Opinion: David Sacks may be Trump’s biggest miscalculation on AI

As lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in the US have joined together calling for the regulation of powerful artificial intelligence models, one of the few vocal naysayers has been Donald Trump. He’s called the perceived dangers of the technology a “hoax” and a “scam”, arguing that the government already has “tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies”.

It’s a starkly different stance from those of his former adviser Steve Bannon, the Republican Texas senator Ted Cruz and even the heads of the world’s leading AI companies. But it’s directly in line with the opinion of David Sacks – a prominent billionaire venture capitalist and Trump’s onetime AI and crypto czar, who has pushed back publicly and forcefully against recent claims of an impending AI apocalypse.

Sacks, who believes regulation will erase the US lead in the global AI race, is seen as Trump’s AI whisperer – the adviser with the greatest influence in the White House on the topic. Time and again, he’s counseled the president to give a soft touch to AI regulation, helping push executive orders and other measures aimed at loosening restrictions on the technology. He also maintains direct financial stakes in multiple AI companies.

On Friday, more than 100 AI researchers, professors and technologists signed a public letter urging third-party evaluations of AI models and outlining how that should be done. The signatories included some of the most notable experts in the field, such as Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI”, and Stuart Russell, a renowned AI computer scientist.

Sacks, in characteristic form, dismissed the letter on social media, calling third-party evaluations “pseudoscience” and “censorship and control”.

“The last time we had media-generated panics like this (with Russiagate and Covid), social media companies created ‘trust & safety’ teams to censor conservative and dissident voices,” Sacks wrote. “These groups haven’t earned our trust, and their agenda is not our safety.”

Derailing AI safety efforts

Last December, Trump signed an executive order to halt state laws that limited AI. It was one of the first of several actions by the president that put his alignment with Sacks on full display. The proclamation assigned a federal taskforce to have the “sole responsibility” of challenging states that attempt to pass laws restricting the technology. The order spelled out an influential role for Sacks to direct the taskforce’s litigation against states.

Then, just four months later, in March, the White House unveiled an AI policy for Congress that encouraged lawmakers to pre-empt state rules. Again, Sacks was seen as working behind the scenes to make this happen. This pattern has continued throughout the year. In July, Trump and Sacks hosted a fanfare-filled AI summit in Washington.

And just this week, Trump called Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, to discuss AI regulation. In a live demonstration of Sacks’ proximity to the most powerful people in the US, the call came in while Sacks was interviewing Huang at an event on stage.

Next week, Trump is hosting China’s leader, Xi Jinping, at the White House and is expected to invite several AI CEOs to be present. Sacks is also slated to be one of the guests in attendance, according to NBC News.

Isabel Sunderland, the policy lead for technology reform at the non-profit Issue One, said that Sacks’ relationship with the president shows what happens when money can buy a direct line to power.

“David Sacks advising President Trump on AI shows exactly how our political system serves the wealthy and well-connected instead of everyday Americans,” Sunderland said. “This is about more than just AI regulation – it’s about who’s allowed to write the rules.”

Trump’s most recent full-throated opposition to AI regulation comes after an Anthropic employee, Jacob Coxon, announced on social media last week that he was resigning from the company, saying AI would soon become “superhuman systems” that could cause human extinction by 2030. After Coxon’s post, other Anthropic employees backed these predictions, with one saying: “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!”

The end-of-the-world prognostications whipped up a frenzy of media and lawmakers’ attention over the past two weeks, with US politicians, heads of state and international bodies calling for the tech to be reined in.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, issued a proposal to slow down the technology’s advancement and ensure public safety by regulating the industry. In a rare public display of unity, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis and xAI owner Elon Musk agreed.

Sacks, however, pushed back on any regulatory action, instead indicating the proposal was an “election-season psyop” and a bid for “regulatory capture”.

In a lengthy social media post responding to Amodei’s proposal, Sacks said: “If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible. But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission.”

Sacks’ political evolution

Sacks, like his tech contemporaries Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, hails from South Africa. He was born in Cape Town in 1972 and then emigrated with his family to the US in the late 1970s. Sacks spent his college career majoring in economics at Stanford, where he met Thiel and worked with him at the conservative student-run newspaper the Stanford Review.

The two men also collaborated after graduating, co-authoring in 1995 the book The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford, an early glimpse into Sacks’ political ideology. The book rails against “multiculturalism”, “diversity” and the “politically correct” decline of higher education.

By the late 90s and early 2000s, Sacks, Thiel, Musk and others worked together at PayPal, becoming members of what’s now known as the PayPal Mafia – an elite group of influential and wealthy tech investors and founders.

After founding and working at various startups over the years, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures in 2017. The fund has raised hundreds of millions for tech companies and has investments in an array of businesses, including SpaceX, Anduril, Palantir, Meta, Airbnb, Lyft and dozens of AI startups. As of 2023, Sacks said the firm’s assets under management totaled $3.3bn.

Around the same time as founding Craft Ventures, Sacks started to get more into politics. While he donated to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid for president, he quickly pivoted to backing mostly Republican candidates and causes.

In March 2020, Sacks launched the popular and influential All-In tech podcast with three other Silicon Valley investors who lean conservative and trumpet capitalist values. Vanity Fair profiled their annual All-In summit in 2025, calling the gathering a “fever-dream capitalist bacchanal where the faithful can stop being ‘guilt-tripped by this woke mind virus’ and get into ‘founder mode’”.

Since then, Sacks’ rightward stances and political giving have deepened, according to a profile in the Atlantic. He donated to JD Vance, Blake Masters, Ron DeSantis and Robert F Kennedy Jr, campaign finance filings show. In June 2024, Sacks threw a fundraiser for Trump at his $45m French-limestone mansion in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights. Tickets went for $500,000 per couple.

“President Trump is relaxed, happy, and cracking jokes about AI,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general at Trump’s Department of Justice, posted on social media from the event.

The AI czar’s time in the White House

After Trump won the presidency, he named Sacks his AI and crypto czar, a newly created role.

The position, as a “special government employee”, only allowed Sacks to work for the administration for a maximum of 130 days a year, but exempted him from confirmation hearings or financial disclosure requirements. The office of government ethics did require Craft Ventures to divest in some of its AI holdings, though.

In March, Sacks said he was leaving the position, but he’s since maintained close ties with the president. In May, he successfully urged Trump to scrap an executive order that would’ve subjected AI models to government review. And in July, the two men hosted the AI summit in Washington. At the event, the president delivered an “AI action plan”, once again aimed at relaxing restrictions on the development and deployment of the technology.

Sacks’ influence on Trump has rankled other senior administration officials, according to the Wall Street Journal. Scott Bessent and Susie Wiles have both voiced concerns about the effects of AI on the country and have advised Trump to mandate increased oversight on the technology. But the president has consistently sided with Sacks on the issue.

Critics say that Trump and Sacks are out of step with the American public on safeguarding AI, even among Republicans. A May poll by Bryson Gillette Insights for the AI safety group Future of Life Institute, found that 85% of Republicans say they support Trump taking strong action to ensure AI is developed and deployed safely.

“Running the David Sacks playbook on AI might be the biggest miscalculation the Trump administration has made,” Sacha Haworth, the executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, said. “He is an out-of-touch Silicon Valley radical who wants to replace humans with machines. You cannot put this guy in charge and not expect to pay a political price. Republicans are going to follow big tech executives right over a cliff.”

Sacks and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.