The adviser urging Trump to reject AI safety fears

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David Sacks has clashed with safety advocates. He’s no fan of Anthropic or OpenAI. Here’s what he wants.

As the heads of leading artificial intelligence companies came together last weekend to warn that runaway AI development could lead to catastrophic outcomes, momentum briefly seemed to be building for regulatory action from Washington.

But one connected and influential tech industry figure has become the leading voice opposing many proposals for government action — on his podcast, in media appearances, and in his private advice to President Donald Trump, who now calls AI doomsday fears a “hoax.”

David Sacks is a venture capitalist and part of the “PayPal Mafia” who, in recent years, has exemplified the rightward shift of some in the tech sector. He advised Elon Musk on his takeover of Twitter in 2022, and regularly unleashes a stream of scornful commentary about Democrats on social media and on the podcast All-In, which he co-hosts with three other venture capitalists.

And for anyone wondering why Trump seems so newly dug-in against AI safety warnings — and against government action that might slow down the runaway technology before people might get hurt — Sacks is right at the center of the conversation. When Politico asked this week about Trump’s newly vocal hostility to AI safety, a senior White House official said: “David Sacks. It’s all coming from him.”

Venture capitalist David Sacks is one of Trump’s most important advisers on AI, typically arguing against government regulation of the industry on safety and other issues.

Yet Sacks is in key ways at odds with the two leading AI companies, OpenAI and Anthropic. He and other influential Silicon Valley figures have backed an alternative vision for the industry’s future focused on “open weight” AI rather than proprietary secret models.

Critics argue that open weight AI presents serious safety and national security risks (the leading open weight models are Chinese); defenders argue it’s better than concentrating superintelligence in two companies’ hands

Trump’s willingness to allow sales of AI chips abroad — including to China — is in part due to Sacks’s influence.

Yet Sacks’s role in the debate is an unusual one. Though he champions the AI industry, he’s no fan of the US’s two biggest AI companies. In his years in the tech industry, he’s made powerful allies, as well as many enemies — technology investor Paul Graham once posted that Sacks may be “the most evil person in Silicon Valley” (in response, Sacks called him a bully and made insinuations of antisemitism). His role, and ideology, are a window into how complex the politics and geopolitical stakes of the AI race really are — as well as how Trump administration policy is often shaped less by agency