Today, Explained - AI: 1 — Humanity: 0

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

President Trump's new executive order makes it harder for states to regulate AI, giving a powerful industry even more power. This episode was produced by Danielle Hewitt and Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King. President Trump with David Sacks, the White House AI and Crypto czar. Photo by Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People are worried about AI, and they want states to make laws to protect them. Megan Garcia appeared with Governor Rhonda Santis at a press conference this week, where the governor proposed an AI bill of rights. Megan's teenage son talked to a bot about suicide. The bot didn't stop and say, I'm an AI. It sounds like you're having a problem. You need to talk to a human. Before taking his own life.

There are people who are suing employers claiming that AI discriminated against them, HR software company Workday is being sued over allegations of ageism. The plaintiffs were rejected every time. They blame Workday's algorithm, which they claimed as qualifies individuals over the age of 40. And there are people worried about data centers being built in their backyards. We live right down the street and we don't want this shit to happen, man. But President Trump just signed an executive order that threatened states with lawsuits if they try to pass AI laws. That's coming up on Today Explained.

There's only going to be one winner here, and that's probably going to be... Today, Explained. My name is Tienung Wyn. I'm a senior reporter at The Verge. I cover big politics versus big tech and the way that technology and the tech industry has started to shape politics and civil society. Why do individual U.S. states want to regulate AI? It's because they're the only people who can do it right now immediately. But Congress is famously very bad at passing laws. Right now, there's very little chance that a comprehensive AI bill will be put together soon enough to address the immediate concerns at families.

Employers, workers, anyone who interacts with a computer will have about artificial intelligence. California sees this risk on the horizon. They're like, oh, gosh, we need to take care of this right now, especially since we're the help of the tech industry. Let's make a law. Here we go. Tonight, Governor Newsom signing into law, a new AI regulation. Transparency and Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act or SB 53.

It is the first to focus on the safety of these powerful AI models. Texas starts seeing social threats that AI poses to their kids. House Bill 149 requires governments to disclose how they use AI, bans images encouraging self-harm in criminal activity, bans social scoring, and the use of sexual images of children. Texas is with this bill signaling to the country and the world that we are going to be the epicenter responsible innovation with AI. Texas is able to put that law together, implement it very quickly,

Once you get to Congress, so many different interests are colliding. Like, you'll have Colorado, for instance, who just put this law in place saying that hiring decisions can't rely on AI to commit algorithmic bias. I think if you're applying for a loan and you're denied, you should have the right to know why. If we're a leader in innovation and technology, what's wrong with being a leader in safe? innovation and technology. Then you might have a red state come in going, when you say algorithm bias, do you mean woke stuff? And then that fight starts happening in Congress. And in the meantime, unless there's laws on the state level that address any of these concerns, there will be no laws addressing these concerns. All right. So the 50 U.S. states are trying to make laws that are

applicable to them. And in the meantime, well, thank you very much. We have a big signing right now. President Trump comes along, signs an executive order that says what exactly. The order was signed last week. It's the AI, artificial intelligence. I always thought

it should be an S-I, Supreme Intelligence, but I guess somewhere along the line, they decided to know the word artificial, and that's okay with me. That's up to them. It states, essentially, if you are a state that is writing or implement,

or enforcing an AI regulation that we don't like for whatever reason, then we will sue you for it. And slash or we can take away federal discretionary funding that you might rely on for critical infrastructure. So the Trump administration is giving AI companies exactly what they want. Did they lobby for this? Like, how did this work out so well in their favor? There are a couple of billionaires who have Trump's ear on this. Primarily, there is this one billionaire named David Sachs, who is similar to Elon Musk has a special government employee status that allows him to both work in the private sector

and in the federal government. His position is the special advisor on AI and crypto. The AI cryptos are, in other words. And he's been pretty influential in getting Trump to warm up to the industry's views on artificial intelligence and how it should or should not be regulated. According to my sources, the argument that they've been making is, look, Mr. President, you want to be part of a massive technical revolution. You're helping build out this brand new infrastructure. You love building things. Also, you do want to beat China in the artificial

intelligence races, right? There's only going to be one winner here. And that's probably going to be the U.S. or China, and right now we're winning by a lot. These are all things that really do speak to Trump. And even though he represented a populist movement when he became president, he's also still a billionaire at the end of the day. And if a fellow billionaire is talking to him, they have that, like, understanding and they have that relationship that you really can't replicate with, you know, regular people in government, they don't have that aura of a tech billionaire, you know? So this being the United States of America, this could get very interesting because one thing we do believe in in this country is states' rights. And it sort of sounds like this is headed

down a path of a state says, we have the right to regulate AI in our backyard. You can't tell us what to do. What do you know about forthcoming legal challenges? What do you know about forthcoming legal challenges? you know about states saying, Mr. President, no? I wouldn't be surprised if California filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration saying that what you're doing is blatantly illegal. Texas, you don't really want to mess with them. I believe there is very strong support in the state government against the Trump administration on this. And in Florida, Governor Ronda Santis signed a bill of rights that listed out what Florida. want and don't want from artificial intelligence.

The more it veers into the consumer facing, just trying to monetize, trying to addict people, trying to do all that, you know, that is obviously going to create a lot of harm. And so let's just do it. So there is a broad bipartisan opposition across red, blue states against this executive order. On the other hand, for smaller states that want to implement their own AI laws, they could look at this and see Trump and his fellow billionaires threatening to make it hurt for their constituents at that very moment. So they could say, okay, it's not worth having this fight because otherwise our constituents get hurt. It is interesting that Governor DeSantis

is one of the people loudly pushing back because we recall that President Trump was elected for many reasons. But there was a sense that parents' rights had been overlooked. There was a sense that, you know, parents were losing control of their children in schools, in hospitals, et cetera, et cetera. And Trump's base was like give the power back to the parents, something that the president, you know, in his campaigning, said he was going to do. I'm for parental rights all the way.

I don't even understand the concept of not being. What do we know about how this executive order is playing with ordinary people? I don't think it's coming across very well. Discussions are really early right now. I think you'll start seeing it erupt more in the midterms. But in red states, you're going to start seeing churches, religious groups, concerned parent groups, come out really strongly against this type of legislation. Marjorie Taylor Green, one of the ways that she broke with Trump early on was because she, Congress was trying to pass the moratorium, the full-on ban on state laws. and went. When I voted for the one big, beautiful bill, I didn't know about this clause. I thought I was voting on taxes, energy, and border security. And when it comes to AI and regulation, when we get to vote on this bill again, I will be voting no because of this clause.

I do want to point out that during the last election, when you mentioned that a lot of voters wanted Trump to come in and stop teachers and hospitals and medical professionals from dictators. what they could and could not do, indoctrinating their kids in quote-unquote woke, whatever like that. I don't think they realized that artificial intelligence was on the horizon, and I don't think they realized that Trump would immediately flip

to the billionaire position on this. Honestly, I think everyone thought, including myself, that Trump was going to be much harsher on these big tech companies. But like over the past administration, I think big tech has realized the best way to get Trump on their side is to literally bypass all of the MAGA aligned regulators that are in the administration who instinctively hate them and go straight to Trump, who is more malleable and likes to talk to billionaires because he views them as his peers. That was Tina Nguyen of The Verge. Coming up, what you need to know about AIsar, David Sacks.

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I could do it a beat or I could do it somber. It really just depends on the topic and what you want. Never mind. I'm Noel King. David Sacks, President Trump's A.I. Tsar, was an early friend of Peter Thiel and part of Teal and Elon Musk's PayPal Mafia. He started a company. He sold it to Microsoft, as you do. Then he started a VC firm. And he now has big stakes in SpaceX and XAI. Like me, David Sacks is also a podcast host. Natasha Tiku, Tech Culture Reporter, for the Washington Post. Tell us about him. Sacks has a very popular tech podcast. All right,

everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, the All In podcast, in the news, in your feed. That she co-hosts with three of his quote-unquote besties. Okay, let's go to Emperor Palpatine. This is coming together as exactly as you orchestrated you as the czar of AI and crypto. Thank you for your service, civil servant David Sachs. They're all investors. And one of the other co-host was also part of the, you know, war room as Elon's taking over. And they kind of cheered a lot of his ideas. Like, yes, fire, fire your trust and safety department. Like, get rid of DEI, you know, like fight for free speech.

Jamath, do you hear that Freeberg got busted looking at porn on his computer? No, I did not. You got busted looking at porn? You want to know what it was? Yeah. It was Elon of a Vakes Wall Street Journal op. It was. I lost it.

Oh, man. It was too good. The idea is like you're getting a, you know, unfiltered, candid look from people who are in the game, in the arena, as they actually do like to say on the podcast. There are the people that are in the arena doing. And then there are the people that kind of get kicked out and get really upset. But increasingly, they started talking about politics. And, you know, David started out as kind of like the conservative foil. His co-hosts were much more like centrist Democrats, and the evolution of their worldview, of their political stances, is pretty close to what we see from, you know, the tech supporters of Trump's second term.

We learn more from All In about David Sachs politics. What do we learn about his politics? We learn that he is conservative. He has also been politically involved in previous election cycles, giving to different campaigns. candidates. He's given to Hillary Clinton. He mostly gives to Republicans. He spoke out against the January 6th insurrection. He was actually backing Ron DeSantis. He asked his buddy Elon to host Twitter spaces with DeSantis back when they were still calling it Twitter. If you remember, it was kind of like an audio disaster. From Twitter headquarters, it's David Sachs here. Elon is staying next to me. And we want to welcome you to this historic Twitter spaces of that.

And he hosted a fun raiser for Vivek, Ramoswamy. Not only that, but they had all of these candidates, or at least all of the Republican candidates, and Dean Phillips, on the All In podcast. And we saw him also become, I think, increasingly closer to the Maga right. How did Trump and Sachs end up getting involved? Well, Sachs hosts a fundraiser for Trump in June. of 2024 at his home in San Francisco. And it seems like that dinner kind of really cemented the deal. There were a lot of crypto entrepreneurs, and Trump just loved it. I mean, Sachs has a very nice home on Billionaire's Row in San Francisco. When Trump came on the All-In podcast afterward,

he was like, I love that house he has. I love David's house. And Sachs is very deferential towards him. Thank you, sir. I heard you have a pretty nice house too. Yeah, I have a deal. We're in a nice house. And they talked about what was happening to the crypto industry, and I think a way that really resonated with Trump. They were talking about being persecuted by the SEC, Chairman Gary Gensler, how hard it was for crypto entrepreneurs to bank, you know, what the Trump administration could do for them. Here's this empowering technology. And keep in mind that Trump is previously called crypto a scam. I think, you know, we've seen this like very quick evolution on that since inauguration, but that was really the start of it. And, you know, there's another quote in that

episode where Trump talks about how Sacks introduced him to all the tech geniuses. When we were at David's house and talking to a lot of geniuses from Silicon Valley and other places. And that ends up being the start of this, you know, faction of the tech. industry that helps bring Trump into the White House for a second term. Okay, so David Sacks goes from outside of the Washington, D.C., establishment, into a role in the White House, in the Trump White House. What is he doing for Trump now? And how serious is this job? You know, we weren't sure how serious it was going to be. His title is the White House AI and crypto czar.

You have been unbelievable. It's our White House AI and CryptoZar, David Sachs, who has done such a great job. I want to thank President Trump for accomplishing what nobody thought was possible, and it's true. Trump and Sachs have a very close and mutually respectful relationship, and he has ended up playing a extremely pivotal role in these two technologies that he has been put in charge of. And we've all witnessed the power of the AI industry through this post-chat GPT boom. So it ends up having a lot of geopolitical significance in terms of how we think about national security in China. All of that is tied in with GPUs and chips that are needed by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, meta, chips that are built by Nvidia, depending on the day, the top of the stock market, trillion-dollar company. So his profile is just so much higher than it used to be. In the first half of the show, we talked about how states want to regulate AI.

And the way that governors are putting it is, we want laws on the books protecting people from artificial intelligence. The Trump administration says, no, you can't do that. Where do you think David Sacks fits into the executive order that says, states, you don't get to make laws around AI? He played a very instrumental role in this EO. We only have a system that's good if it's smart. David Sachs, can you say a few words with it? Yes, sir. So as you pointed out, we have over 1,000 bills going through state legislatures right now to regulate AI.

It involved David Sachs doing a lot of work behind the scenes, talking to, you know, the populist wing of the Republican Party, you know, trying to get them on board, emphasizing that this would not affect those laws that would keep their. constituent safe. They tried to make it clear like, look, we're not trying to stop you from protecting teens in your district or what have you. You know, we just want laws that are not onerous that won't slow down the development of the AI industry. You can't regulate your way to winning the AI race. And in the United States, the innovation's done by the private sector. So it's really the job of government to enable the private sector and get the red tape out of the way. And that very much matches what you're hearing from the VC crowd that worked in the Trump administration, that, you know, was aligned with the tech right. When they came into office, it was like,

we want rules of the road for crypto and we want no hindrance for AI. You know, this EO definitely reflects their interests in making sure that there's not a quote unquote patchwork of laws that a startup has to abide by. So the stakes here are very high. David Sacks is a rich man who is powerfully connected in the White House, and he does not want there to be AI regulation. And he's made that clear. And for the moment, the president says there will be no AI regulation. On the other hand, you have American citizens, many of whom vote saying, we are concerned about AI. We want laws around this stuff. So as we try to project over the next couple of years, which side of this do you think is going to end up winning? David Sachs or, you know, the concerned citizens of America? Just in the last couple months, we've seen this particular question really gear up for a fight because you have increasing concerns, right, from parents who are reading these stories about chatbox,

you know, encouraging teenagers to die by suicide or manipulating them in ways that look extremely. uncomfortable when you start reading the chats. My son said explicitly to the spot on several occasions that he wanted to die by suicide, but there weren't any mechanisms to protect him. And at the same time, you have people kind of pushing back in an organized way against having more data centers in their neighborhood. And the idea that, you know, we're going to literally change the landscape of the country and other countries, you know, in order to power this technology that CEOs say is

going to put everybody out of work. We are absolutely worried about this and other energy infrastructure increases from data centers driving up our electric bills and our neighbor's electric bills because it already has been. So I would say, you know, before maybe some of the chatbot pushback, you would have had the industry get its way. And I think that the industry will still be able to win. and I think that some of the, like, the ability to do little carve-outs for child safety,

for issues that are kind of like kitchen table issues or things that just sound terribly bad, like encouraging a child to commit suicide. You know, you might be able to get some restrictions on that, but the thing that will really shape how the tech industry has to behave is any checks on its ability to grow. I'm not saying that it's futile. You know, I think drawing attention to these issues could hopefully potentially change the outcome towards what voters want, what people want. But I think that we should watch for that distinction between some of like these little safeguards that nominally seem like they're going to protect people or, you know, carve out a safe space for them and some of the bigger, more existential factors. Natasha Tiku, techu, tech culture reporter, what a beat, the Washington Post.

Today's show was produced by Danielle Hewitt and Avishai Artsy. It was edited by Amina El-Sadi, in fact-checked by Laura Bullard, Patrick Boyd, and David Tatashore-engineered. I'm Noelle King. It's today explained. Thank you.