How Trump Will Unleash a Tech Hell on America

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. & Crypto Czar.” In his statement, Trump wrote that “Sacks will focus on making America the clear global leader” in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, which he deemed to be “two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness.” In addition, Sacks will “safeguard Free Speech online,” “steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship,” and “lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.” For his first-ever Truth Social post, the incoming czar responded to Trump with gratitude and claimed that he “looks forward to advancing American competitiveness in these critical technologies.” It’s the first position of its kind in United States history and, more importantly, a fulsome reward for Sacks, who’s spent much of this year fundraising for Trump and advising him on power-circle picks, from Vice President–elect J.D. Those folks will likely include a lot of Sacks’ fellow Silicon Valley Republicans—think Peter Thiel, All-In co-host Chamath Palihapitiya, Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey, the Winklevoss twins—while excluding anyone deemed “woke,” or any business rivals who pose threats to the companies and sectors that Trump-advising techies like Sacks, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen specialize in. If you thought the conflict-of-interest optics were bad enough with the “Department of Government Efficiency” project from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, you won’t feel any better about czar David Sacks. Not long after Trump’s announcement, Sacks shared a clip from Andreessen’s recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience concerning, as Sacks characterized it, “the dystopian path we were on with AI” before “the timeline split,” leading us to “a different path now.” Andreessen stated to Rogan that “if you thought social media censorship was bad … A.I.