On with Kara Swisher - Why This Crypto Billionaire Wants to Slow Down the AI Arms Race

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Ripple CEO Chris Larsen once told Kara he’d rather vomit blood out of his eyeballs than run for public office. But that doesn’t mean he won’t use his wealth to influence politics or install a Flock surveillance system that helps the San Francisco Police Department. The latter has some civil liberties advocates crying foul. Kara presses Larsen on everything from surveillance, the AI arms race, cryptocurrency regulations, California's billionaire tax ballot measure, and the midterms. This conversation was recorded live at San Francisco’s Pier 27 as part of the Odoo Experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Caroswisher, and I'm Caroswisher. My guest today is Chris Larson, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency tech company, Ripple. Larson has become a controversial figure over the past few years due to his funding of an extensive surveillance network in San Francisco that many credit would lowering crime in the city. He's never been shy about using his wealth and influence to propel certain policy goals, gaining detractors and admirers along the way. But Larson insists that his interest in San Francisco stems from a true love of the Bay Area, and I believe that's true. He's willing to talk about almost anything, and we get into it here, surveillance, AI reform. He's actually one of the tech bros fighting other tech bros, cryptocurrency regulation, and national politics.

Chris is a really interesting thinker, and he goes all over the place, unlike a lot of these tech pros that shifted right, he did not. He shifts in ways that I find more sensible. I don't agree with him on everything. but he's a really smart thinker and he's putting his money where his mouth is. This episode was recorded live at San Francisco's Pier 27 as part of the Odu experience, so let's get into it. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business takes everything you've got,

and a lot of the tools out there that are supposed to make your life easier just aren't great at talking to each other, and that means you end up having to toggle between a dozen different apps and services just to keep the lights on. Enough of that. Now there's Odo, the all-in-one fully integrated platform that actually might help you get it all done. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try O-D-O-D-O-O-D-com.

That's O-D-O-O-O-O-O-D-com. Chris, why don't we just get your assessment of San Francisco right now? There was, of course, the Fox News period where everything was doom and gloom, much of what they were saying were lies. Talk a little bit about how you look at San Francisco as an innovation center. right now. Yeah, well, first of all, I mean, the city's really doing great. We've really come back. We were, we had some problems, right? A lot of those were political, self-inflicted wounds. But, you know, we've got a fantastic mayor now, Mayor Lurie. And we've really, yeah, I think we should have a lot of 74% approval rating. That's incredible in San Francisco. But we, I think we fixed our public

safety problem as well. We were, you know, the nation's capital is in terms of smash and grab crimes. which are not violent crimes, but they are the kinds of crimes that make people say, I just don't want to go into the city. And I don't want to have my workers there. It's like 25,000 smash-and-grab incidents that were reported every single year. That's down now 70%.

And it's because we've given the police the right tools. The voters approved Prop E back in 2024. I gave them drones, these license plate readers. I know there's some controversy on cameras. But it's been incredibly effective. And we've stood up something called a real-time investigation center. So that's a game changer because now instead of, you know, there's a crime and it gets reported and it's too late, everybody's gone, nothing can be done about it. That's how it used to be.

Now they're catching these smash-and-grab crews in real-time. They come into the city. They do 10 hits a day of crimes. Now you see one of them. We send a drone over to witness them doing a second act. with the license plate readers, we can see where they're going. You send a unmarked police car with a plain closed police officer in it. They put a spike strip out right when they're going by, and they've basically eliminated these crews. And even the crews are talking about this on some of

their podcasts, believe it or not, they have podcasts. As they should. Which is, as they should. But it's great news because nothing works unless you have public safety. And that's why the mayor says This is number one objective, still is. And then you need clean streets. We've made a lot of progress there. Obviously, we had a big homeless problem. Still have some work to do there. But we've made a ton of progress and making sure that,

particularly in the tenderline, that that doesn't become a containment zone. So you can see the results. And I think that set the stage for this AI boom that people wanted to be right here. And that's great news, obviously, for not just the city, but for the state. It's literally like the entire world is sending us a check.

And, you know, that's been a real blessing. Talk a little bit about the AI boom. Obviously, you and I have been through several of these, you know, where it grows and then it comes back. And San Francisco itself has gone through many of these. But we're a boom bus city, for sure. Always happened. But talk about the current one, because obviously people are worried about the AI boom

turning into an AI bubble. And we'll get to that in a second. But why are they coming back to San Francisco? I often tell the story of this one guy. They all left all of a sudden from Miami or Austin or wherever they want it. I was like it's hot and wet there and it's hot and dry there. But they all were like trying to tout and sort of kicking San Francisco. The place where they made their fortunes, which I thought was particularly ungrateful,

but they had to kick it at the same time. And so I was at a really good restaurant here, a place. It was a tartine, actually, down over that way. And I was with a very well-known AI person, and we saw this guy from across the room, big table of people eating the delicious food of tartine. And we went over and were like, get the fuck out of here. You can't have our food. What do you do?

Of course, I'd move back, but still continued to pretend they were conducting themselves in Miami where none of that happened. Is there something about San Francisco in your, like, is there, in this world of digital, is place important anymore for innovation? I think place is super important. I mean, what we have here, I think it's a fine souffle that's very hard to replicate. You've just got the right amount of, you know, obviously major capital that's just down the street. But you've also got still the remnants of the hippie movement, right?

You've got all kinds of experiential ideas around art that you don't see anywhere else. I think even Burning Man is a great influence for sort of creativity. You're going tomorrow, right? We'll go tomorrow. Have fun. It's a lot of people say you can't understand Silicon Valley. He asked if I was going. I laughed in his face.

We'll get you there one day. No, you never will. Never. Okay, all right. Not unless there's a four-season's hotel there. Okay, good point. Yeah. But, you know, it's the creative energy, thinking differently, art and engineering.

That's kind of what goes on there. But I think that's what you have here. And that's very hard to replicate. Everybody always says, hey, we're going to build a Silicon Valley. It's not happening. Right. And the concentration of venture capital here, when you look at AI, I mean, it's just off the charts compared to anywhere else.

that says a lot. You've got to admit, like California's had some problems. San Francisco, we've had our problems. Yet despite all of that, this is still the place where people came to think the impossible. And that's where they're setting their companies up. Why is that from your... I was thinking about this last night.

We had a reunion of our recode staff, but I really did say that same thing. What is your reasoning for it? What creates the current AI boom? And what is the worry you have? Obviously, the inflated, possibly, affiliated valuations, except. Well, there's a lot to be worried about with AI.

We're going to talk about that. But I think this is still a place where you come up with a crazy idea. People are not going to talk you out of it or talk about how stupid it is. Every idea I've ever had and I talk to my friends around here, and it's like, oh, right on, go for it. That sounds awesome. And that matters, actually. And then I think the other thing is you have a lot of sort of veterans.

We've been how many cycles now? Who stayed here, even after they made their fortunes? because it's a wonderful place to live. And there is a notion of sort of paying it back, right? So, like, I had a lot of mentors that helped me that I wouldn't be here. If it wasn't for one sentence, a couple of people said at the right time. And I think we all remember that, and then you try to help the next group they're coming around. So even if you're not involved with AI, which is, you know, a lot of young folks are just doing incredible work.

you might be involved just from sharing your experience or sharing your encouragement. That's a very hard thing to replicate as well. In a place. In a place. So let's go through some stuff that you've been involved in as an entrepreneur. We're going to through a whole range of different things, from cryptocurrency to politics. But let's start with some news. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which the White House says will provide a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies,

is set to have a procedural vote in the Senate later this month, September 15th, actually. President Trump is putting a lot of pressure on lawmakers to get this passed. Talk about where you are on this. Obviously, the Trump administration has been friendly towards cryptocurrency and friendly to himself in terms of benefiting himself, rather. He's just a good businessman, people. Obviously, we've been very involved with crypto policy. It's going 13 years now since 2012 is when we've.

started out. There was nothing on the books there. We were all paranoid. We were always going to be arrested at any moment, right, for sort of counterfeiting or whatever, a million different worries that you could have. Man, some, you know, some progress was made over the years. But then we had the Biden administration. I was a big backer of Biden and Kamla for president. But they really screwed up here. They really screwed up. They were supposed to be a sort of a moderate governing, you know, regime. And they outsourced their financial regulation to the Elizabeth. Elizabeth Warren Wing and Gary Gensler, who were determined to block any regulation specifically designed for the industry, which is a completely novel industry. It didn't fit into anything

that we had. And they went after this sort of regulation by enforcement lawsuit approach, I think designed to hobble the industry or destroy the industry. They just got it in their heads that this was all bad. And obviously, lots of just bad stuff happens in any technology boom. But there's a lot of great stuff here in modernizing the world's financial infrastructure, tokenizing assets to make them cheaper to trade globally. Lots of great stuff. And they didn't go in that direction at all. So we had a very anti-crypto regime. As you know, we were sued by the Biden administration, Gary Gensler. We had a four-year battle. It was brutal. We were lucky we survived it. We spent $150 million defending ourselves.

So we ended up winning. Like right after I saw you last on your show in 2023, maybe a week after that. We did get a favorable ruling, but it was brutal. And if we didn't have a lot of money, we were in a small startup, we would have been finished. And that's just not right. So we wanted new regulations that were specific to the industry. This administration obviously been very pro and wants to be the crypto leaders of the world. And they have so far gotten through one bill, the Genius Act, that regulates stable coins. That's what we're. It's a really important development, so that's now clear. But we need this market structure bill,

kind of maybe even the more important bill called the Clarity Act. Boy, it's been negotiated here now for a long time. It's been really tough, but I think there is bipartisan support. We're hopeful we get it through because we need to get this, you know, really official rules so that people know what to do, so consumers know what to expect. It's better to have more regulation that's clear. then no regulation, and that's what we want.

Where do you expect it to pass, or where is it at this point? It's still tough. There's still some tricky areas around ethics that the Dems want to see happen. I get why they want that to happen. I just hope we can get a compromise that works, because no bill is actually worst for, you know, how ethics go forward. It would be better to have as strong a bill as we can possibly get. What's the most important part of this bill from your bill?

perspective. The most important part of it is defining what is a commodity, what is a security. That's always been the issue. Always been the hang up. And we got clarity in our court decision, but most of the other players don't have that. And if you don't have that clarity, I think the problem could be from one administration to the other, you're just whipsawing back and forth. And that's just no way to have a market work. Which won't grow. And of course, the crypto industry hit back hard against Democrats. Sherrod Brown was sort of wide. widely derided by the crypto industry and loss. He looks like he's going to be back.

Yeah, I love Sherrod. And that was unfortunate. I think, again, his staff went in the wrong direction. I don't think it was him. He was more of an Elizabeth Warren-type influence on his staff. So you like her, Elizabeth, right. I used to. I really did, but I don't like what she's been doing lately.

She kind of leaned into the anti-tech, anti-innovation. But you do have these problems. You talked about this ethics issue. White House Disclosure Forms show president. and a Trump made more than $1.5 billion from crypto investments last year. Should there be some laws in place to rent government officials from profiting off of cyber currency? I think no question. Same with stock trading. We see that in both parties. But absolutely, we need a lot. There's a lot of work to be done there as far as how our government works.

And then what does it do for the citizens that are worried about corruption or, you know, crime? And there are legitimate issues. There are, but it's a pretty regulated business already, right? I mean, finance, FinTech, I always think, is very different from, let's say, communications, right? Communications, you have First Amendment, so it's much harder to regulate, and you have these problems with the social media companies on that score. But financial transactions you don't have a First Amendment on, right? So you don't have the freedom to do a lot of things you see in traditional data companies. So it's already heavily regulated.

But this just makes it clear in this specific industry, which I think the big thing here is it's making the traditional financial industry embrace it and modernize some of their systems that make them faster, cheaper, more global. Which they seem eager to get into. They do seem. I think it's this notion of an Internet of value. We have an Internet of information. The world works better if you have an Internet of value. Values different than information for all kinds of reasons. That's a good thing for the world. you need the clarity of regulation for the big guys to really step in full. They're in pretty good right now, but this would really settle a lot of questions and give them the confidence to invest, you know, a decade out. But you would be for a stipulation that government officials shouldn't be profiting.

Sounds good to me. Yeah. I don't think they should be able to trade stocks or any of this stuff, and you see a lot of that going on. It doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, absolutely. We probably should pay them more than or something. I agree with you on that one. Yeah. And here in San Francisco. San Francisco, too. It's crazy the responsibility they have and how little they make. And I think that just sets up all kinds of problems. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Odu.

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It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process. So you can focus on what really matters, running your business. thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try O-D-O-D-O-O-O-O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-O-com. So last time we were on stage together, we talked a lot about the balance between surveillance and civil liberties.

And recently, the debate was brought right to your front door. In the past few years, you've helped fund an extensive surveillance network throughout San Francisco that now allows police to monitor residents in real time with the goal of catching suspects, as you noted. You've said you have bright lines around surveillance or no facial recognition and profiling and no stop and frisk. Talk a little about this.

There are people, you talked backstage, my son is worried about it, yours. So talk a little bit about this because immediately when I see your name was like, oh, the surveillance guy. I'm like, it's a little more complex than that. And then I get exhausted, try and explain it. But there are legitimate worries about surveillance

given it could go a very different and very ugly way. You just have to look to China. You have to look to a lot of the authoritarian countries. Talk a little bit about this. Yeah, it's almost the issue of our day. And you're right. I talked to my son about that.

He's 19. And he always gives me a hard time. I can't, you're doing the surveillance thing. What are you doing? And I was like, well, we cut down on crime, you know, 70% smashing crime. He said, I'd rather have the crime than the surveillance. Like, oh, you know, so I get it. You know, this is a tough issue.

It's a really tough issue. You know, but in 24, that's when the voters of San Francisco approved property. that's what allowed the police to have these tools for the first time. And again, it was a game changer. It's incredible to think that's only two years ago. So the world has changed so much. And, you know, even last year, there wasn't a lot of opposition. Now it's tremendous opposition.

Right. Last year, and certainly in 24, I think people saw flock cameras as a tool. Oh, great. Sounds good. We're going to catch all these smashing grabbers. Now, huge opposition, right? It's called deflock movement, literally. Right.

Well, because, well, there's a reason for it. Let me just, the flock cameras, we don't know. It's automatic license plate readers. They've been getting a lot of Brad Press. There have been multiple reports across the country of police officers using flock cameras to stalk people, including ex-wives and girlfriends. A lot of common sense oversight tools like requiring officers, gender a case number for running a place just don't exist now.

A feature has become mandatory on January 1st. My whole premise of a lot of this stuff is that if it's become a tool, it can become a weapon instantly. For sure. And anticipation of that never happens. Yeah. And I think the thing that's really changed, two things. One, I think the AI arms race, I think, is so unpopular.

It's caused so much mistrust. That's one thing. And then, of course, we have this disaster with ICE, where literally Americans are being killed and people are being scooped up and put in, God knows where. That's not what voters signed up for. I think those two things, together with, new surveillance tools, that's what's making people upset.

Nervous. Nervous, right? I totally get it. So I think... I mean, I have no question in my mind that Mark Wayne Mullen would use these tools to abuse citizens. No question at this point. You know, I totally get it. I think this is going to be the issue of the day, though, is because this is a trade-off, always public safety and privacy and, you know, just being able to not be seen.

Where is that line? I think the line is going to be moving. I think what it says, though, is that governments, including San Francisco, and San Francisco is really good on this, right? So their use of these tools, by the way, are incident-based. So they're not just doing surveillance and looking everywhere and trying to see if somebody's doing something wrong. It's when you get a report of a smash-and-grab incident or a strong-arm robbery.

Then a drone is going to be sent over there. That's what they do, but I get it. People are still uncomfortable because it could change. But again, I think San Francisco could do needs to do. a better job. San Francisco keeps flock information for a year. That's way more than the average. The average is about 30 days. And flock just because they know they're under pressure, change their default setting to seven days. And to go even further, New Hampshire has a law now that says flock information can only be kept for three minutes. So three minutes to see if that

matches a crime and then you have to get rid of it. Another thing, what's new is we've never have so many drones in the air. They're super effective, right? This is a drone as first responder. It's a huge force multiplier for the police, but we've never had 100 drones in the air owned by the government. We do now. Now, if you're on the street, you don't really have an, you know, you're in public lands. That's one thing. You can never pick up audio in our systems. That's important, right? Ring cameras do, for example. But you can pick up people's backyards from a drone. I would like to see, those technologies blacking out people's backyards, blacking out people's decks,

places that are private. Because, again, I think people are bothered by this, right? So people are bothered, demonstrators with Sunrise Movement gathered outside your house to protest your support of these tools. This backlash, are you, it has to do with a lot of abuse

that no one thought of. And I saw Facebook Live for the first, time I was sitting in a room and I said, okay, what are you going to do about bullies, murders, suicides, someone's strapping a GoPro on their helmet and shooting of church or a synagogue. I was like, what are your tools to deal with this if this happens? And literally the text said to me, you're a bummer. And I was like, yeah, I'm a bummer. So is a human race.

So I don't know what to tell you. Why isn't there any kind of transparency around the consequences? for people to decide on. Because voters, I know they approved it, but if they understood, how do we make it so that it's deeply transparent so they can make the trade-offs they want to? Yeah, and San Francisco does have multiple layers of approval

on how these things are deployed. There are audits of them. But obviously we have to do more because the temperature and the anger, again, I think people are putting all of these tools and data centers are the expression of a great amount of anger and angst about this whole AI revolution that we're living in right now.

I was talking to some of the people who are building these data centers, and they had me in, and they said, we'd really love your thoughts on why people are feeling this way. And I said, they hate you, and you're hateable. Like, I don't know. Like, you know, there's an expression of punchable face. I'm like, tech has a punchable face right now in a way that deservedly kind of thing.

For sure. So these are all linked together. And data centers, as you're right, is a proxy for having these AI companies tell us they're going to take all our jobs. They're going to kill us. They're going to – what are you doing here, human still? You're still here bothering me. How does it – because at the same time, I just interviewed the mayor of Lansing, Michigan, which I talk about a lot because it was really striking. He put together a data center deal that was all the right things, closed-loop water, payments to the citizens.

long-term property taxes, they had to pay the difference in any electrical problems so that rates wouldn't go up, all everything, total transparency, there was no NDAs, the citizens rejected it. Yeah. Rejected it. Yeah. So there's no, no amount of money or promises were believed in any way. So why should we believe you, not you, but, you know, why should we believe tech at this point when that happens? when there's things that are beneficial, like you're talking about.

Yeah, I'd almost separate tech from the AI arms race. There is an AI arms race that's completely out of control. It's all gas, no brake, no steering. And of course, that's going to end badly. And I would say that's AI insanity. Yet it continues. And when you have companies, I mean, they're so wealthy. But when you have them telling you, hey, we invented fire,

we invented nuclear energy, you know, And this is really dangerous, and it's going to destroy jobs, and it's going to hurt, you know, kids and take over humanity. And then 20 minutes later, they're releasing the new super powerful model. You know, I just don't know how you reconcile that. And I think everybody understands, like, that's not good. So I think the data center opposition, which is staggering, maybe that's healthy. That's the way to sort of stop it, slow it down, or force regulation, you know, in that industry. Because the other thing the industry is doing is they sort of tried to take a reverse page out of the crypto industry, setting up super PACs, but to crush anybody that dared come up with any guardrails.

And you saw this in the Alex Boris race, right? That doesn't make any sense, right? So you actually need people now to be really leaders, to be smart and to be working on these guardrails and maybe even slowing it down. I mean, Donald Trump told people they were stupid and poor if they didn't go along with it. Howard Lutnik said no water would be involved. He's such a moron. Well, the weird thing about that is, which I don't get, is the MAGA movement is actually pretty aligned on this. They are. They don't trust these companies.

They do not. They are very concerned about kids and families and loss of jobs. I mean, that's exactly what we talk about here. Well, that's where you see Marjorie Chely Green and Elizabeth Warren coming together in a big blob. It's really an interesting and strange. I saw some of the child protection folks getting together. There's Steve Bannon on this issue. Yeah. And by the way, I think that's good news.

This is maybe one area we can find. Oh, nothing was Steve Bannon is good news, but that's fine. All right, sure. Something came up in our last conversation that democracy is messy. We talked about it. And why you said you'd rather vomit blood out of your eyeballs. I don't know how you would do that than run for office. Still true.

But there is the worry about billionaires, you know, using your money to just fund it. Like using your money to fund these agencies to get. do fast-track adoption without having enough people coming in on it, like enough citizens being able to do that. Yeah, for sure. Look, there's way too much money in politics. The Supreme Court made a huge mistake with Citizens United and with gerrymandering. That should be the top two things that we try to change,

and hopefully our next administration, if we can do that. But it is the rules of the game. So, I mean, if you want to get involved in policy, you have to play that game. unfortunately. We can't let the oil industry sort of dictate energy policy and then have the solar folks, for example, sit back and go, oh, look at our lovely product. I hope everybody loves it. No, it doesn't work that way. You got to get out there and fight. You know, this is politics. It's not a pillow fight. Speaking of that, according to your time, you spent about $3.5 million on Alex Boris, who was under attack from Open AI for his AI safety advocacy. Why was that fight? I wasn't

surprised you were there, but others were, like, that you were there. Well, it was just this totally obnoxious fucking thing from this Greg Brockman, like 50 million bucks is going to drop on Alex's head for him to dare to come up with any kind of guide. Greg Brockman is one of the top executives at Open AI. President. President. And they try to say, no, that wasn't open AI.

Of course it was. It was a strategy. And so that was just wrong. And, you know, we wanted to show that people that, you know, like Alex and obviously Scott Wiener here and Mani Routenel in Colorado, who did win, we put a million bucks in that race, that we're going to have, we're going to have their backs, and we're going to support you to defy this big money. And we're talking about big money in AI. It's so big now. It is. It's so scary what could be coming down the pike here. But money doesn't always buy results when you have that much opposition.

So I think that was important. Obviously, Alex didn't win, but he came pretty close. close. Right, but you just talked about money. The Guardrails Alliance, the new Superhack, backed by tech workers, labor unions, and other rank and file workers backed for us. They were up against leading the future, which is, as you noted, funded by Open AIs President Greg Brockman. It is an operating budget of $100 million compared to Guardrail's goal to raise $15 million. You told the times the Open AI was, quote, trying to destroy intimidate and send a clear message that if you do come up with clear guardrails, we're going to crush you. So talk a little bit about this. No, I mean, I'm sorry, let me do one thing. You're an investor in Anthropic, which is

open AI's main rival. Well, no, this is actually not true. I mean, it is true. I mean, I have indirect investments in Open AI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. So all the same. Right, okay. So all different people that we're doing it. Okay, so talk a little bit about this money differential, because it's vast and there's plenty more coming. It is, but I think the good news here is you have that much opposition to what's going on, and it's clear you do, I think it's kind of ineffective. And you compare that to the crypto industry where you really didn't have a lot of opponents. You had sort of an Elizabeth Warren wing, but there isn't really sort of a populace that was sort of anti. And on the other side, you had 50 million Americans trading crypto.

That was a big plus. That's not the case in the AI thing. The AI thing is different. This is not Airbnb. This is not Uber. It's not crypto. All of those had lots of policy implications, lots of political action committees, but those are like incremental things and how the world works. AI is like an existential threat to like human existence, right? It's a different thing. I mean, it is fire. Like they invented fire and then they're trying to say, oh, we don't need fire stations or fireproofing or, you know, it's just crazy. So it's a whole different beast and I think the money isn't working. And if it had been working, you wouldn't have this kind of backlash. Right. And I think they're trying to.

unbacklash. They're backing off, right? Yeah. They're trying to talk about how all the positives. And there are, don't get me wrong. Right. This is potentially a fantastic, you know, future that we could be living in, but only if we take the very, very difficult middle path between this AI insanity we're on now, this unmitigated

arms race, which by the way, you know, Anthropic and Dario, they're doing better, but they're still in the arms race. Right. They're still releasing another powerful model with, okay, it seems to be fine, and warning about all the dangers that will happen. So we can't be on that path, and we can't be on the Bernie Sanders, shut it all down, you just walk away from it path. It's as Tristan Harris and Center for Human Technology, they did great work on this.

Yeah, he's about to come out with some new stuff. He's so good. But like he says, this is a very difficult middle path we need to walk. That means you need extraordinary, you know, brave political leaders who are knowledgeable. And you need a lot of, I think, the people in tech to stand up and to push back on the folks that are in the arms race bubble. They don't even, some evil people, mostly good people, doing really good work. I think just one evil person is not good. And we know which one that is.

You can do a lot of damage, right? Yeah. But they're in a bubble, though. They're not seeing this. So why aren't they seeing this? Well, I mean, a couple of things. I think many of them have. I mean, if you look at people that donated to Alex Boris,

let me give some props to a lot of the Open AI employees. Like, their leaders were doing one thing, but the employees were actually backing the Alex Borris's. And if you look at a lot of the Anthropic employees, an Anthropic, I think, does a much better job across the board. What is it now? They're involved in this Alaska race, because back in the candidate who's really good on AI regulation,

that's encouraging. So maybe it's the leaders who run a bubble, but the employees see the power and the danger of these things. Well, you know what? You know them. Why do you think they're this way? I mean, I do think you get in a bubble with anything. It's super exciting work. You know, just the reaction of the world. I mean, in like what, four years, it's the only thing we talk about. It's pretty intoxicating, I'm sure. And they're also super working probably nonstop, but I know time to say. sleep, right? You do, I think you do get in a bubble. You get in a bubble. They probably don't meet a lot of folks in places that are really concerned about this, though. Yeah, they don't. They don't. That's for sure. They go from their planes to their houses, to their... But one thing I would say, I think the social media miss, I mean, we let that get away from

us, right? I think that actually is some good news because we've seen this movie before. Right. And so it's pretty hard to pitch all that. BS, it's all good. And if you're seeing that in these cases, these social media cases, which are going their way and using product liability versus Section 230 or free speech, they're now losing. And you saw this giant settlement, which is small, but it's bigger than I expected. It's a good development. It's a good development.

And it's still not over. I think that's right. I think that's exactly right. So do you switching gears on this thing, you're against the billionaire's tax because people are mad at billionaires. I don't know if you know that, but they are. Even people who like money, like myself, I'm mad at billionaires, right?

I can't wait to get back to 900 million. I can be a good person again. Okay, all right. That's a good billionaire joke. And there's not that many, I can tell you. But talk about this, because one, that's, I think, the issue. And the one-time, five-percent tax, what's the big deal? Well, look.

Also, we need your money. Thank you. Just give it to us. Okay. Everybody hates billionaires. If you want to get even with the billionaires, make them stay in California, where they pay 13 percent and they don't get capital gains breaks. Now, make them stay. It's such a terrible place to live. But go ahead. Well, I mean, it's good for the state. Okay. All right. Okay. You know, that's one thing. But look, it's a terribly designed bill. And I think Mark Cuban has made this point, right? We both know in tech and in many small businesses, most of your wealth is paper wealth.

And, you know, we both lived through the dot-com crash, right? You know, I think most of those stocks went, they were down 99% within a year. So imagine if the day they set your tax bill was pre-crash. And then you had to pay it post-crash. The tax bill would be five times bigger than your net worth, and you'd have no liquidity to pay it. And so in that reality, you know, that would apply to the AI folks right now. A lot of paper wealth. You have another AI crash that could happen anytime.

Same situation. I mean, entrepreneurs, they would never set up in California. Why would you risk that? You could just go across the border to Nevada or Arizona or Texas or Florida, and you wouldn't have that situation. That will drain money out of the general fund. And that hurts most workers in California, including teachers, firefighters.

That's why they're against it. Look, this structure was designed by Dave Reagan from this local SCIU union. that's what it was designed to give more resources to those union members, right? So it's, it's not fair, it's not well-structured. And I think Dave Riggins never meant us to go on the ballot. His MO is to shake down the state government with these really painful propositions and then negotiate away for some other benefits. Luckily this time, Governor Newsom didn't go for it. And this thing is on the ballot. It's terrible. And we need to defeat it. At the very time, people really don't like billionaires.

Do you think that is the case? Is it going to be defeated? And if it's not, what happens? I mean, you never know with the mood here. I think if you care about Silicon Valley, people here, get involved in the opposition. There's other ways to fix the income disparity, and we have to. And billionaires, like Peter Thiel, slip out of all manner of payments by manners of tricks. Like, Scott Galloway has proposed an alternative minimum tax or some other way to do this.

but most people feel I pay more taxes than Elon Musk. This is insane, like on a per capita basis. So why not figure out something that is fair? Because they block that too. Yeah, I don't buy the studies that show, like the secretary is paying more than the billings. Like, we're paying a lot of money into, if you're here in California, you're paying a ton of taxes.

But look, this has to be fixed at the federal level. Look, you know, we have a $2 trillion dollar. annual deficit now, 40 trillion in debt. Obviously, we need to tax the wealthy more, but again, at the federal level and do it on income, because again, wealth taxes don't work. You had 15 countries, I think it was in Europe. They had this in the 90s. They've almost all done away with it because it just doesn't work. So income is cash. That's the way to tax. But do away with the capital gains taxes federally. We don't need it. And I think in an AI world, look, we've got to stop valuing capital over people. And right now, you know, you can write off a private jet in one year. It's ridiculous.

So you have to do away with that stuff. Maybe allow people to write off 10 years of employing a person. That'd be a better way to go. And so we really got to redo our tax structure. But look, the only way you're going to get there is you've got to get a Democrat in the White House. And that's what we should be working for. And by the way, part of way of doing that is making sure that California is a problem-solving state and not creating more problems. like this tax would create. So where do you imagine this going now? Billioners, of course, have been threatening to leave New York City

for more than 20 years over similar taxes, and they never do. Do you think this would happen in San Francisco? Oh, people will leave for sure. People already are leaving. But, yeah, again, you wouldn't be here in a structure like that. It's too risky. It just wouldn't work.

But look, I think you have sort of the worst, though, the worst on this thing if it passed because I think it's tied up in the courts forever. I think the Supreme Court throws it out. It looks very unconstitutional to me. But so you'd have the worst of the narrative, people leaving just in case. You'd never get a dollar out of it because it probably be overturned to the Supreme Court. Again, it was never designed, I think, as a solution for this problem.

So your solution is the federal government reforms the tax system. Well, you've got to get a Democrat in the White House. And then we've got to maybe get rid of the filibuster. So you can get this through depending on what happens with Congress. But yeah, we have to completely redo our tax system. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Odu. There's an endless supply of software out there that promises to streamline your workflow.

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I want to finish up talking about solutions. One of the things is tax reputation is really, the polls are really quite clear about that. But what could happen to turn that around from your perspective? So look, you just have different situations in different parts of security. Obviously, in Washington, the unions don't have much power. In California, the government unions have too much power and SCIU as well. And look, our budget is up, even though our population is flat. So we definitely are not being very efficient.

It can't just always be a revenue issue. And I think people will support higher taxes. I would. I'll pay more if I know it's being used efficiently. But I don't think we're there yet. And I think the reason is Sacramento is too dominated by a couple of government unions and by SCIU, and they're there every single day threatening legislation.

And we need to stand up a permanent sort of pushback by the business community, not the tech community. It's even about tech policy. It's just about being problem solvers. And look, we know the problems in California are housing, right? The energy is too expensive. It's too hard to build stuff. Those are the problems people want to solve.

If you deal with that, I think you get majority support. I just interviewed Steve Hilton, for example. For governor? Yes. Bacera will not do an interview with me. Yeah, we just said yesterday we're supporting Bacera. We've had a number of meetings with them. I like them.

And we were meeting specifically on climate policy. I spend most of my time on climate change work. But the climate folks, look, we failed. Like, we're kind of, we need a reset. Like, we're all stuck. The climate folks, we've been advocating for too many things that are expensive, a green premium. And that's not working for working people.

And that's why you get the backlash, right? I think the oil and gas industry, they're stuck. Like, they're fighting us on every front, but they've got to start making sustainable fuels. And we're big believers. You need a lot of electrification, obviously, although we've lost that race to China. But look, we don't necessarily have an internal combustion engine problem. We have a sustainable fuels problem. And the oil industry could make fuels from renewable energy.

You can make fuel from solar panels, nuclear, wind. You can absolutely do that. It's not economic today, but solar was not economic. 10 years ago, it's the cheapest form of energy today. And they also have to figure out ways of sucking carbon out of the air. They're not going to do that because they're nice guys. But they're going to do that under pressure. And there's a lot of pressure points going on, including the insurance crisis, which I hate to.

We love that issue. I mean, it's a terrible thing going on. But because it is a direct result of too much carbon in the air, and that's warming the earth and this extreme weather, I mean, every day you turn around, then there's like, oh, another act of God, right? No, it's because of too much carbon in the air, right? So they're responsible for that. And I think there will be a moment of some kind of grand settlement where the damages will be in the trillions.

It'll be a tobacco moment. But you're not going to kill the oil and gas industry. We've been trying to kill it, and that's not working. But if they started changing the way they make fuels or sucking the carbon out of the air, that can work. And by the way, there are a billion and a half internal combustion vehicles in my world. I mean, what are we going to do? We're going to throw it on the ocean? I mean, it's just not going to work. And again, China has sort of taken over all the EV industry. We can't, we probably

can't compete with them anymore. We can probably compete on internal combustion engines with sustainable fuels. America's pretty good at that. But we can't have a situation where, you know, there's 10 million cars being exported from China now. It's crazy how big that has grown. We can't get into a situation where all of your cars are made in China and they're self-driving and you lose all the jobs of making the cars and all the jobs of driving the cars, we are fucking not going to let that happen.

Okay. Can't let that happen. All right. Wow. Okay. Okay. Okay. So I was going to ask about China, like what's happening there. And you're absolutely right. You go there, and what they're doing in cars has been astonishing.

If you go anywhere in the world, B-YD cars are everywhere, a lot of Chinese vehicles, robotics, innovative. electrification, innovative. How do you look at the challenges from China? Because they are also ahead in climate stuff, like climate and capture and things. Except for carbon capture.

Carbon capture. We can own that. Right, but they're ahead and a lot of stuff that eat towards sustainable because they see the problem themselves. Yeah, I think it's less for climate and more force energy security. That's right.

Different objective. That's probably why they haven't gone into CDR, carbon dioxide removal. And we can own that and we need to. And the oil and gas industry is pretty good at molecules. They've got to figure out how to do that. But yeah, the us versus China, we're going to lose to China in the AI thing. It's a red herring.

That's not right. We can't think that way. They're operating in a whole different reality. And we can't compete in that reality because we don't want that reality. That said, there's lots of stuff we can be doing together. Like we've got to get together on the really scary stuff on. AI, like biological war. I've just read that book, biological war, a scenario, scary as hell, worse than a nuclear holocaust. We've got to work together on that. On EVs, I just mentioned,

you know, we can't lose all the job. However, you know, the B.YD. Siegel, $10,000 car, fabulous car. We should be letting that in to California, at least, for our low-income folks. Right now, we have these crazy high gas prices, 70 cents a gallon, right, and tax. That's something. most regressive tax in the world that's hurting the guy that can't afford to live in Silicon Valley, lives in Modesto, paying a fortune, and he can't afford an EV, they're all 50 grand. Let them buy a Chinese B-YD Seagull. But maybe you have to be income tested, because we're never going to make that stuff, right? So I think it's just complicated. We've got to be working with them, but we've got to also know that they're trying to eliminate our way of life. But there's tons of

things we can do together. Especially around AI safety, 100%. That's right. All right. The last thing is, one of the things, as you've noticed, Chris is all over the map here. And it's a really interesting thing. I often find you really interesting. And Mark Cuban's very similar in that way.

You don't quite know what direction you're going to go. Obviously, you have very liberal tendencies. You've been supportive of Democrats. The same time, you're against the billionaire's tax. But how, in this very partisan era where it's really like, ugh, like, it's very hard to operate for most people. And especially with the administration, who is actively hostile

towards lots and lots of people with voting and obviously trying to do all manner of horrors with ICE and everything else, which seems very obvious. And the polls are showing that. Nobody's liking what's happening here. How do you get back to an area of comedy anywhere, like,

at all, where it's going to, where people are going to get a or maybe they won't. Maybe this we're post-American. I think we'll get back. there. We've had other difficult times in American history, really a bit difficult times. Yeah. Well, I always go when people in Washington is like, oh, we can't speak to anyone. I'm like, civil war. Lots of challenges. I think, number one, dump your social media. Just get off that shit. It's just really bad for you. And it's ruining our country. I think the other thing is we got to

get a notion of fighting really hard for what we believe in. Like, fight really hard. But then loving your opponents when the fight is over, right? After a football game, You fight really hard, shake hands after. We've got to get back to doing stuff like that. How do you do that? I get that. I get that. Right. Well, you got to teach our kids.

Maybe our generation is too far gone, but, you know, it's not our world anymore. So we've got to teach our kids to think that way. So who do you look at that you find, even if you might not agree with them, among the political figures, or leaders? I mean, obviously, Dolly Parton, but we don't have her anymore. Well, I've pointed to two, like Telarico, James Teller Rico, we got to know him pretty well. well, you know, I ask him if you get to the Senate, you're going to impeach Trump, right? And he's like, no, I'm going to make Trump a winner. I'm going to make him a winner.

And, you know, Mark Cuban has done the same thing with his drug program. He gave Trump the credit. Great. If that works, that's one step. We've got to start working with our fellow Americans. Rob Sands, another guy is going to be governor of Iowa, I believe. Same thing. You know, he's a damn in a red state.

He's going to win me. He's just, he's a problem solver. He's pragmatic. He goes everywhere. He talks to everybody. So we got to start doing that more. So last words for people here. There are a lot of entrepreneurs, business people.

You've obviously had a lot of success. You have a very interesting life. What would be something you would say to entrepreneurs to think about going forward? And this really sort of, it's a moment right now we're in. Yeah. Well, something always helped me. There was somebody before I started my first business and I never thought I would have. but he said, cut the life votes, right? Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of failing.

Failure is a badge of honor if you do it with grace and honor. And you got nothing, nothing to be afraid of. And you have the incredible tool. Oh, I think from this conference, right? You have incredible tools now, including, this is where AI, I think it is really good. You know, we've never had a higher number of small businesses starting. So I said, you know, go for it and take those risks. In San Francisco, you're going to stay? 100%. 100%. All right. All right. Chris, thank you for being here, as usual, incredibly thoughtful

conversation. And thank you, Odu, for hosting. We're at the Odu experience in San Francisco. Odu makes an all-in-one suite of business software, everything from sales and accounting to inventory and operations on the theory that you shouldn't need 10 systems to run one company. That's a very good thing. Anyway, thank you so much and thanks to Chris Larson. Today's show was produced by Nashat Kerwa, Tracy Hunt, Madeline LaPlante Duby, Michelle Alloy, Catherine Millsop, and Kalyn Lynch. Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester, Lisa Soap, Julia Sharp Levine, and Manola Moreno. And thanks again to Odu for hosting our conversation. Our engineers are Fernando Arudan Riquan and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following this show, the drones haven't found you yet. Yet. If not, what the flock

are you doing? Go wherever you listen to podcast, search for On with Carous Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Carous Fisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Box Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more. Thanks again to Odu for supporting this show. Odo wants to be your ultimate all-in-one, fully integrated platform to handle everything. Seriously, everything. Inventory, CRM, accounting, HR, and much more. No more shopping around or settling for expensive services that can only handle a fraction of your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

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