Tech Won't Save Us - Trump’s Crypto Profiteering Is Worse Than You Think w/ Jacob Silverman

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s Islamophobic attack on Zohran Mamdani, what it tells us about the state of tech’s politics, and how Donald Trump is enriching himself through crypto scams.Jacob Silverman is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.Also mentioned in this episode:Jacob has reported on the Aqua 1 Foundation’s mysterious crypto deal that puts $75 million dollars in Donald Trumps pocket.Trump signed the GENIUS Act last week, which aims to make crypto more mainstream and is widely viewed as openly corrupt. Trump has already made millions of dollars from crypto.Crypto is coming for the US 401k.Support the show

This is a situation where you could be a CEO of a billion dollar startup that everyone wants to be a part of, and someone who works for your investor can call you a Nazi and a terrorist online and like nothing happens. Welcome to TechMultsevus made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Jacob Silverman. Jacob is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book, Gilded Rage, Elon Musk, and the radicalization of Silicon Valley. He'll certainly be back on the show in the next couple of months to talk about it. But in the meantime, I wanted to have him back because he's been doing a lot of reporting on the tech industry's adoption of this really

right-wing politics, its links to Donald Trump, and how Donald Trump is enriching himself from this relationship, not just with the tech industry more broadly, but from the crypto industry in particular, as he is increasingly engaging in these scammy cryptocurrency schemes that are making him millions of dollars in the process. So we start by talking about this guy, Sean McGuire, who is a partner at Sequoia, one of the leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, who you might remember recently sent some tweets about Zoran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for the mayor of New York City, calling him an Islamist, and ultimately not really backing down. on his racist characterizations of Mamdani.

And I wanted to discuss that with Jacob for a few reasons, one to understand who this guy actually is and to see his evolution, but also because I feel like it acts as this illustration of this broader dynamic in Silicon Valley, where not only is it acceptable to express these kinds of opinions, but it seems almost encouraged and rewarded. And that also leads us to have a conversation about the ways that it can be completely acceptable for someone like McGuire to say racist and Islamophobic things about someone like Mondani, but at the same time, speaking out against the genocide in Palestine is something that's very difficult for many in Silicon Valley to do because they know that they would face

consequences if they were to do so. So I wanted to explore that dynamic with him before we talk a bit more about Donald Trump directly, right? Not just the relationship between him and the tech industry and what that looks like now that Trump and Musk have had their falling out. but more broadly, how the Trump administration is legitimizing the crypto industry, giving them the legislation that they have long hoped for, and how that's directly leading to money getting into Trump's bank account from a bunch of crypto people who want to make sure that they are not going to be held to account, prosecuted, investigated in the way that they were under the Biden administration. So I think that this is a really good kind of update episode on what has been going on

with this extreme right-wing movement in Silicon Valley, how it relates to Donald Trump. So I hope that you enjoy it because I think Jacob is the perfect person to have this discussion with. If you do like this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work, that goes into making tech won't save us every single week so we can keep having these critical, in-depth conversations, exploring different aspects of the tech industry, its embrace of the radical right, and the harms it poses for the broader society, you can join supporters like Tyco from Amsterdam, Phil

from Brisbane, Australia, Shannon in Washington, D.C., Syma and Amin from Lisbon, Portugal, and Morgan in Montreal, by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Jacob, welcome back to the show. Glad to be here. I'm always excited to chat with you. You know, you're always looking into such fascinating topics. Can't wait for your book, which is out very soon, which people should go, pre-order. I'll remind them again. But you've been writing some really interesting articles lately about this relationship between the tech industry and the Trump administration, about this

broader embrace of right-wing politics that we're seeing in the industry and championing of it, really. And so I wanted to start with one particular example of this that really seemed to get a lot of attention, given what it was and what happened around it. And that was that in early July, Sequoia partner, Shaw Maguire, he got a lot of attention for some racist tweets that he sent about Zoran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for the mayor of New York City. So to start, who is Sean McGuire? And what was he saying about Mamdani that really got people angry? So Sean McGuire is a general partner at Sequoia, which is really the leading venture capital firm in the Valley. I mean, there's a lot of mythology attached to it because of the companies

that supported. It has $85 billion or so under management. It's a huge influential firm. But it's also been a sort of publicly apolitical one or tried to be in its existence, despite having some of its partners be kind of politically active as Democrats and Republicans on their own. But Sean McGuire is 39. He's a general partner there. He's known for doing a lot of Elon Musk deals for kind of being Sequoia's point man to invest in XAI, SpaceX, Twitter going private, even the boring company. And he's done some other work too.

and as I write in this article for Business Insider, he actually has a pretty extensive and interesting at times history, I think. Over the last couple of years, really, since October 7th, he's been very publicly right wing at times, according to a lot of people bigoted, Islamophobic, and his expressions, you know, very much in support of Israel and Israeli war aims. And kind of seeing himself, I think, as I write in the article, as kind of this like information warrior in this larger counterterrorism struggle and this struggle that he's very explicit about, which is between the West and radical Islam. If you're around during the War on Terror or even sort of the Obama-era version of it,

like it's a lot of that kind of stuff, except VCs are now part of the conflict and their, you know, funding companies that are involved in the conflict. Like, I'm going a little astray here, but one of the points that I make is that McGuire invests on behalf of Sequoia in Israeli tech companies, especially in ones that are currently involved in the genocide in Gaza. So there's a lot of political issues going on here. And he was like previously in Afghanistan back during the George W. Bush years and things like that, right? Yeah. He was getting a PhD at Caltech in physics, I think quantum physics. And then he says that he was recruited by the director of DARPA, the sort of skunk works part of the Pentagon, which is very

highly mythologized. And a woman who recruited him is a Caltech alumnus. And he was sort of patriotic, but a self-proclaimed kind of Democrat centrist. This was about 2012. I mean, people around him who I talked to said this guy wasn't very political. I feel like we should just say real quick what he did in early July. Do we ever say that? Yeah, sure thing. Yeah. So what was he actually tweeting? What got people angry? He said that Zoron Mandami was a secret Islamist. And basically, went on this tirade about him, and eventually a lot about Bamdani's father, Mahmoud Ban Dani, who is perhaps a radical lefty, but a relatively obscure academic at Columbia. But Columbia, of course, is also the den of all evil right now.

It broke this damn in social media in tech, where you had a lot of people, especially a lot of Muslims in tech and executives and founders who are like, enough already. This guy for the last couple of years has been saying a lot of crazy stuff like this, and how can Sequoia stand for this? To go back to your earlier question, yeah, part of how we did get here is that I think a formative period in McGuire's life was when he was at Caltech and then got recruited to go work for DARPA as a civilian in Afghanistan and spend over a year there. There's a program you can read about online that's been a report about more than 10 years ago in some publications called Project Memex or Nexus 7 is another program. A lot of it ended up being open sourced or like they spun out companies. A big part of it was kind of developing search tools for beyond the surface web.

So for the deep web or for like devices that are connected to the internet, sort of like showed in, if you've heard that internet thing, search engine, but beefed up and for cybersecurity and national security uses. That aspect of it actually was what McGuire and his group were working on. I don't really know actually where they're based in Afghanistan. He may have tweeted at some point, but I do know that they traveled around. He was kind of known for his sense of adventure. They lived in Afghan cities at times, like outside the wire, so to speak.

He had traveled to dozens of countries on his own and was kind of like an outgoing backpacker type besides being very technically and scientifically capable, according to people around him. And it sounded like Afghanistan at first was supposed to be kind of an extension of that adventure almost. Like, yes, I mean, he was interested in national security, but mostly this idea of cybersecurity, protecting U.S. networks from being hacked by. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. No one seems to mention Israel, but probably Israel too. And went there, again, with this sense of kind of duty and adventure, perhaps, in mind. But I think Afghanistan was perhaps one stop on his kind of milestone towards radicalization. He seemed to be, or at least claims to have been very involved in kind of counterterrorism missions there or access to very privileged intelligence.

some of it does seem a little bit of kind of war hero, braggadocio or something, but other people have kind of testified at least to his technical abilities and that he was there and maybe saw some things. Do we know how he kind of gets from that point where, okay, he's in Afghanistan, you know, he seems to be like kind of a backpackery figure. He presents himself as like maybe more of a Democratic Party supporter to now, like, you know, he's explicitly spouting racist, Islamophobic stuff. acting as though he's this kind of like warrior in the civilizational battle that these people seem to be trying to present themselves as being in. Yeah, and that's the terms he speaks in, especially, you know, that are familiar to people who are tracking like the tech right and this

elite tech right. So what happens is he comes back from Afghanistan. He resumes his studies at Caltech, but he also helps spin out a company from DARPA from their project in Afghanistan called Cadium with a cue. It was with some of his colleagues from there. Some of them are scientists, the CEO is a CIA analyst who leaves the agency to go be CEO of this company. And they do pretty well. It's basically this technology, I mean, I haven't tried it or really heard from anyone who used it, but they had a mix of government and big corporate clients. And they scan people's networks.

And it was basically like, do you have unauthorized machines or devices connected to your network? You know, are they located in Moscow? Are there people snooping on your networks? And it was a successful company for a while. And then it got renamed Expans and it was sold to Palo Alto Networks, which is a huge cybersecurity firm. And the number I've seen, there are different numbers tossed around, but I think it was about $1 billion. And so after this, you had part of that progression down towards like the counterterrorism info warrior path.

But then he finishes his PhD. This is a very high energy guy while also working at Google Ventures where he gets a job as a venture capitalist and later becomes GV. and one of the main radicalizing events, I think, is that he left GV in part because he claims that he didn't get promoted to full partner, I believe, because he's a white man. And at the time, there was some kind of internal policy, it seems, to promote more women. I don't know what the exact policy was, because I don't think that may be publicly known, but also in his mind, it's no white men whatsoever. And this is very much during early woke backlash.

You know, I use woke mostly in the sense that these people use woke and not as like, it's not always an accurate descriptor or whatever. But like, this is a period in which a number of people in tech have the same kind of reactionary response to what they see as woke politics or woke overreach. And so he left for Sequoia, which is the biggest VC firm, as I said, Patrick Collison supposedly helped him. he's the co-founder of Stripe, McGuire had invested in his company. One other thing that I think is worth noting is that when McGuire shared this story about

where he claimed he had been discriminated against as a white man, this was last year. You know, he's very active on X and he likes to sort of be goaded into, don't make me do it, don't make me, oh, right, fine, I'll tell the story. You know, sometimes he puts up polls, should I tell the story about how I was denied promotion for being a white man? The event that happened that day that prompted him to sort of go to his audience, who then said, okay, do it. And he did it was that Google Gemini had created pictures of America's founding fathers as black men.

And this is one of those two-day news, viral news things that pissed off people in tech a lot, of course, from Elon Musk on down, because wokeness had infiltrated the AI. And this is actually a matter of existential concern. and must eye. So that's why he was sharing it. I just think that's revealing, like, that not only does he think, like, okay, I was oppressed for being a white man, but like, oh, I got to share this because Google has gone too far.

The generative AI that doesn't understand anything is creating George Washington as a black man. Civilization is falling. That's so funny that that is like the thing that really set him off, right? And all these guys. Yeah. They take this stuff seriously. I mean, sometimes they're hysterical about it for just a dare to, but like, they treat it all

as a big deal. Anyway, the other major thing that I think radicalized him was October 7th. I don't think he was raised Jewish. At some point, seems he converted. He married a Jewish woman from a kind of Iranian-Israeli family, a very wealthy one in L.A. I don't really get into her background that much. Her father was involved in Qualcomm. But he added her last name, Cohn, after he got married. At the same time, I talked to someone who went to his wedding, which was in Israel in, I think, 2018, and the guy knew him well, and said to me, like, I had no idea he was Jewish until I went to his wedding in Israel. But, you know, like a lot of folks, after October 7th, their politics were catalyzed in one

direction or another, he went very right, became much more talkative about his Judaism and his Zionism, and really became, like, this crusader for Israel. And beyond just, like, being a Twitter warrior, they're very much. been times in the past when Sequoia had invested in Israeli companies. A lot of VCs, frankly, just invests in like a couple of Israeli firms every year. Sometimes it's just a fintech firm or something like that. Sometimes it might be connected to the military establishment. But what happened after October 7th was that Sequoia kind of made it, or at least people at Sequoia, led by, seemingly by Sean McGuire, made it kind of a deliberate project to invest in

Israel. I believe they opened another office there. Sean McGuire bought a home in Israel. He started going regularly. He posts about this on LinkedIn, for example. And they're investing in a lot of Israeli companies from cybersecurity to AI, sensors that are already being used in Gaza, various military companies. I mean, it sounds misleading to call it defense tech. There's an article on Sequoia's website that McGuire wrote with a couple of colleagues where they're very explicit. They talk about techno warriors from Israel's elite units. I mean, people may have heard of Unit A200, which is kind of the elite surveillance.

technological unit, but there are others that, of course, feed directly into the Israeli high-tech industry. And Sequoia via Sean McGuire and a couple of his colleagues are very interested in investing this stuff and are putting millions of dollars into it and celebrating it. Like in this article you can read on Sequoia's website. And they even say, like, we develop this thesis independently of Sequoia, they say. Like, they work for Sequoia, but they're kind of speaking for the three of them and whatever capital they represent that Israel is going to be this. hub for these kinds of technologies that will be, I'm paraphrasing now, but will be exported to NATO countries. So this is a kind of idea or a thesis even that we've heard before or like

from lefty academics like Israel and Gaza is the testing ground for Israeli military innovation that has then exported elsewhere. You know, it's kind of like they're acknowledging that and saying like, we like that. We're going to invest in that. And I think, to add one more piece to this, like, this didn't make it into my article, but, you know, there's a self-consciousness about this kind of stuff, but they're proud of where they stand. Like, the right-wing VCs are proud of their views and their militarism. McGuire shared an article within the last month or so on social media. And it was some, I think it was a video, a lecture about, like, the deep history of Silicon

Valley or the Cold War history of Silicon Valley. And, you know, some people share this kind of thing to say, like, did you know that a lot of this stuff kind of comes from an unsavory place or from the defense establishment during the Cold War. And for some people, that's a, oh, wow, that, you know, that's ethically complicates things. I have to think about this. But he was clearly sharing it from a point of pride and from a desire to return to that. And that's, of course, what we see across big swaths of the VC and the tech industry is like, they want to be part of the new military industrial establishment. They want to build it. They are proud of it and they see a lot of profit in it. And so in his own way,

McGuire is part of the leading edge of this. That is something that's important for us to understand, right? And of course, Anthony Lowenstein, who wrote the book of the Palestine Laboratory, talking about the types of things who were talking about there, has been on the show. But, you know, as you're saying, talking about this stuff from a very different perspective than what someone like Sean McGuire would think about the proliferation of these technologies and how they are developed in Israel and used on Palestinians, right? So there are a couple things that I want to pick up on based on what you were saying, right?

The first is, so you have someone like McGuire who is making these statements who, you know, I don't know, we could call it a Twitter troll or, you know, he's trying to be provocative on Twitter, but also really firmly believes these types of things. When he has a moment where he calls someone like Zora Mamdani an Islamist and is kind of making these racist statements, is that like good for him from a perspective of like notoriety? you know, he's getting all these tech people to come and defend him, even though there are, of course, detractors, people criticizing him, people even criticizing Sequoia because of the types of things that he's saying. But is that really hurting him at the end of the day, given the composition of the tech industry in this moment? Yeah, I think that's a good point. And the short answer is it's not hurting him. It might even be helping him. I mean, I talked to some VCs and someone who works for one of Sequoia's limited partners, one of their investors, these people can't speak under their own names because they would be fired.

I mean, part of the theme of my article is actually that basically if you're not a tech founder, you can't, or a high-level VC, you can't speak out about this stuff without getting fired. And that's a real problem. But the people I talk to, and some of them like McGuire, some of them don't, some of them like him, but think he's kind of gotten a little nutty, as someone told me. You know, they're a different sort of interpretation. Some of these people are Democrats, but still, like, no one's, seems to really think that it's hurt him. Some people actually think it's helping his deal flow,

as I quote one guy saying, because he is articulating a thesis, as I said before, these ideas that a lot of people agree with. And bravado is actually sort of a valued quality in some VCs now, especially the guys doing military stuff or doing stuff that in some way might be in defiance of the establishment. I mean, the government certainly doesn't care anymore. The government's their partner in a lot of this stuff. But, you know, people who want to somehow seem anti-woke or politically incorrect or don't want to apologize for who they are or perhaps are misogers or racist in the way that a fair number of young people in tech seem to be. You know, there's still a lot of Democrats or notional liberals in tech.

I do think some of the personality types and beliefs we're talking about are more concentrate in what some people call little tech, but just like VCs and startups, there's a lot of it. And it's some really powerful people. I think a revealing example is someone I talk about, I'm John Mossad, who he's the CEO of Replit. They had a strange problem recently where their AI deleted someone's app. But basically, it's an AI coding app that mostly has had very good press. They popularize the phrase vibe coding, where you input a lot of instructions and it creates an app for you.

And it's really buggy, but you keep giving it more instructions. And eventually, hopefully you get, you know, the weather app that you always wanted or something. Just saying, I hate that phrase so much. vibe coding. It's annoying. And like the other day, Travis Kalanick was talking about vibe physics. And I was like, you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. But it's just a synonym for I don't know something. But the company is well respected, a unicorn startup. He seems to be well respected. He's of Palestinian Algerian descent. Grew up in Jordan. His father's Palestinian, billion dollar startup, you know, Ryan the AI wave got everything going for him. But he is a Muslim part Palestinian founder. And he even

like is sort of like an anti-woke guy like he is not some like lefty but he gets an incredible amount of grief i would say on social media and recently he went on jo rogan and he talked a bit about gaza and his concern for palestinians and some people i talk to especially muslin people in tech this was important to them say what you will about joe rogan a lot of people watch this their bosses all watch this it was a big deal for like a respected startup CEO to go on joe rogan talk about Gaza. The reaction from people was like Sean McGuire said that he was lying, that Massad was lying on air. McGuire seemed to post a crop screenshot that was misleading. He got into this whole argument with Massad. And then what I found rather amazing was Keith

Rabeau, who kind of a hateful guy, but Keith Rabe is before compared Massad to a Nazi. Rabe used to work at Founders Fund, Close Peter Thiel Associate. Now he's a partner at Coastal Ventures the Vinod Kosla is supposedly Democrat, but you know, these guys are all authoritarian. Anyway, he's a partner at Kosla Ventures called Masad a Nazi after this most recent kind of dust up over Joe Rogan. He kept calling him a Hamas supporter, Hamas sympathizer. The amazing thing to me is Kosla Ventures is an investor in Mossad's company in Replit. Now, Keith Roboy didn't make the investment.

Some other partner did. But like his fortune is tied to it. and everything. And it's like, very few other industries work like that. I mean, of course, there's harassment or abuse in all kinds of industries or like, you know, a lot of industries where traditional ideas of discrimination maybe are put by the wayside, like certainly in Hollywood in some ways. And this is sort of a lesser thing that I heard some people talk about, but I didn't really get to talk about as much in the article is like, is there actual discrimination happening here? Like, are VCs in some ways discriminating against potential

companies they might invest in or people they work with because they're Muslim or pro-Palestinian or whatever else. I mean, a lot of people are worried about getting fired for posting even on LinkedIn about Palestine. There are stories that I haven't confirmed yet of people getting fired for that reason. But like, this is a situation where you could be a CEO of a billion dollar startup that everyone wants to be a part of. And someone who works for your investor can call you a Nazi and a terrorist online and like nothing happens. And that's the other part, I think, of what you were sort of asking about is like, not only does this seem to be good for so far for McGuire, but nothing really is happening untoward, except some criticism and some maybe

bad press that he likes to kind of leverage into, you know, memes and stuff. No one at Sequoia has really said anything, it seems, at least publicly, they've made these comments before about being studiously apolitical, and he does, you know, as people told me, he does produce good returns for them. I don't think he's essential for the Elon relationship. Like, as someone said to me, like anyone could be the money guy at Sequoia for Elon. Like, Elon just has to just say, like, can I have some money for my next thing? And Sequoia will say, oh, sure, like, we want to be part of it. You know, it's probably nice that there's this sort of sycophantic right winger who shares

a lot of must beliefs, but it could be any number of people. Anyway, but so they don't need to keep them around for that, I think. But, you know, frankly, there may be people there who agree with him. Like you said, he represents this growing consensus on the tech right. and there's nothing forcing them to do something. There's no policy so far there doesn't seem to be anything illegal, and the press isn't really bad enough, and their investors won't want to pull their money because they get great returns.

Yeah, like it feels like it's not very difficult to be the Musk guy, right? Giving Musk money, it's a pretty easy position to hold, I think. Oh, Elon Musk wants money, we give him money. Yeah, you just got to pick up the phone whenever he calls and say, yes, or, oh, we got a great going here. And also your Diablo playing is wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. You're a real programmer, sir. We respect it. Yeah. I mean, I think that says something very sad about where VC stands now. I do think it is kind of a fact about who is ascendant and what people can do and get away with in this kind of world. Before we pivot our conversation, I just wanted to double down on that point that you were

making, right? Because I feel like there was a moment in the tech industry where there was a lot of talk about diversity and being open to different types of people and trying to have more people of color and stuff represented at tech companies, right? You know, this very different kind of orientation. And now, you know, we're in this moment where certainly we hear a lot publicly about, you know, the problems that anti-Semitism compose and the rising anti-Semitism in society and how this is a problem. But then you also have these very powerful people, as you're saying, who openly make very racist and Islamophobic remarks, you know, very frequently, you can see quite clearly that there seems to be an institutional view within a lot of these tech companies that Israel's

genocide is okay, but saying that Palestinians shouldn't be subject to a genocide is something that is kind of like not acceptable in many cases or could threaten your job or your position or something. It just seems really wild that this is the place where someone, much of the tech industry finds itself in this moment. Yeah, Ozzie Osmond, who's the CEO of Monarch Money, it's a financial planning app, and he's said some things publicly complaining about McGuire's behavior and kind of this double standard. And then he sent me a message, and I quote from him in the article, he called it very asymmetric. Just like this conflict is pretty asymmetric, frankly, Israel versus the Palestinians. In Silicon Valley, you have very warmongering right-wing

V.C. saying sometimes plainly offensive stuff about broad populations, including people who work for them, versus, you know, people who are afraid or receiving blowback for making basic expressions of solidarity or support for Palestinian rights or just wanting the war to end. One example that was point out to me was the CEO of Hymns, which is, you know, they make pills for hair loss and stuff and kind of repackaged stuff and friendly ads and nice packaging. And, and, and, and, kind of their health brand that has done pretty well. The CEO made a public statement to the effect of that he would be willing to hire protesters from Colombia and elsewhere who have been blacklisted, especially after all these CEOs

across various industries have said, we'll never hire people and tried to docks all sorts of people and stuff. It didn't strike me as a very extreme level of support or commitment. It seemed pretty open-minded. And he had an extreme backlash from within the industry. people are trying to short the stock. I mean, I'm sure that happens anyway, but it did not go over well. And I think he's still CEO of the company and everything.

And that's someone who runs a successful company. So that was pointing out to me a lot. And this idea that founders or people of a certain rank and stats are really the only ones equipped right now to kind of survive that blowback. And that's the asymmetric part of this. And that's what's really unfortunate is how captured it is by an institutional far-right narrative. It seems like a real issue, right?

And something that we don't talk about nearly enough. Now, I wanted to pivot because, you know, it feels like to me when we talk about this story about Shaw McGuire, it is kind of like a microcosm of this broader change or this greater openness to expressing these extreme right-wing politics and kind of the hold that they have in Silicon Valley. I was wondering how you see how pervasive that has become and how it has formed this, I guess, relationship with the Trump administration in terms of trying to express this politics, but also kind of move forward this way of seeing not just the tech industry, but I guess the United States

as a whole. Well, you know, I think despite Elon Musk falling out with Trump, the tech mag alliance is still in pretty good shape. Even Musk hasn't really been punished by Trump yet, and he could be still at some point. Or, you know, there are things that Trump could do. He's made threats to take away contracts and stuff like that. I think Musk is still like looking his wounds and perhaps surveying how many problems he has in his business empire. Yeah, I think Trump said the other day that he wasn't going to be cutting off the subsidies as he initially kind of threatened he might do. And I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, he sort of dangles that as a possibility

repeatedly when he wants something from Musk or wants to kind of bring him to heal again. The two sides, I think they don't always share the same interests or like even sort of like pop cultural interests, but they share a lot of the same resentments, like, and cultural resentments. And that's the thing I've written about when I write about my forthcoming book. which is like anti-wokeness, transphobia, contempt for Democrats, and small L liberalism and democratic governance, you know, they're not maybe interested in guns or country music or something like that.

Heartland MAGA fans might be, but they're angry about a lot of the same things. And I think that is still a binding agent, I think, because Trump will also be doing some taking away health care from people or other things like that. And the tech people just sort of nod their heads and think, okay, privatization opportunities or it'll be something more culturally or kind of socially motivated like some anti-trans executive order or legislation and and again i think like that's not going to alienate the tech guys of anything some of them are going to be all for it unfortunately so on that level i think it's working i working in scare quotes of course i think doge is still kind of doing what it wants to

do but i think more than kind of cutting a lot of money out of the budget it's still making inroads for privatization and kind of the shoehorning of AI into everything. Of course, there's a lot that they're doing that we probably don't know about. It's still kind of unclear about, you know, is there just a firehose of data from federal agencies going to XAI? They very well could be. There's certainly, we know there's a lot of bad stuff, illegal and anti-democrat, purely by bypassing the civil service and oversight mechanisms. You know, Trump fired all 18 inspectors general on like day one. So they have been complicit and participating in this total dismantlement of the rule of law of checks and balances of regulatory oversight. And a lot of them, of course, are very invested in crypto and have been

happy also to see the crypto industry get everything at once, culminating in the bills passed last week. The Genius Act, which is the Stablecoin bill, has been passed by both houses. The Clarity Act, which basically, I joked on X somewhere, Sam Bankman Fried is crying in a federal prison cell because this is exactly what he wanted, which is the Clarity Act basically gives most authority over crypto to the CFTC, which is a much smaller agency, much easier to deal with. It's already cutting jobs at the same time. And the SEC kind of gets kneecapped a little bit. And then they get to start doing like trading these perpetual futures products, which was the bread and butter of FTX overseas a number of years ago. They get to do kind of everything they want now.

Is there any like hope or signal of Sam McMahon Free getting out earlier? Or is he just kind of like forgotten to rot at this point? It's one of those things that I would, I would not discount because there's so many people who got pardoned at the first six months, I mean, up till this date, people who admitted to serious crimes, to fraud, to stealing from vulnerable people at times, you know, who made plea deals to not end up like Bankman Freed. Of course, he was seen as a liberal. That is not a fully accurate view.

I mean, and he donated a lot of money under the table to Republicans and had relationships with them. I think if it comes, it might somehow come through Peter Thiel, who supposedly, according to ProPublica and other reporting, I believe, gave basically there's sort of this line about how Epstein gave great tax advice, and that's why people paid them hundreds of millions of dollars. But supposedly, Sam McMahon-free's father, Joseph Bankman, basically pointed Peter Thiel towards this method of putting your stock in an IRA and allowing it to appreciate there and avoiding potentially. billions of dollars worth of capital gains taxes. And that's what he's done. ProPublica has this article has report on it. The whistleblower on that, of course, went to prison. He put a lot of his Facebook stock in this IRA and other stock, I think, and there you go. He won't pay billions of dollars worth of taxes. So that's a huge favor. And Joseph Bankman, despite being seen as a liberal,

he's a scholar of tax shelters and tax evasion. Like, yeah, he's written about, here's how we should simplify the tax code and make it easier for regular people. But his son did an incredible act of financial thie seemingly with his father attending most of the key meetings. So, you know, I think the narrative that this was all just like liberals doing bad is wrong or not quite accurate. So, and the other side of is that Trump has become incredibly transactional, of course, and anything can kind of happen. So, yeah, I didn't think it last year, but now I think it's possible. I don't think most of the crypto industry wants that. I do think a lot of them personally hate him, just like don't like him as a person. They've gotten a long fine without him.

I don't know how many allies he has left, but not the majority, not like someone like Brian Armstrong and Coinbase, I think, who has taken the leadership mantle, at least in the U.S., so, you know, I think they would probably lobby against it. But yeah, I think it could really happen. Yeah, it probably helps for them to say, look, you know, the scammer, the real bad guy is behind bars. And now we're like the legitimate industry that is still left here, right? They certainly were saying that a few years ago, like, thank God we got rid of that guy. None of us liked him. All of us did business with him and like appeared everywhere with him, but none of us liked him

and he was the one scammer, so thank God we can move on. How convenient. But you mentioned the Genius Act and the Clarity Act there. Can you go into what these actually are a little bit more? And what they mean for, you know, the way that the U.S. is going to approach crypto regulation now And, you know, the potential threats that it really sets up now that this industry is going to be unleashed in a much greater way to make these products available, to promote them to people, to try to get people to buy into what we know are very risky assets. You know that this is a crypto-friendly bill, just by the name alone, the Clarity Act, because the crypto industry for years under Biden was asking for, quote, regulatory clarity. That was their favorite phrase.

And the Biden administration said, you have regulatory clarity. I mean, not always in the strongest of language, but they would say, you have regulatory clarity. You just aren't abiding by existing securities laws. And, you know, there would be these instances where crypto exchanges would come in and they would say, like, to the SEC and have meetings with people there under Gary Gensler, their arch enemy. And the crypto industry would say, this is how our business works. And the SEC would say, well, that's not really legal under current market structures. First of all, you can't combine all these different functions under one roof. you know, you're based overseas, your K-Y-C-A-M-L, which is know your customer anti-money laundering

doesn't seem up to stuff, like various things that they just seemed to could not satisfy existing securities regulations. And the crypto companies would leave saying, like, that's outrageous, like, you're just not embracing innovation. You're, you know, holding back the crypto companies, you want us to fail. That was the impasse, basically. And we can get into why that was disastrous politically or something like that. But that was the disagreement. And so under Trump, through executive orders, through changes in personnel and policy, because, you know, the new heads of these agencies can do a lot to dictate policy. They've basically, given the industry, everything that they've wanted. So they started out by pardoning a lot of people, by dismantling

units at the DOJ and SEC focused on crypto crime, ended a bunch of lawsuits and prosecutions, including, you know, notable people like Justin's son, that were probably slam dunks under a competent administration. And then you get the legislation. which is finally passing. So you had the Genius Act has passed in both houses. I think it's just got to be signed by Trump. Or maybe he already signed it this week. I think that was the one. He had Paulo Ardorno from Tether in his office, which is another one of those, oh my God, I can't believe at moments. You know, this is someone who could not travel to the U.S. under the Biden administration, only started coming to America this year. You know, his product is like the token used for global

money laundering besides Bitcoin. It's a key link in that. in that network of that chain, whether he's aware of it or not. And here he is. It was incredible. But Justin's son's another person like that. Now his company just went public on NASDAQ this week. He was wearing a tuxedo and ringing the bells. And now they're like, wow, the criminals are in charge.

Is he still the ambassador for Grenada or whatever? He was. So Justin's son is famous for jurisdiction hopping. He was in San Francisco for a little while, like six years ago or more. and then he left and has been in Asia, in Hong Kong. He's a Chinese national, though his main citizenship seems to be St. Kitts and Nevis. He has spent a lot of time in Hong Kong recently and talks very highly of the Chinese government. I mean, he's the kind of guy who always seems to be looking for protection.

So a couple years ago, he went to Granada, seemed to pay for citizenship, and became their ambassador to the World Trade Organization. And so he had appended his excellence, I believe it was, or H.E. to his name and his social media handles. And it was occasionally going to Switzerland to take pictures. Then a couple of years later, the government, thankfully, democratically turned over in Granada. And the new administration was just like, no, thank you.

You can retire your hat and your H.E. Yeah, what is going on here? Yeah, and then he left. And I think he's been mostly in Hong Kong since. But he now travels much more freely than he did under the Biden administration. He's another guy who was not coming to the U.S. under the bio administration. He also famously bought a space flight on a Jeff Bezos rocket in 2021 for $28 million. He might have bought two seats, but he paid a lot of money.

And since then, he's been saying, oh, I'm too busy. But now in Vegas at the big crypto conference a couple months ago, he was there. He had women dressed up in space suits doing this whole sort of like stunt on his behalf. And he recently did some articles talking about how and some interviews. reviews how he's talking about, I'm finally going to space. Everything has kind of come full circle culturally, but especially legally and enforcement-wise. There's like no mechanism. And the DOJ can also like set priorities. So the government has basically said, don't enforce a lot of this financial crime. We don't care about this. Another executive order was to not enforce the FCPA, the Foreign

Crump Practices Act, which is something that actually they should have prosecuted Sam Bankman freed under because he allegedly bribed Chinese official. was more than $150 million worth of crypto, Carolyn Ellison testified to this in court. But now that kind of thing is actually legal because the Trump administration said, we're not going to enforce that. And this was an important law

that actually restrained a lot of bad behavior by both American companies and foreign companies who didn't want to really be caught in the net of, like, you know, bribing the government of Guinea for a mining concession and then being caught and getting screwed over by American authorities, which did happen sometimes and was like obviously a tool of soft power,

but sometimes a good thing for kind of global rule of law and governance. So everywhere you turn, this is all gone, and then it's been codified now in this legislation. The Clarity Act really makes it so that a lot of these tokens probably don't have to be registered securities, which is what the SEC wanted before for them to be registered securities. It's all pretty much going to go under the CFTC, which previously ruled that Bitcoin and Ethereum are commodities, just like corn or oil. Why not? And the main picture here is that, like, a lot of things that they've been doing or want to do are going to be legal. They're going to have better access to U.S. banking and finance, which is what they've wanted all along to.

And they won't be breaking the law just by issuing tokens and trading them on their own exchanges. On, you know, the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ or a lot of foreign stock exchanges, you have these different roles that are divided. Like, you never have, like, a trading firm owned by NASDAQ trading on NASDAQ. But, you know, that's what FTX and Binance did do or do, and what a lot of U.S.-based exchanges probably do. You have all these kind of roles vertically integrated. And this was what the SEC was saying, no, you can't do that because you can manipulate markets, trade against your customers. There's all kinds of room for corruption. You can allow people to front run if they pay you extra, you know, all sorts of things that happen.

in mainstream finance, but there are mechanisms to guard against them. And now we're just not going to really have that. You'll have kind of a fig leaf regulatory structure that has a few protections. But, you know, I recently talked to a congressman yesterday, Sean Kasten from Illinois, who talks about this stuff a lot. He thinks that this is still going to be a huge vector for money laundering, whether you're the president or whether you're one of these other financial criminals. Because if you're in the know, you'll still be able to do it via stable,

and offshore exchanges. I'll come back to what you said there about the president in just a second. But I have like a grab bag of smaller questions based on what you were saying there. Feel free to address what you want to address. But does this set up greater risks for average people now because this is going to be more integrated into the financial system? Does it set up like structural concerns for the financial system, like possibility of economic collapse, recession?

And I guess the final question that I have around those is I've seen some people writing about how kind of legitimizing stable coins becomes actually a threat to like the dominance of the U.S. dollar and the position of the U.S. dollar in the global system. So I wonder on, you know, what your thoughts are on those different pieces of this. There wasn't contagion really into the mainstream financial system. Now, a lot of everyday people, unfortunately, did lose their money because this was the boom for everyday retail traders and speculators. There's like people like you and me and your taxi driver, people you meet in restaurants or your cousin. It was like, yeah, I saw the Tom Brady commercial. I'm going to go buy a bunch of meme coins.

And then, unfortunately, they lost their shirts. But there wasn't a lot of fallout in mainstream finance or kind of the legitimate economy. There were some crypto-related banks in the last couple years that failed. But beyond that, there wasn't contagion, as they say. Now to, I think, society's benefit, a lot of the everyday retail traders are gone. Like those everyday people, they bought the pitch before, but no longer, or they don't have money to gamble. They're not stuck at home during COVID with a relief check that they might want to gamble on some Bitcoin. The trading volume from regular people isn't there.

But what that means that the industry needs money from government and from corporate sources. So there's been a real movement to get union money, both private and public sector unions, into crypto, whether it's on their balance sheets or putting retirement funds. into crypto or crypto-related ETFs or companies like micro strategy, which are now considered kind of a proxy for owning Bitcoin. Well, putting retirement savings into crypto is okay because

Kara Swisher told me in that ad that time. I know. It's incredible. And so to Kirsten Gillibrand, who's supposed to be, you know, the Democratic Center from New York, the World Capital Finance, has been, I mean, this is something that deserves emphasis every so often. She's been leading all of this, especially the Genius Bill. She's very

proud of it. And maybe she gets some nice donations from the industry, but it's just incredible that at this late date, there are Democrats who don't understand or unwilling to acknowledge that this industry is not just like, is their political enemy and is contrary to their constituent interests. I mean, I've talked to people like that. Rep I mentioned earlier, Sean Caston, who says, you know, he begs some of his colleagues to vote against things, and they're just like, look, I know it's bad. It hurts my soul, but they're going to spend so much money against me in the next election cycle. And that's kind of as far as some of these people go.

But anyway, the concern is that now that this is really moving into kind of load-bearing parts of the economy, it could be really bad next time. And it will be because this happens every few years with crypto. And because there's a lot of fraud in this system, there's a lack of fundamental value. So even just recently Trump issued an executive order kind of making it easier for 401Ks to invest in crypto. And what I tell people also is that, like, you may not be interested in crypto, but it's like the line about politics.

crypto is sort of interested in you, or at least we're going to have to play by the crypto industry's rules of deregulation, high risk, high leverage, betting on extremely risky speculative products that have no fundamental value. There are even derivatives of products with no value. And that spreads risks throughout the system. And it also means that, like, you may have exposure to crypto, whether you like it or not. Like your retirement account, which is managed by some fund manager, may have Coinbase in it because Coinbase, I think, is now part of the S&P 500 or it may have micro strategy in it for similar reasons, like these crypto-related companies are entering into index funds or the indexes that become part of index funds.

So, like, you might be a few degrees removed from, like, the price of Bitcoin going up and down. But in some ways, that makes it even worse because then there's leverage that that's in the system and sort of a cascade effect that can happen when, like, Bitcoin goes down. It's not just the people holding Bitcoin. It's all this stuff that's connected to it. You know, I think that's kind of a guarantee at this point. I don't know when, but we're really dismantling all the mechanisms to prevent that from happening. And some of them, I think, also to

ameliorate it or deal with it once it happens. One danger is that the losses will be socialized and that the crypto industry, who are some of the worst political actors we have, are going to be bailed out. Yeah, it seems like a huge risk, right? The more and more that this works its way into the system. It just feels like, obviously, it's not the same as what happened in 2008 in the lead-up to that. But, like, the more you see this financial deregulation, the more you're kind of set up for a time when, sure, things can boom in the short term, but then things are going to come crashing down and we're all going to have to feel the effects of that, right? Yeah, and there are some deficit layers. I mean, there's a reason why people are posting big short gifts all the time. Like, there's a huge bubble.

And also, like, during the housing crisis, like, yeah, at least people had houses. But one of the problems was there are all these complex financial instruments or these synthetic derivatives that, again, were a few degrees removed from any tangible asset or debt or mortgage itself, created all this risky, highly leveraged economic activity that was fundamentally not productive except for some Wall Street high rollers who are taking huge risks on this stuff. And so, like, once again, we're having this like financializing of what in this case is actually a worthless underlying asset, not, you know, houses and mortgages. have some value. But again, a similar kind of process and financial engineering has taken place. And I think if it's not the cause of the next recession, it's going to be like one of the explosive catalysts, you know, maybe there'll be a war or an asset collapse in some other sector or something like that, or the AI bubble will burst because open AI and others can't pay their bills anymore. But, you know, this will be a huge component of it that will affect a lot

of people, unfortunately. Definitely. And you know, you mentioned the president there. As we start to wrap up, you know, we're talking about cryptocurrency. Donald Trump is obviously passing these bills that are going to make it easier for these companies to get everywhere throughout the American financial system. But he has been very much involved in cryptocurrency himself and in particular trying to make a lot of money off of it. And it also seems, you know, based on some of your reporting and some other things that I've read that these crypto folks are also trying to buy influence with them through buying these crypto tokens and things like that. So what do we see in that aspect of it with the, I guess, like corruption, but also like just the way that he is enriching himself by using these crypto

tokens? Trump is making hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars already through a number of crypto ventures. You know, we don't have to get into all the details, but there's the meme coins. World Liberty Financial is the most important one. And there's a world liberty financial token. There's the stable coin that they're issuing. I mean, which just as a quick aside, how could any Democrats vote for a stable coin bill? while the president is about to issue his own stable coins. Like, it's just absurd. But, you know, the main point is he's just kind of able to issue either himself or through

his proxies, kind of tokens on demand. And anyone can buy in and put money in his pocket, whether he makes the deal or they want to or not. Like, with crypto, anyone can send them money. I've said this in a couple of interviews, but like, if you're a foreign head of states in your direct financial interest to buy either the Trump meme coin or World Liberty financial tokens and to make sure Trump knows it. And you don't have to call them up and ask permission. You can just go online and tell your finance minister, if you're the dictator of some

country or you're Victor Orban or whoever, you know, buy these tokens before Trump comes for his state visit. And then we're going to ask him, you know, to build a radar station here or, you know, give us a billion dollars or something. That's just a new facet of statecraft right now, I think. I mean, there are other ways in the past to bribe officials. We've, of course, seen Trump get the $400 million jet from Qatar, which is a huge problem from just a bribery and security perspective. But this is an ongoing thing with kind of no limit, potentially. There's more than $150 billion worth of tether in circulation. And this is like a pseudo legal token, but not really. What's the stop there being $100 billion worth of USD1, the Trump's

stable coin in circulation in a year or two? It could happen if, you know, they just want to, or if the bad people who are already putting money into his companies continue to do that. So, you know, we have the example of Justin's son, who now I think it's about 200 million across various investments and token purchases. He had his SEC case dropped against him, a multi-billion dollar fraud suit. He clearly feels free to travel into the U.S. now. He went to Mara Lago, to this gala, the meme coin gala. He's doing big things.

He's promised to support Trump's stablecoin. There's deals, it seems, are involving Binance. the shadiest crypto exchange in the world, has a very long rap sheet, but its CEO is now seeking a pardon. And then as I've been trying to report on more, they're like all these people that we don't really know about or are a little murkier in their dealings with Trump and his crypto empire, which includes, you know, Trump's sons. It includes Steve Whitkoff, Trump's most important diplomat, Steve Whitkoff's sons. Like, this is very much a fusion of the political office, Trump's friends and family and business interests. So one of the ones I report about

recently. Last month, there was something called the Aqua One Foundation published a press release saying, we bought $100 million worth of World Liberty Financial token. We're proud to be in business with them. We're going to support the stable coin and future projects. And there was only one person named in connection with that company, someone named Dave Lee. And he had an X account, but it was very thin. And it was hard to tell who he was or what this company was. And I published a piece of the nation basically saying, like, it doesn't seem like this company. exist. I can't find anything saying that Aqua One Foundation is a real thing. You go and look on the blockchain and you can actually see where they sent at least $80 million worth of stable coins

to World Liberty Financial. Like a deal happened. But I couldn't find anything and no one would tell me anything. I contacted World Liberty Financial's PR. They said, we'll get back to you. They never got back to me. And then I published that first piece of the nation basically, you know, here's the good faith effort I made to find something here. I contact all these people. There's nothing here, except for money being sent. So I got a good tip, and I basically did some research investigating online and was able to find with a pretty good degree of certainty who this Dave Lee behind the company was, the guy with the X account. Their server was hosting a website of what turned out to be a related company, and also some stuff he had tweeted about. Under his other

company, he's appeared at public events, which there are videos of those events. Like, it was kind of piecing together this trail. And, you know, I was almost positive that I had the right guy. And then things that have happened since, I am positive. But it appears he grew up in Brazil. He's of Chinese parentage. There was a Chinese publication that did a small bit of reporting about him that said he supposedly comes from a wealthy business family that moved to Brazil. Doesn't really say much more than that. He went to NYU and went to business school there. I have a picture of him in a club in New York, seems to come from some means. And then he went to China and mostly Hong Kong and got involved with a company, and this was the link, really, called Web3Port. Web3Port is

known as a market maker behind all these crypto projects, but they have been accused of basically manipulating markets or scamming or running off with the money a few times now. And my theory is that Web3Port was trying to rebrand under Aqua 1 without really telling anyone. They didn't do a very good job of it. And the last bit of it is, this guy seems to have a day job in finance. He works for the biggest Chinese state energy company in their finance department, I believe, as a manager of some type. You know, they probably employ hundreds or thousands of people who do this kind of stuff. But, you know, I'm not a big hawk, a China hawk or anything, but it is strange. And we're talking about foreign influence and, like, where did someone like this get $100 million?

They've seemingly done big crypto deals before under the other name, the Web3 port. they've invested in other companies, but still, not every kind of crypto hustler in Southeast Asia or East Asia has $100 million to send to the President of the United States. And somehow this guy does. And since then, he's done some things like he kind of acknowledged controlling both websites. He never actually denied that he's this guy. He just sort of gave me the worst PR-speak emails of saying, like, we're glad to answer any questions, but he's still never answered any questions.

But again, he's acknowledged, controlling the websites and done a couple of other things. other things that I'm pretty much 100% sure it's him. He also sent me some dick picks afterwards through a couple like throwaway signal accounts, which it's got to be him. I mean, the first one said, hey, I have something about your Aqua One Foundation article, Q the pick. It's a weird thing because this guy is like, this is a big deal, you know, this is someone who's representing mysterious interest is sending the president, I mean, the president gets like 75% of all token sales from this company, sending the president like $75 million, basically. and yet he has kind of has bad obsec and responds with like juvenile behavior he also shut down one of

his accounts that helped me link the two of them and then he reopened it so like you know i'm sure this is the guy he hasn't named a single fact i got wrong but at the same time like nothing has happened it hasn't even been picked up by mainstream media i think some crypto media report about it but like and this is going to keep happening it is kind of the point too like i'm glad i identified this one guy frankly it was pretty satisfying but like there's a lot more of this out of there and some of these will be announced and the people will be tracked down like I did and some these are never going to be announced or never going to pass through the blockchain they'll be done over the OTC at you know at a meeting between Don Jr. and some UAE Prince in

Dubai and no one will ever know. So that's why like we're really talking about the biggest financial scandal or corruption case in U.S. presidential history like this is like I hate to be condescending by saying this is banana republic stuff or something. But this is like like, you know, authoritarian president steals everything and then flees to Riyadh or Moscow. It's like that kind of thing. And that's why I'm constantly banging the drum about this, like, that I think it's really important. Absolutely. You know, I remember during the first Trump administration where we'd occasionally be talking about, you know, the foreign government spending money at his hotel in D.C. and then telling him about how nice it was there, you know, to like get that degree

of influence. But this is just on a whole another level. The amount of money, the way of it's being done, the way it's like not even really being, you know, as you're saying, like, a lot of this mainstream media, there's so much going on that they're not even really picking up on this thread of the story, even though it's going to be so consequential, right? And I've written about some of those stuff for mainstream publications. I mean, when I unmask that guy, which was a follow-up to a nation article, I published on my own website knowing that it might not be seen as much. But, you know, I did hear from someone at the intercept, for example, it was like, oh, we would have liked that. I'm like, so, you know,

there are people who are interested, but it's combined with this tremendous sort of apathy and indifference by a lot of people. Of course, the crypto aspect makes it harder for some folks to understand or they just want to ignore it. But, you know, I think the sort of quick way to kind of reach Normies is to say, like, you don't need to pay too much attention to the crypto or the technology. Just at bottom, this is a way for Trump to line his pockets with potentially unlimited money. And people are already doing it, already getting favors from it. And all of the enforcement mechanisms have been disabled so that he can keep doing it. And, you know, there's nothing to stop one of these authoritarian powers or supposed U.S. allies from, from giving Trump

billions of dollars in a single transaction. Yeah, it's absolutely wild to even think about, right? That it's possible, that it's happening. And what can come out of it? Jacob, it's always great to have you on the show to get your insights about all these things. Obviously, you'll be back on the show soon because you have a book coming out and I can't wait to talk to you about it. But thanks so much for taking the time. Always appreciate the conversations. Oh, it's always fun. Thanks, Paris. Jacob Silverman is a journalist and author of the forthcoming book, Gilded Rage, which you can pre-order now. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with the Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kylie Houston. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like

you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash TechWon't Save Us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week.