Silicon Valley on the Hill...Companies Spending More on AI...Tesla Drops its EV Chargers
Silicon Valley on the Hill...Companies Spending More on AI...Tesla Drops its EV Chargers
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Tech Looks Too Eager to Prepare for a Trump Presidency at the Hill and Valley Forum
It’s always sad when Silicon Valley has to worry about what politicians think.
Meeting with government officials typically means playing grown up and losing some of your spunk.
The startup ecosystem, when it’s at its best, isn’t begging for public money or whining about regulation or engaging in zero-sum competition. Silicon Valley is at its purest when it’s building products faster than the government could ever think to regulate them.
Unfortunately, certain realities are forcing certain serious venture capitalists to court government officials:
Many big venture capital firms are excited about defense tech companies like Anduril and Shield AI. Winning government contracts has actually become a key part of the startup playbook for certain companies.
Facebook has so frustrated politicians of both parties that they’ve actually stepped up their tech governing game. With the rise of generative artificial intelligence, the Biden administration moved quickly this time around to lightly regulate AI, effectively favoring companies with big budgets to comply with government oversight.
American companies are competing against Chinese tech companies in a world where (a) many American technology companies can’t operate in China, (b) Chinese tech companies can mostly do business in America, (c) Chinese companies aggressively “borrow” American intellectual property, and (d) the Chinese government pumps money into important technology companies to make sure they’re globally competitive.
Elections are coming up and it’s hard not to voice your opinions and, if you’re rich enough, get politicians to owe you a favor.
So it is with that in mind Madeline (our not-Eric Newcomer reporter here at Newcomer) found herself at the Hill and Valley Forum on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. Here’s what she saw and the troubling warning that ran through the event.
The event, a discussion of AI policy and national security, was put together by Jacob Helberg, who has established himself as a major player in nationalist tech policy after pushing legislation to force the divestiture of TikTok. Helberg is an advisor to Palantir and married to venture capitalist Keith Rabois.
Delian Asparouhov, a partner at Founders Fund, helped put on the shindig with Helberg, along with 137 Ventures’ Christian Garrett.
As an event, it was by any fair measure a success. The Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson delivered closing remarks, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer appeared at a closed-door after-event dinner, and venture capitalists Vinod Khosla, Joe Lonsdale, and Josh Wolfe were on stage.
Also on stage — a somewhat unhinged Alex Karp. The Palantir CEO went on a rant about college protesters (TL;DR he hates them with a peculiar passion) and joked about launching drone strikes on VCs who disappointed him — not exactly that grown-up behavior when dealing with politicians that we were talking about in the beginning.
The panels were generally what you’d expect if politicians and tech leaders are given a long leash to say whatever they want. The many journalists in attendance were passed over as moderators in favor of investors, members of Congress, and Helberg himself. Senator Lindsey Graham (on a panel with Sequoia senior steward Roelof Botha) was still angry about Section 230. Somebody tell him that’s yesterday’s controversy.
Politico described the event as a “MAGA-tinged Hill summit.” Helberg rejected the characterization, posting, “MAGA-tinged? I think the word they’re looking for is BIPARTISAN.” The Washington Post said that Helberg and crew were clearly revving up to write AI rules for Trump should he become president again.
From the ground, it was definitely an event tilted toward Republicans. Among the elected officials1 on stage, Republicans outnumbered Democrats 7-12, and a lot of the talk seemed to be about what AI policy could look like under a Trump presidency. (The answer seemed to be: leverage China fears to roll back Biden’s executive order and block regulation of AI, while ramping up funding for national favorites.)
During the event’s final talk, Speaker Johnson outlined three core tenants for his AI agenda: rejecting calls for government “licensing” of AI, pushing allies to back off regulation and join the fight against China, and boosting domestic energy production (including fossil fuels) to support the compute needed for a proliferation of AI data centers.
To be fair, some of the panels, including Wolfe and Khosla’s, were truly bipartisan. (Khosla is going to host Joe Biden for a fundraiser at his house next week.)
But the decision to have former President Trump dial in for a short surprise video appearance certainly drove home the message that a segment of the tech set is positioning itself for a possible second Trump presidency.
Event co-host Asparouhov’s description of Trump’s appearance in a post after the event should put Democrats looking to play nice on notice.
Asparouhov wrote:
The 45th and potential 47th President of the United States...
Giving remarks at the 2024 Hill and Valley Forum at Capitol Hill
4 years ago you had to issue an apology if you even said you voted for him
In 2024, every major defense tech fund is sharing a stage with DJT”
That’s the sort of rhetoric that undermines the idea that this was a bipartisan event about national security, as opposed to an effort to normalize Trump and treat him as a regular Republican that business-people could navigate.
A number of Silicon Valley names — including Helberg, Lonsdale, Daniel Gross, and Matt Ocko — stayed in the area for an event to support House Republicans’ fundraising efforts, according to Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman.
Tellingly amid all the chummy vibes at Hill and Valley, we didn’t hear much mention on stage of the fact that Trump opposed the TikTok bill, which Helberg and the VC China hawks cited repeatedly as a key priority.
We’re all for bipartisanship when it comes to making sure that America is competitive with China, and on tech policy and national security in general, for that matter. We’re also wary of overaggressive AI regulations.
But embracing Trump is crossing a line. Just read his latest interview in Time Magazine.
We’ve said since the very first edition of this newsletter that supporting Trump is beyond the pale. There’s a grim logic in the eagerness of so many VCs to cozy up to him and his allies, what with the promise of tax cuts, minimal regulation, and now the prospect of a Trump administration dumping money into their AI companies in the name of national security.
But it’s short-sighted, at the very least, for investors to so blithely abandon foundational American principles like rule-of-law government, which among other things is one of our enduring competitive advantages—and which Trump, with his election-denialism and mob-boss practices, is explicitly committed to destroying.
The financial class shrugging off fascist warning signs because a candidate is friendly to business is a terrible story that we’ve seen before.
While the Hill and Valley Forum was basically a backslapping event, it’s also a reminder that Trump is very much going to be on the ballot. Insiders are gearing up for a possible second Trump presidency.
We need to start taking that seriously and literally.
Texts with a VC
Josh Wolfe’s Take on Helberg’s Hill and Valley
