00:30:57 · Mike Isaac, Max Read, Erin Griffith
[00:30:57] S4: thing to be cynical about. Yeah. [00:30:58] S1: I know. Yeah. And do you feel like there's a there's a shift? I mean, I I think we all are aware of what felt like, I'm sorry to use such immaterial language here, a vibe shift in Silicon Valley a few years ago. Buddy. Is there a vibe shift swinging back? I'm interested in... If any of you feel like that might happen, or is it... Is this... Was that... Was the first vibe shift an illusion? [00:31:19] S3: I mean, I've seen headlines to that effect. But I think, like Mike said, it's gonna be a little bit more on the DC side of things because, I mean, just from my perspective, a lot of the VCs were really excited to be able to not care about stuff like that Democrats care about, like DEI. Culturally, it seems like we're kind of gonna be still in that, in in that vibe. [00:31:43] S1: Yeah. It doesn't seem like that's changed. Jasmine, we were talking before we were taping about, like, a sense that there's there's a question about how Republicans are gonna react to to this. They're likely to lose the house of representatives. There's gonna have to be a shift in how they approach AI regulation in Silicon Valley.
00:31:58 · Jasmine Sun, Max Read
[00:31:58] S2: Totally. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the big open questions I have about the twenty twenty eight primary too. I mean, primary season's gonna start basically two weeks from now. And are JD Vance and Marco Rubio going to break from Donald Trump's extremely, extremely unpopular positions on AI regulation in data centers? Right? Like, spite of the vast... Like, the majority of Republican voters do want to regulate AI. They would prefer slower with more safeguards versus some kind of abstract, immaterial beat China narrative. And yet, basically, every Republican in Congress or every Republican leader has been unable to say any of that because the president sort of sets sets what the party line is. And if the Republicans think of beating in the midterms, I could imagine some more folks deciding to break off and say, like, actually, like, our constituents are angry at data centers. They're worried about kids' safety if they're social conservatives. But I am starting to see a bit of a split in the Republican Party between the more traditional libertarian, free market, letter up types who are still very excited about deregulation versus some of the more New Right folks. I was... I spent the weekend with some folks from American Compass, the New Right think tank, and they're all thinking, actually, maybe after the midterms, this is the time for the Republican Party to get serious about AI regulation on kids, jobs, safety, things like that. [00:33:22] S1: Were they saying AI or were they saying SI?
00:33:22 · Max Read, Jasmine Sun, Erin Griffith
[00:33:22] S1: Were they saying AI or were they saying SI? [00:33:25] S2: It was actually really funny. It was it was a chat in the house workshop, but there's a split in the room, and then you could tell there's a bit of internal tension between folks from the admin and other places who were saying s I and the folks who were a little bit too staunchly, like, we're not caving to that. So it was really funny. [00:33:42] S3: I've never seen a better, like, metaphor for, like, people talking over each other and, like, not being able to communicate than, like, not even being able to agree on what we're calling this thing. [00:33:52] S2: It was kind of amazing. [00:33:54] S1: Yeah. So one of the issues on the ballot next Tuesday is this tax in California on billionaires. Erin, can you explain what the what the what the proposition is, what the measure is? And what... I mean, I think we can all guess, but why are... Why are Silicon Valley so interested in this tax on billionaires?
00:34:10 · Erin Griffith
[00:34:10] S3: Yeah. I mean, it's it's been actually pretty fascinating. Prop 40 is a proposed one time 5% billionaire tax on wealth, including unrealized gains. You know, that means, like, you know, private startup stock for billionaires in California. And as you can imagine, the billionaires are a little bit mad about it. And so what better way to fight back than to use their vast wealth? And so they've gathered... This group that we reported on, Building a Better California, has gathered $333,000,000, which is so, so, so much to fight a state proposition. Mostly from, you know, Sergey Brin, but then he brought in John Doerr and Patrick Collison, the founder of Stripe. John Doerr's a very famous VC investor from Kleiner Perkins. And so... And they have been, over the last couple months, recruited this, like, kind of who's who of Silicon Valley, like, very high powered, famous VCs, founders, many of whom are not billionaires. There's some, like, mere 100 millionaires and even billionaires. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, you know, aspiring billionaires. But they are... They're they're mad about this for a number of reasons. You know, they think it's poorly written, that they don't believe that it's gonna be a one time tax. They don't like how the money's actually gonna... Like, the money's not, you know, specifically earmarked well enough to to do the things that they say they're gonna do, and they don't trust... They they basically just don't trust the politicians to to do the right thing with it. And so they're really mad about it, and they don't like the precedent in a sense because California is kind of known for, you know, as being a trendsetter. And so they're worried that it's gonna turn into this cat and mouse game where other states are gonna do it, and because a lot of them have already left the state. But they're mad about essentially the principle of They
00:35:55 · Mike Isaac, Erin Griffith, Max Read
[00:35:55] S4: believe the matter. [00:35:55] S3: Yes. Yeah. They believe that, you know, this is going to hinder aspiring billionaires, founders, builders from moving to California and wanting to, you know, get rich. And so I think, you know, there's a lot of reasons that they're fighting it, and they're all kinda like banding together and getting on these weekly calls and like talking about their strategy. And like, one of the really interesting things that we found in our reporting was like, they are aware of how it looks. They they... There was this quote in one of the documents that they're circulating to other donors that says, billionaires are seen as having a net negative impact across issues. They're not trying to be the face of this. They don't wanna be out front. They're they're not like, you know, talking publicly about this like they might if there were some other, like, you know, any issue, like including data centers. They are trying to go through other groups that they're partnering with, like Planned Parenthood is a really big one that they're working with to kind of... That's opposed to it. And so Why... [00:36:57] S1: Sorry. Why is Planned Parenthood opposed to it?
00:36:57 · Max Read, Erin Griffith, Mike Isaac
[00:36:57] S1: Sorry. Why is Planned Parenthood opposed to it? [00:36:59] S3: I mean, for some of the same reasons, it's not sustainable. This one time tax thing is, like, supposed to make up for some of the Trump administration cuts. And they don't believe that it's... You know, it's not setting them up in a position to, like, be sustainable going forward. So they just think it's poorly written. I think a lot of the people that are opposed to it are not opposed to the idea of a wealth tax, including actually some people that I spoke with for this story. They they just think this is a crappy one, and they wish that it was better... Like, that it that it was just structured better and made more sense. [00:37:32] S4: But do you feel like they're always gonna say that? I feel like it's always a, well, this bill is poorly written, and if they could only legislate it better. I just feel like I've heard that from Andreessen or whoever a million times. You know what I'm saying? [00:37:45] S3: Totally. It's... I mean, it's it's almost sort of like respectability politics where it's like, I like, I agree with your message, but I don't like how you're doing it. Yeah. [00:37:52] S1: I was interested to learn that about the... About Planned Parenthood though, because I hadn't I hadn't realized that this was more than just a a cabal of billionaires plotting