No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
00:27:09 · S1, Jacob Helberg, Sarah Guo
[00:27:09] S1: How do you think about in general this transitioning through administration? So you mentioned a number of executive orders. Typically, when an administration shifts, you end up with a lot of those executive orders undone in both directions. Right? Somebody comes in and they kind of cancel a bunch of the executive orders that were signed by the prior administration, and they write a bunch of other ones that may be at odds with them. And so often the key is legislation or other approaches. How do you view making this stick if you think it's so important for our country's future? [00:27:40] S0: Well, are some things that I think will be hard to undo. I mean, tax reform is very sticky. And so, know, one of the interesting attributes about my role of the State Department is we're actually not allowed to comment on electoral politics. So it's kind of this interesting, you know [00:28:05] S1: Yeah. So I guess ignoring that. [00:28:06] S0: Statutory limitation that we're subject to. [00:28:08] S2: When you we we have the audience of a lot of folks in the AI ecosystem, but also a lot of folks in the general business and investing ecosystem of companies of different scale. What do you think, like, American business people and entrepreneurs should know about these policies in terms of how they affect them?
00:28:28 · Jacob Helberg
[00:28:28] S0: The the goal for Paxilica is we want to use it as a platform to expand market access for our companies. Because even amongst our allies, sometimes our companies, you know, face a lot of hurdles with exporting their products and services. So we want to hear feedback from them on, you know, what are what's working and what's not working in places like Japan, South Korea, India, and things that we could do better in the policymaking space to make sure that we can actually make, you know, provide some support for our companies to be more competitive in those markets. We also want to hear, you know, it's been great to already get a lot of feedback from a number of different companies on partnerships that are already in flight and opportunities that they see on the table on the supply chain security side. So there's a lot of cross pollination and partnerships that are already being forged between American companies and companies in India, in Japan, in South Korea, even in Singapore. And so understanding those partnerships helps us really understand how executives are thinking about their supply chain strategy. Everyone uniformly is obviously thinking about ways of having of being much more deliberate about their supply chain decisions in ways that factor in the realities of the need to not be overexposed to China because of the political dynamics at work. And so understanding where they see opportunities for what segments of their supply chain helps us get a better understanding of what's working and what can we help grow, you know, as quickly as possible and scale. And so that part is very useful. So I would say expanded market access, strategic partnership opportunities on the supply chain side. And and then we also want to make sure that we actually create a space where we can talk about important intellectual property intellectual property conversations. You guys are obviously very involved in the AI industry. And so I'm sure you've been, you know, spending a lot of time thinking about the whole model distillation debate, which is super important to actually protect the economic value of these hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in AI companies.
00:30:47 · Jacob Helberg, Sarah Guo
And so that remains a really important unresolved area of policy, where I think getting the input from the builders who are the closest to the development of this technology is super important. [00:31:00] S2: When we last spoke to you on No Priors, you were just beginning your tenure at the State Department. What has the biggest surprise been? You've been very active since you started.
00:31:11 · Jacob Helberg
[00:31:11] S0: Well, the biggest surprise is honestly how entrepreneurial it's the Trump administration has been. Because I think the stereotype for people who work outside of the government is usually really focuses on, you know, this idea of the government is super bureaucratic. And obviously, that's not to say that the government is a massive enterprise. And lots and lots of people involved, lots of processes. But the really extraordinary thing is we have a president who also spent most of his life in the private sector and who really likes speed. I mean, you know, the running joke, especially, you know, with our counterparts overseas that deal with the Trump administration is that we like to move in Trump time. Because, you know, the president, when he likes something, he wants it yesterday. And so that part's really been amazing because the appetite to try new things and the appetite for risk and to move really, really fast is highly unusual by government standards and really speak for the philosophy that President Trump brings to bear in the Oval Office. And so that part's really been extraordinary. That combined with the really great leadership that we've been able to benefit from at the cabinet level from secretary Bessen, secretary Lutnick, secretary Rubio, secretary Bergam, who, you know, it's an incredibly collegial team. And and they really, you know, operate with a level of professionalism that's been incredibly inspiring for people like me in the sub cabinet to be able to benefit from and and also, you know, work very constructively with our bureaus.
00:33:00 · Sarah Guo
[00:33:00] S2: One thing that you've said recently surprised me just in phrasing. You referred to America as a global underdog, believe. That's not the way I think of America. Can you explain yourself?
00:33:13 · Jacob Helberg
[00:33:13] S0: Yeah. So I think, you know, it's interesting because I think The US often thinks of itself as the Navy and, you know Versus a pirate. Versus a pirate. And so, you know, Allison Graham wrote this book years ago called The Thucydides Trapped, where he kind of characterized America as the established power, and he characterized China as the rising power. And and I actually think, you know, one of the really big flaws in that whole line of thinking is I really wouldn't say we're an established power because I think for most of our history I mean, one of the things that really makes America quite unique and and very different is from the earliest days of our founding, we've always been a nation of underdogs. We started out as 13, disorganized, unruly, rebelling against an empire of polite society and, you know, the educated expert class. And who said that, you know, our project as a republic would never succeed. And if there really is one through line across our history, as almost any decade in, you know, the history of our country, there have been, you know, a class of experts that predicted, you know, our decline or, you know, that we've reached the limits of our power, whether it was the great financial crash, whether it was the Iraq War, the first and second oil crisis, you know, the Vietnam War, you name it. And, you know, the amazing thing is Americans perform really, really well when, you know, we feel like our backs are against the wall and it's crunch time. I mean, I'm sure you'll remember during COVID, there were these very dramatic, you know, Atlantic magazine covers about the great unraveling of America. And against the odds of, you know, everyone in the mainstream press, we came out with a with a vaccine in under a year that actually performed much, much better than every other alternative out there and came out of COVID much earlier. China obviously was bogged down in its zero COVID policy, the effects of which it's still feeling today. And so the reason I say this is because I think, you know, culturally, it's something that makes America very, very unique. And I think it's something that really hits close to home for Silicon Valley because it really Silicon Valley embodies, you know, the quintessence of the underdog mentality. Every founder