Last week, the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz declared their allegiance to Donald Trump in their customary fashion: talking about money on a podcast.
“Sorry, Mom,” Ben Horowitz says in an episode of The Ben & Marc Show. “I know you’re going to be mad at me for this. But, like, we gotta do it.”
Marc Andreessen and Horowitz insist they voted for Democrats until now. They are friends with liberals. They claim to be tense about the social blowback they will receive for this, especially due to the historically progressive nature of the tech manufacture and the Bay Area.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the large issues that people care about.”
But given the general movement among their class toward Trump, I think those claims about being tense are overblown, if not performative. There is, for instance, Elon Musk’s pro-Trump super PAC, which has support from Sequoia Capital’s Shaun Maguire and 8VC’s Joe Lonsdale, among another notables. (The Wall Street Journal reported Musk is planning to donate $45 million a month, which Musk has denied.) There’s the $160 million the crypto movement has put forward in support of right-wing candidates. We can’t forget their VC pal David Sacks speaking at the Republican National Convention. And last but not least, there’s Trump’s moving mate choice of JD Vance, a erstwhile venture capitalist whose firm’s investors included Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Andreessen himself.
This isn’t a movement. It’s a clique.
The podcast itself is an extraordinary performance. At 1 point, Andreessen concedes that their major problems with president Joe Biden — the ones that led them to support Trump — are what most voters would consider “subsidiary” issues. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the large issues that people care about,” he says. If we take this podcast at face value, we are to believe that these subsidiary issues are the only reason they’ve chosen to endorse and donate to Trump.
These subsidiary issues take precedence for Andreessen and Horowitz over, say, mass deportations and Project 2025’s effort to end no-fault divorce. We are looking at a simple trade against individual liberty — abortion, the rights of gay and trans people, and possibly democracy itself — in favour of crypto, AI, and a taxation policy they like better.
For Horowitz, “probably the most emotional topic” is crypto — a16z started a $4.5 billion crypto fund in 2022, and the pair believe that the Biden administration has been profoundly unfair to crypto. In Horowitz’s view, the Biden administration “basically subverted the regulation of law to attack the crypto industry.”
“We’re the largest crypto investors or largest blockchain investors in the world.”
Certainly much of the crypto industry prefers Trump. But it seems apparent that there has been quite a few intra-agency squabbling as legislature dithered on passing any laws. To place the blame squarely on Biden is bizarre, peculiarly erstwhile we have Trump’s chaotic erstwhile word as guidance. Sure, Trump is no longer saying Bitcoin is “a scam against the dollar,” as he did in 2021; he is scheduled to talk at the Bitcoin conference this year. But his evidence in office is not precisely pro-crypto. During the Trump administration, financial regulator FinCEN initially asked the public to supply comments on a crypto regulation change over a 15-day period that included Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, fresh Year’s Eve, and fresh Year’s Day, which effectively shortened the comment window by 4 working days. There is besides the Ripple Labs enforcement case, in which the SEC is seeking a $1.95 billion fine; it, too, dates to the Trump administration.
The pair’s complaints about Gary Gensler, the current head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, are striking. They are peculiarly annoyed that he won’t pay attention to them. “We’re the largest crypto investors or largest blockchain investors in the world, and we’ve requested meetings with him at least a half a twelve times,” Horowitz says. Gensler has not met with them. Neither, they say, has Senator Elizabeth Warren or Biden himself.
In fact, Andreessen makes it clear that he expects presidential attention, something he’s been getting since he was 23. Given the number of times Andreessen and Horowitz make references to various meetings with various politicians, it’s easy to get the impression that they are mostly insulted that they are being treated like average constituents.
From crypto, we decision to AI, which Andreessen and Horowitz don’t think is being regulated correctly either. According to Horowitz, AI is as powerful as, or more powerful than, the net and the global computer manufacture from the 1950s on. “This may be the biggest technological boom of all time,” Andreessen says.
These regulations have small to do with technology and a lot to do with old-fashioned lying
Andreessen says in his newsletter-cum-manifesto, “The small Tech Agenda,” that he is worried that AI will face akin scrutiny to crypto. The FTC has issued guidance to the AI industry that indicated it will prosecute companies that exaggerate what their AI can do, say they are utilizing AI erstwhile they are not, and recklessly put products on the marketplace without decently analyzing the risks. Meanwhile, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has told lenders that they must supply a reason for a credit denial that’s better than just “computer says no” erstwhile utilizing AI models. These regulations have small to do with technology and a lot to do with old-fashioned lying.
In the podcast, Andreessen and Horowitz single out Biden’s executive order about artificial intelligence. The order requires companies to disclose the presence of very large models, as well as to supply the government information about what the plans are for the model, what cybersecurity measures are taken to defend those models, and the results of red-team investigating for delicate subjects, among another things. This is in keeping with Horowitz’s assertion about the seriousness of the technology.
So what’s the problem? The 2 focus on computing power. The disclosure requirements apply to “any model that was trained utilizing a quantity of computing power greater than 1026 integer or floating-point operations, or utilizing primarily biological series data and utilizing a quantity of computing power greater than 1023 integer or floating-point operations.” Andreessen and Horowitz think specifying specified a limit is ridiculous. small tech “will be snuffed out by this kind of regulation,” Horowitz says.
It is possibly worth noting that nothing above the size specified in the executive order — the size Andreessen and Horowitz object to — even exists yet, according to Arati Prabhakar, Biden’s top tech advisor.
The irony is so apparent it’s almost embarrassing to point it out
The fundamental complaint here is that these 2 believe that the Biden administration’s approach to AI “enshrine[s] the 2 or 3 companies that they believe are the only companies that substance as kind of permanent monopolies,” Andreessen says. “And they’re going to just fundamentally destruct the startup ecosystem underneath that.” Andreessen Horowitz is, of course, invested in that ecosystem, having earmarked $2.25 billion for AI applications and infrastructure.
The anti-monopoly rhetoric is in keeping with a16z’s latest marketing push. According to Andreessen’s newsletter, startups are threatened by the government, which is “now far more hostile to fresh startups than it utilized to be.” too his objections to the way the SEC has increased its oversight of crypto, he is besides upset that a stepped-up interest in antitrust has made it more hard for him to exit investments. “Regulatory agencies are punitively blocking startups from being acquired by the same large companies the government is preferencing in so many another ways,” Andreessen writes. After all, the national Trade Commission has launched an enquiry into large Tech’s partnerships and investments with startups — with the goal of seeing if those partnerships squash competition.
The irony is so apparent it’s almost embarrassing to point it out. Andreessen says he is upset that large Tech is besides powerful, but he opposes antitrust action due to the fact that that blocks a way for VCs to exit. Either you’re comfortable with large Tech getting bigger, in which case acquisitions are fine, or you want small tech to be competitive, which means blocking manufacture consolidation. Mainly, it seems that Andreessen believes in cashing out.
In the podcast, Andreessen and Horowitz pointedly name Google as a threat to startups. “Google, I think we would all agree, is more powerful than most likely 95 percent of countries in the world,” Horowitz says at 1 point. Google, specifically, is simply a sore place with the right wing. Vice presidential nominee Vance has already said it should be broken up. Vance believes Google is controlling information and skewing besides far left. Of course, Google’s moderation policies don’t just apply to Google News — they besides affect YouTube, which hosts a large many right-wing podcasts without issue.
Tax improvement was “the final straw for me, the thing that tipped me hard.”
It’s unclear how seriously to take Andreessen and Horowitz’s complaints about large Tech due to the fact that the complaints don’t rather square with their behavior. For instance, Facebook is likewise powerful and influential, especially in AI. Andreessen sits on its board. A16z is invested in OpenAI, which has a partnership with Microsoft — and both have lobbied strenuously for more regulation around AI. It certain seems like if a16z wants to change things at those large companies, individual could simply choice up the phone.
At this point in the podcast, you could squint and say maybe the concern about AI and crypto is truly about technology and progress. But from those 2 topics, we decision on to classical rich guy crap of the most tedious kind: tax reform. Andreessen says it was “the final straw for me. This is the thing that tipped me hard.” They are upset about a proposal to alter capital gains taxes.
Capital gains are paid on investment assets, and they are typically paid erstwhile the investment is sold and the gains are, in manufacture terms, “realized.” The new Biden treasury proposal means that for people whose wealth is worth more than $100 million, any unrealized capital gains will be taxed, too. This is what has Andreessen and Horowitz in a tizzy. It means that if they own a clutch of highly valued startup shares, they will gotta pay taxes on them before they cash out. This is simply a “very scary proposal,” Horowitz says.
Startups are illiquid assets, Andreessen points out. “Startups never go up and down. They’re never overvalued,” says Horowtiz, dryly. “There’s no bubbles.” Andreessen notes that the way the value of a startup is calculated for the purposes of this proposed taxation has to do with the latest round’s valuation.
“Presto chango, we’re Argentina!”
Historically, 1 of the ways that Andreessen Horowitz has approached startup investing is to inflate a company’s valuation; it is “the OG erstwhile it comes to doling out speculative startup valuations.” The fresh proposed taxation punishes this kind of behaviour — a advanced valuation means a advanced tax. “This makes startups completely implausible,” says Andreessen. “Venture capital just ends. Firms like ours don’t exist.”
This is followed by an anxiety spiral that is kind of hard to convey in text; I propose you perceive for yourself. “California is done,” says Andreessen. “It’s full destruction.” The taxes won’t just mark the wealthy; they’ll come for everyone. “Once the structure gets established, the politicians do what they do: they’ll walk the numbers up,” Andreessen says. “Presto chango, we’re Argentina!” says Horowitz.
Finally, Horowitz gets ahold of himself. “By the way, this 1 most likely won’t get all the way through the system,” he says. “But it might!”
There is another issue that might origin wreckage throughout Silicon Valley. It is immigration. An awful lot of immigrants comprise Silicon Valley’s talent pool — a immense swath of engineers in the US are on H-1B visas. The Trump / Vance ticket is virulently anti-immigrant.
“The crypto manufacture is uniquely international, and so immigration law is crypto law.”
The current CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM are all immigrants. So are Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are active in Fwd.us, a lobbying group dedicated to immigration improvement that Musk and Sacks both left. If there were an issue that would rally the people who care most about progress, innovation, and talent, you’d think protecting the immigrants who’ve built lives and careers in tech would be it.
Stopping immigration is simply a core issue of the Trump campaign. During the Republican National Convention, delegates held up signs saying “Mass Deportation Now.” Trump has called the H-1B, the visa many tech workers usage to come to Silicon Valley, “very bad” and “unfair” to US workers. In his erstwhile term, he targeted H-1B visa applications specifically; in the fiscal year 2018, almost 25 percent of applications were denied, up from about 13 percent the year before. In fiscal year 2019, 20 percent of H-1B applications were denied. The denials plummeted after respective Trump administration rules were thrown out by courts; the denial rate in 2022 was just 2 percent.
Immigration plainly matters for crypto — as Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin says, “The crypto manufacture is uniquely international, and so immigration law is crypto law.” Buterin is 1 of the most influential voices in crypto, and Ethereum is the foundation for a swath of Andreessen Horowitz’s investment portfolio. Among the investments that trust on it are MakerDAO, VeeFriends, Dapper Labs, and EigenLayer. It is remarkable that the founder of Ethereum is saying that voting for Trump is against the crypto ethos, and the large crypto investors are doing it anyway.
The word “immigration” is only mentioned by Andreessen and Horowitz in the podcast erstwhile they discuss the rally in which individual attempted an assassination: Trump had turned his head to look at a illustration that purported to show illegal immigration into the US as the bullet whizzed by. I wondered why specified an crucial issue for tech wasn’t addressed, so I emailed Margit Wennmachers, a16z’s PR guru, to ask. She didn’t reply.
After I finished listening to the podcast, a fewer things kept nagging at me. Take the very beginning of the podcast. erstwhile upon a time, Andreessen says, you could get very rich and then give the money distant in philanthropy, “and you get tremendous credit for that. And, you know, it absolves you of whatever.”
At any point in the last 10 years, any people suggested that possibly rich people should pay more taxes alternatively of giving their money distant — that possibly the whims of any random rich individual are not the best way to support the most susceptible in our society. Andreessen and Horowitz propose that this critique of philanthropy is simply jealousy. It besides unbalanced “the deal.”
“The deal,” as described on the podcast, is vague. To my ear, it sounds like this: Tech companies could fundamentally do whatever they wanted, as long as people who worked there paid advanced taxes and donated adequate money to charitable causes. The money — taxes, donations — made them the good guys.
The 1 thing all these hype cycles had in common was VCs talking their books, as publically as possible
Andreessen and Horowitz point to the mid-2010s — that is, the era of low interest rates — as the time of “the deal” unraveling. Notably, this is around the time that the tech hype cycle became apparent even to people who weren’t paying attention. This year, it’s scooters! Now it’s viral media companies! Now it’s metaverse! Now it’s crypto! Now it’s AI!
These ideas were more or little rejected by the market, but possibly AI. The 1 thing all these hype cycles had in common was VCs talking their books, as publically as possible. That charge was led by Andreessen Horowitz.
So now, alternatively of investing in things the marketplace wants, Andreessen and Horowitz appear to be gambling on government instead. Their timing is remarkable; not even a week after their Trump endorsement, Biden dropped out of the race, rallying the Democrats behind Vice president Kamala Harris. In the hours immediately following the announcement, small-money donors raised $46.7 million for her campaign. By endorsing Trump, Andreessen and Horowitz have effectively lost whatever leverage they might have had with the Harris campaign.
But possibly that doesn’t matter. close the end of the podcast, Horowitz says that he was shaken by the assassination effort on Donald Trump due to the fact that he’s friends with Ivanka, his daughter, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. “Ivanka and the kids were just at my house,” Horowitz says, of learning Trump was shot. “We went to see David Copperfield and all that. So my brain was almost frozen due to the fact that I had this feeling about, ‘Oh my god, Grandpa just got shot.’”
“Ivanka and the kids were just at my house.”
And this talk about democracy brings me to Curtis Yarvin, personal friend of vice presidential candidate Vance. Yarvin, a software developer, is openly anti-democracy. (Yarvin’s recent newsletter, in consequence to Biden dropping out, enthusiastically advocates for a return to monarchy. Freak shit.) 1 of Yarvin’s ideas, called “retire all government employees” or RAGE, is part of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation proposal for what Trump should do if he wins. This rhetoric was echoed by Vance in 2021, who called out Yarvin by name.
So this VC cabal is trading against the basic principles of America — not simply against individual freedom, but democracy itself — in the hopes of profit. It’s not the first time tech has made the trade against freedom; IBM made it during the Holocaust.
In venture capital, you are what you fund. Andreessen and Horowitz realize this, even embody it. But they aren’t just backing the issues they discuss on their podcast; they are backing Trump and Vance. That means those donations are anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and possibly even anti-democracy due to the fact that that is what the Trump / Vance ticket stands for. These are not subsidiary issues: these are now what 2 of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures now stand for, too. Is that a good investment?
