From a complete Washington novice, Silicon Valley investor David Sacks has against expectations emerged as one of the most successful members of the second Trump administration.
He is formally chair of President Donald Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
However, within the White House he’s known as the AI and crypto tsar, there to information the president by the expertise revolutions during which the United States play a central function.
“I am grateful we have him,” OpenAI boss Sam Altman mentioned in a submit on X.
“While Americans bicker, our rivals are studying David’s every move,” billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff chimed in.
Those supportive posts responded to a New York Times investigation highlighting Sacks’s investments in expertise corporations benefiting from White House AI help.
Sacks dismissed the report as an “anti-truth” hit job by liberal media.
But the episode confirmed that this South African-born outsider has grow to be a power in Trump’s Washington, outlasting his buddy Elon Musk, whose White House profession led to acrimony after lower than six months.
“Even among Silicon Valley allies, he has outperformed expectations,” mentioned a former shut affiliate, talking anonymously to debate the matter candidly.
Unlike many Silicon Valley figures, the South African-born Sacks has been staunchly conservative since his Stanford University days within the Nineteen Nineties.
There he met Peter Thiel, the self-styled thinker king of the right-wing tech neighborhood.
In the early Nineteen Nineties, the 2 males wrote for a campus publication, attacking what they noticed as political correctness destroying American increased training.
After incomes levels from Stanford and the University of Chicago, Sacks initially took a standard path as a administration advisor at McKinsey & Company.
But Thiel lured his buddy to his startup Confinity, which might ultimately grow to be PayPal, the legendary breeding floor for the “PayPal mafia”; a gaggle of entrepreneurs together with Musk and LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman. whose affect now extends all through the tech world.
After PayPal, Sacks based a social media firm, bought it to Microsoft, then made his fortune in enterprise capital.
A significant turning level got here in the course of the COVID pandemic when Sacks and a few right-wing associates launched the All-In podcast as a strategy to cross time, speak enterprise and vent about Democrats in authorities.
The podcast quickly gained affect, and the model has since expanded to incorporate main conferences and even a tequila line.
Sacks started his strategy to Trump’s interior circle by marketing campaign contributions forward of final yr’s presidential election.
With Musk’s blessing, he was appointed as pointman for AI and cryptocurrency coverage.
Before diving into AI, Sacks shepherded an formidable cryptocurrency invoice offering authorized readability for digital belongings.
It’s a sector Trump has enthusiastically embraced, together with his household now closely invested in crypto corporations and the president himself issuing a meme coin; exercise that critics say quantities to an open door for potential corruption.
But AI has grow to be the central focus of Trump’s second presidency with Sacks there to steer Trump towards industry-friendly insurance policies.
However, Sacks faces mounting criticism for potential overreach.
According to his former affiliate, Sacks pursues his goals with an obsessiveness that serves him effectively in Silicon Valley’s company-building tradition. But that very same depth can create friction in Washington.
The most important controversy facilities on his push to stop particular person states from creating their very own AI rules. His imaginative and prescient requires AI guidelines to originate completely from Washington.
When Congress twice didn’t ban state rules, Sacks took his case on to the president, who signed an govt order threatening to chop federal funding to states passing AI legal guidelines.
Tech lobbyists fear that by going solo, Sacks torpedoed any probability of efficient nationwide regulation.
More troubling for Sacks is the rising public opposition to AI’s fast deployment. Concerns about job losses, proliferating information facilities, and rising electrical energy prices could grow to be a serious subject within the 2026 midterm elections.
“The tech bros are out of control,” warned Steve Bannon, the right-wing Trump motion’s strategic mastermind, frightened about political fallout.
Rather than looking for frequent floor, Sacks calls criticism “a red herring” from AI doomers “who want all progress to stop.”
Published – December 26, 2025 09:30 am IST