, a Canadian trade reporter; Nick Taylor-Vaisey, our Ottawa bureau chief; Oliver Ward, a U.S. trade reporter; and Megan Messerly, who covers the White House. We’re not any closer to ending the trade war, but we have as good a grasp as we can of where it stands — and why neither country’s leader chickened out with this round of tariffs. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Carney did not TACO. Zi, where are we now? Zi-Ann Lum: We're bracing for hard times here in Canada. We're hearing from Carney, who released a polished explainer-style video today, tell Canadians (again) that this isn't the first time the United States has tried weaponizing Canada's tariffs to "break" Canada — and it won't be the last. So that sets expectations the Canadian countertariffs that came into force today may provoke more retaliatory actions stateside. Carney's “Expect Hard Times” message to the Canadian public suggests they should expect more money in his government's upcoming budget to go to sectors and businesses that will be hardest hit in this trade war escalation. I'll add that Trump targeting the Canadian dollar over the weekend was particularly interesting because that signals how serious the administration is in snatching Canada's share of the North American auto industry. One compelling reason to build in Canada is that it can be cheaper for labor costs when you pay workers on the Canadian dollar vs. U.S. dollar, so seeing Trump zero in on that raises the question: What's Trump going to do about it? Trump also did not “chicken out.” Megan, why didn’t he back down? How willing is the White House to absorb the political and economic risks of escalation? Megan Messerly: The administration genuinely believes this bubbling trade war will hurt Canada more than it hurts the U.S. — even with some of Canada's… [TheTopNews] Read More.4 weeks ago
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