Why This Crypto Billionaire Wants to Slow Down the AI Arms Race

[MUSIC]

Hi everyone from New York Magazine in the Vox Media Podcast Network.

“This is on with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher.”

My guest today is Chris Larson, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency tech company Ripple. Larson has become a controversial figure over the past few years. Due to his funding of an extensive surveillance network in San Francisco that many credit would lower in crime in the city.

He's never been shy about using his wealth and influence to propel certain policy goals,

gaining detractors and amyers along the way. But Larson insists that his interests in San Francisco stems from a true love of the Bay area, and I believe that's true. He's willing to talk about almost anything and we get into it here. Some balance AI reform.

He's actually one of the tech-brows fighting other tech-brows, cryptocurrency regulation, and national politics. Chris is a really interesting thinker and he goes all over the place. Unlike a lot of these tech-brows that shifted right, he did not. He shifts in ways that I find more sensible.

I don't agree with him on everything, but he's a really smart thinker and he's putting his money where his mouth is. This episode was recorded live at San Francisco's Pier 27, as part of the Odo experience. So let's get into it. Support for this show comes from Odo.

Running a business takes everything you've got, and a lot of the tools out there that are supposed to make your life easier just aren't great at talking to each other, and that means you end up having to toggle between a dozen different apps and services just to keep the lights on. Enough of that.

Now there's Odo, the all-in-one fully integrated platform that actually might help you get it all done.

“Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?”

Try Odo for free at Odo.com, that's Odo.com. Chris, what do we just get your assessment of San Francisco right now? There was, of course, the Fox News period where everything was doom and gloom, much of what they were saying were lies. Talk a little bit about how you look at San Francisco as an innovation center right now.

Yeah, well, first of all, in the cities, really doing great. We really come back. We had some problems, right? A lot of those were political, self-inflicted wounds, but we've got a fantastic mayor now, Mayor Larry.

And we've really, yeah, I think we should have fought 74% approval rating, that's incredible

in San Francisco, but I think we fixed our public safety problems as well. We were, you know, the nation's capitals in terms of smashing grab, crimes, which are not violent crimes, but they are the kinds of crimes that meet people say, I just don't want to go into the city and I don't want to have my workers there, it's like 25,000 smashing grab incidents that were reported every single year.

That's down now, 70%, and it's because we've given the police the right tools, the voters approved Prop E back in 2024, that gave them drones, these license plate readers, I know there's some controversy on. I'm going to talk about that. But it's been incredibly effective, and we've set up something called a real time

investigation center. So that's a game changer, because now instead of, you know, there's a crime, and it's gets reported, and it's too late, everybody's gone, nothing can be done about it, that's how it used to be. Now they're catching these smashing grab crews in real time, they come into the city, they

do 10 hits a day of crimes.

Now you see one of them, we send a drone over to witness them doing a second act with

the license plate readers, we can see where they're going, you send an unmarked police car with a clean, closed police officer in it, they put a spike strip out right when they're going by, and they've basically eliminated these crews. And even the crews are talking about this on some of their podcast, believe it or not, they have podcasts, which is, as they should.

But it's great news, because nothing works unless you have public safety.

“That's why the mayor says this is number one objective still is.”

And then you need clean streets, we've made a lot of progress there, obviously we had a big homeless problem still have some work to do there, but we've made a ton of progress and making sure that particularly in the tender line, that that doesn't become a containment zone. So you can see the results and I think that's set the stage for this AI boom that people

wanted to be right here, and that's great news, obviously, for not just the city, but for the state. It's literally like the entire world is sending us a check, and that's been a real blessing. Talk a little bit about the AI boom, obviously you and I have been through several of these, you know, where it grows and then it comes back, and the simmer just good self has gone

through many. Right.

Talk about the current one, because obviously you will worry about the AI boo...

into an AI bubble, and we'll get to that in a second, but what, why are they coming back to San Francisco? I often tell the story of this one guy. They all left all of a sudden for Miami or Austin or wherever they want it. I know.

It's like it's hot and wet there, and it's hot and dry there. But they all were like tying a town and sort of kicking San Francisco. The place where they made their fortunes, which I thought was particularly ungrateful, but they had to kick it at the same time. So I was at a really good restaurant here, a place, it was a 13, actually down over that

way. And I was with a very well-known AI person, and we saw this guy from across the room, a big table of people eating the delicious food of 13, and we went over and we were like, get the fuck out of here. You can't have our food, and of course, had moved back, but still continued to pretend

they were conducting themselves in Miami, where none of that happened. Is there something about San Francisco in this world of digital, is this place important anymore? For innovation? I think place is super important.

I mean, what we have here, I think it's a fine soufflé that's very hard to replicate. You've just got the right amount of, obviously major capital, it's just down the street. You've also got still the remnants of the hippie movement, right? You've got all kinds of experiential ideas around art that you don't see anywhere else. I think even Burning Man is a great influence for sort of creativity going on.

You're going tomorrow, right? We'll go tomorrow. Absolutely. It's a lot of people say you can't understand what you're about. He asked if I was going, I laughed in his face.

We'll get you there, Wendy. No, you never will. Never. Okay. All right.

Okay, good point. Yeah. But, you know, it's the creative energy and thinking differently, art and engineering, that's kind

“of what goes on there, but I think that's what you have here, and that's very hard to replicate.”

Everybody always says, hey, we're going to build a Silicon Valley.

It's not happening. Right. And a concentration of venture capital here, we're going to look at AI. I mean, it's just off the charts compared to anywhere else. That says a lot.

You know, you've got to admit, like California's had some problems, San Francisco. We've had our problems. You have to spite all of that. This is still in the place where people came to think the impossible. Mm-hmm.

And this is where they're sitting there. Why is that from your career? I was thinking about this lesson. We had a reunion of our recodes staff, but I really did say that same thing. What is your reasoning for it?

What creates the current AI boom? And what is the worry you have around, obviously, the inflated, possibly affiliated valuations, exactly. There's a lot to be worried about with AI. I can talk about that.

“But I think this is still a place where you come up with a crazy idea.”

People are not going to talk you out of it or talk about how stupid it is. Every idea I had and I talked to my friends around here. And it's like, oh, right on, go for it. That sounds awesome. And that matters, actually.

And then I think the other thing is you have a lot of sort of veterans. We've been how many cycles now? Who stayed here even after they made their fortunes? Because it's a wonderful place to live. And there is a notion of sort of paying it back, right?

So like I had a lot of mentors that helped me. That wouldn't be here if it wasn't for one sentence. A couple of people said at the right time. And I think we all remember that. And then you try to help the next group that they're coming around.

Even if you're not involved with AI, which is a lot of young folks are just doing incredible work.

You might be involved just from sharing your experience, or sharing your encouragement. That's a very hard thing to replicate as well. In a place. In a place. So let's go through some stuff that you've been involved in as an entrepreneur.

And we're going to through a whole range of different things from cryptocurrency to politics. But let's start with some news. The digital asset market clarity act, which the White House says, will provide a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies set to have a procedural vote in the Senate. Later this month, September 15th, actually.

President Trump is putting a lot of pressure on lawmakers to get this past. Talk about where you are on this. Obviously, the Trump administration has been friendly towards cryptocurrency and friendly to himself. In terms of benefiting himself, rather. He's just a good businessman, people.

Obviously, we've been very involved with crypto policy going that way. It's going 13 years now since 2012 is when we started out. There was nothing on the books there. We were all paranoid.

“We were always going to be arrested at any moment, right?”

For sort of counterfitting or whatever.

A million different worries that you could have.

Man, some, you know, some progress was made over the years. But then we had the Biden administration. I was a big backer of Biden and and comma for president.

They really screwed up here.

They really screwed up. They were supposed to be a sort of a moderate governing, you know, regime. And they outsourced their financial regulation to the Elizabeth Warren Wing. And Gary Gensler, who were determined to block any regulations specifically designed for the industry, which is a completely novel industry.

Didn't fit in anything that we had. And they went after this sort of regulation by enforcement lawsuit approach.

“I think design, the hobbly industry or destroy the industry.”

They just got it in their heads that this was all bad. And obviously lots of just bad stuff happens in any technology boom. But there's a lot of great stuff here in modernizing the world's financial infrastructure. Tokenizing assets to make them cheaper to trade globally. Lots of great stuff.

And they didn't go in that direction at all. So it a very anti, you know, crypto regime. As you know, we were sued by the Biden administration, Gary Gensler. We had a four year battle. It was brutal.

We were lucky we survived it.

We spent 150 million dollars defending ourselves.

We ended up winning. Right after I saw you last year on your show in 2023. Maybe a week after that. We did get a favorable ruling. But it was brutal.

And if we didn't have a lot of money, we were a small startup. We would have been finished. And that's just not right. So we wanted new regulations that were specific to the industry. And the administration obviously didn't very pro.

And wants to be the crypto, you know, leaders of the world. And they have so far gotten through one bill. The genius act that regulate stablecoins. That's a really important development. So that's now clear.

But we need this market structure bill. Kind of maybe even the more important bill called the clarity act. What has been negotiated here now for a long time. It's been really tough. But I think there is bipartisan support.

We're hopeful we get it through because we need to get this. You know, really official rules so that people know what to do. So consumers know what to expect. It's better to have more regulation that's clear than no regulation. And that's what we want.

What do you expect it to pass or where is it at this point? It's still tough. There's still some tricky areas around ethics. That the Dems want to see happen. I get why they want that to happen.

I just hope we can get a compromise that works because no bill is actually worse for, you know, how ethics go forward. It would be better to have as strong a bill as we can possibly get.

“What's the most important part of this bill from your perspective?”

The most important part of it is defining what is a commodity, what is a security.

That's always been always been the hang-up. And we got clarity in our court decision. But most of the other players don't have that. And if you don't have that clarity, I think the problem is it could be from one administration to the other. You're just whips on back and forth.

And that's just no way to have a mortgage loan. Well, and of course the crypto industry hit back hard against Democrats. Sherrod Brown was sort of widely divided by the crypto industry. And Lossie looks like he's going to be back. Yeah, I love Sherrod.

And that was unfortunate. I think again, his staff went in the wrong direction. I don't think it was him. He was more of an Elizabeth Warren type influence on his child. So you like her Elizabeth, right?

Yeah. I used to. I really did.

“But I think it's like what she's been doing lately.”

She kind of leaned into the anti-tech anti-innovation. Yeah. But you do have these problems. You talked about this ethics issue. White House disclosure forms show president drop made more than $1.5 billion from crypto investments last year.

It should there be some laws and place government officials from profiting off of cyber currency? I think no question. Same as stock trading. We see that in both parties. But absolutely.

There's a lot of work to be done there as far as our government works. And then what what does it do for the citizens that are worried about? Corruption or, you know, crime and there are legitimate issues. There are, but it's still, it's a pretty regulated business already. Right.

I mean, finance of pentac always think is very different from, let's say, communications.

Communications you have first amendment. So it's much harder to regulate. And you have these problems with the social media companies on that score. But financial transactions you don't have a first amendment on, right? So you don't have the freedom to do a lot of things you see in traditional data companies.

So it's already heavily regulated. But this just makes it clear in, in, in this specific industry, which I think the big thing here is it's making the traditional financial industry embrace it and modernize some of their systems and make them faster, cheaper and more. I think this is notion of an internet of value. We have an internet of information.

The world works better if you have an internet of value and values different ...

That's a good thing for the world.

And you need the clarity of regulation for the big guys to really step in. They're in pretty good right now, but this would really settle a lot of questions and give them the confidence to invest, you know, a decade out. But you would be for a stipulation that government officials shouldn't be profiting. And sounds good to me. Yeah.

I don't think they should be able to trade stocks or any of this stuff. And you see a lot of that going on. It doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, absolutely. We probably should pay them more than.

I'll say three with you on that one. Yeah. And here in San Francisco too, it's crazy. The responsibility they have and how little they make.

“And I think that just sets up all kinds of problems.”

We'll be back in a minute. Support for the show comes from Odin. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? One for sales and other for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Before you know it, you're drowning in software instead of growing your business. This is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM accounting inventory e-commerce HR and more.

No more app overload, no more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business. Whether you're just starting out or already scaling up,

plus it's easy to use customizable and design to streamline every process. So you can focus on what really matters, running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch so why not you? Try Odoo for free at Odoo.com. That's Odoo.com.

So last summer in stage together, we talked a lot about the balance between surveillance and civil liberties. And recently Debate was brought to your front door. In the past few years, you've helped fund an extensive surveillance network throughout San Francisco. That now allows police to monitor residents in real time with the gold catching suspects as you noted. You've said you have bright lines around surveillance or no facial recognition and profiling and no stop and frisk.

Talk a little about this. There are people you talked back to. My son is worried about it. You're saying, so talk a little bit about this because part of it, immediately when I see your name is like, oh, the surveillance guy. I'm like, it's a little more complex than that than I get exhausted trying to explain it. But there are legitimate worries about surveillance given it could go a very different and very ugly way.

“You just have to look to China, you have to look to a lot of authoritarian countries.”

Talk a little bit about this. Yeah, it's almost the issue of our day and you're right. I talked to my son about that. He's 19.

And he always gives me a hard time.

I can't, you're doing the surveillance thing. What are you doing? And I was like, well, we cut down on crime. You know, 70% smashed me. And he said, I'd rather have the crime than the surveillance. Like, oh, you know, so I get it. You know, this is a tough issue.

It's a great tough issue. You know, but in 24 us when the voters of San Francisco approved property, that's what allowed the police to have these tools for the first time. And again, it was a game changer. It's incredible that the thing that's only two years ago.

Okay. So the world has changed so much. And you know, even last year, there wasn't a lot of opposition. Now it's tremendous opposition. Right.

Last year and certainly in 24, I think people saw the flock cameras as a tool. Oh, great. Sounds good. We're going to catch all the, all the smashing grabbers. Now, huge opposition. Right. It's called deflock movement literally. Right. Well, because, well, there's a reason for it.

Let me just, the flock cameras, we don't know. It's automatic license plate readers. They've been getting a lot of bread press. There have been multiple reports across the country. A police officer is using flock cameras to stalk people, including ex wives and girlfriends. A lot of common sense oversight tools like requiring officers,

general case them for running a place just don't exist now. A feature has become mandatory on January 1st. My whole premise of a lot of this stuff is that if it's become a tool, it can become a weapon instantly.

Sure. And yeah. And anticipation of that never happens.

Yeah. And I think the thing that's really changed two things. One, I think the AI arms race, I think, is so unpopular. It's caused so much mistrust. That's one thing. And then, of course, we have this disaster with ice. We're literally Americans are being killed.

And people are being scooped up and put in God knows where. That's not what boaters signed up for.

“I think those two things together with new surveillance tools that's what's making people upset.”

Nervous, right? I totally get it. So I think... I mean, I have no question of my mind that Mark Wayne Mullin would use these tools to abuse citizens. No question at this point. You know, I totally get it.

I think this is going to be the issue of the day.

Because it's a trade-off, always public safety and privacy.

And, you know, just being able to not be seen.

Where is that line? I think the line is going to be moving.

“I think what it says, though, is that governments, including San Francisco,”

San Francisco is really good on this, right? So they're used of these tools, by the way, are incident-based. So they're not just doing surveillance and looking everywhere and trying to see if somebody's doing something wrong. It's when you get a report of a smashing grab incident or a strong arm robbery. Then a drone is going to be sent over there.

That's what they do, but I get it. People are still uncomfortable because it could change. But again, I think San Francisco could do needs to do a better job. San Francisco keeps flocking information for a year. That's way more than the average.

The average is about 30 days and flocks just because they know they're under pressure. Change their default setting the seven days. And they go even further. New Hampshire has a law now that says flocking information can only be kept for three minutes. So three minutes to see if that matches a crime and then you have to get rid of it.

Another thing when I, you know, what's new is we've never had as many drones in the air.

They're super effective, right? This is a drone is first responder. It's a huge force multiplier for the police, but we've never had 100 drones in the air owned by the government. We do now. Now, if you're on the street, you don't really have any, you know, you're in public lands.

That's one thing. You, you, you can never pick up audio in, in our systems. That's important, right? Ring cameras do, for example. But you can pick up people's backyards from a drone. I would like to see those, those technologies blocking out people's backyards,

blocking out people's decks, places that are private.

“So that, you know, because again, I think people are bothered by this, right?”

So people are bothered. So people are bothered by this, right? So people are bothered by this.

So people are bothered by this, right?

So people are bothered by this, right? So people are bothered by this, right? So people are bothered by this, right? So people are bothered by this, right? So people are bothered by this, right?

What are your tools to deal with this, if this happens? And literally the text said to me, you're a bummer. And I was like, yeah, I'm a bummer, so I'll see human race. So I don't know what to tell you. Why isn't there any kind of transparency

around the consequences for people to decide on? Because voters, I know they approved it, but if they understood, how do we make it so that it's deeply transparent? So they can make the trade-offs they want to. Yeah, and San Francisco does have multiple layers of approval on, you know,

how these things are deployed. There are audits of them, but obviously we have to do more, because the temperature and the anger.

“Again, I think people are putting all of these tools”

and data centers are the expression of a great amount of anger and angst about this whole AI revolution we're living in right now. I was talking to some of the people who are building these data centers, and they have me in, and they said, we'd really love your thoughts on why people are feeling this way, and I said, they hate you.

You're, and you're hateable. Like, I don't know. Like, you know, there's an expression of punchable face. And like, tech has a punchable face right now in a way that deservedly kind of thing.

And so these are all linked together. And data centers as you're right is a proxy for having these AI companies tell us they're going to take all their jobs. They're going to kill us. They're going to, what are you doing here, human?

Still, you're still here bothering me. How is it? Because at the same time, I just interviewed the mayor of Lansing, Michigan, which I talk about a lot, because it was really striking. He put together a data center deal that was all the right things.

Close loop water payments to the citizens, long-term property taxes. They had to pay the difference in any electrical problems. So the rates wouldn't go up. All everything, total transparency, there was no NDAs. The citizens rejected it.

Yeah, rejected it. Yeah. So there's no no amount of money or promises were believed in any way. Yeah. So why should we believe you, not you, but, you know, why should we believe tech

at this point when that happens? When there's things that are beneficial, like you're talking about. Yeah, I'd almost separate tech from the AI arms race. There is an AI arms race that's completely out of control. It's all gas, no break, no steering.

And of course, that's going to end badly. I would say that's AI insanity. Yet it continues. And when you have companies, I mean, they're so wealthy. But when you have them telling you, hey, we invented fire.

We invented nuclear energy.

You know, and this is really dangerous. And it's going to destroy jobs. And it's going to hurt kids and take over humanity.

And then 20 minutes later, they're releasing the new super powerful model.

You know, I just don't know how you reconcile that.

“And then I think everybody understands, like, that's not good.”

So I think the data set are opposition, which is staggering. Maybe that's healthy. That's the way to sort of stop it slow it down or force regulation. You know, in that industry. Because the other thing the industry is doing is they sort of try to take a reverse

page out of the crypto industry, setting up superpacks. But to crush anybody that dared come up with any guardrails. You saw this in the out of spores race, right? That doesn't make any sense, right? So you actually need people now to be really leaders to be smart

and to be working on these guardrails. And maybe even slowing it down. I mean, don't tell people they were stupid and poor if they didn't go along with it. Howard Latinx said, no water would be involved. He's such a moron.

Well, the weird thing about that is, which I don't get, is the maga movement is actually pretty aligned on this. They are. They don't trust these companies. They do not.

Yeah, they are very concerned about kids and families and loss of jobs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

“Well, that's where you see Margie Chalegrino Elizabeth Warren coming together”

in a big blob. It's really interesting. And then you saw some of the child protection folks getting together. Steve Bannon on this issue. Yeah.

And by the way, I think that's good news. This is maybe a one-year-- No, nothing with Steve Bannon is good news. But that's fine. All right, sure.

Some came up in our last conversation that democracy is messy. We talked about it. And why you said you'd rather vomit blood out of your eyeballs. I don't know how you do that than running for office. Still true.

But there is the worry about billionaires using your money to just fund it. Like using your money to fund these agencies to do fast track adoption. And without having enough people coming in on it. Like enough citizens being able to do that. Yeah.

For sure. Look, there's way too much money in politics. The Supreme Court made a huge mistake with citizens united and with Jeremy Andrewing. That should be the top two things that we try to change. And hopefully on next administration, if we can do that.

But it is the rules of the game.

“So I mean, if you want to get involved in policy, you have to play that game.”

Unfortunately, we can't let the oil industry sort of dictate energy policy. And then have the solar folks, for example, sit back and go. We're looking at our lovely product. I hope everybody loves it. No, it doesn't work that way.

You got to get out there and fight. You know, this is politics. It's not a pillow fight.

Speaking of that, according to your times that you spent about $3.5 million on Alex Boris,

who was under attack from open AI for his AI safety advocacy. Why was that fight? I wasn't surprised you were there, but others were like that you were there. Well, I was just this totally obnoxious fucking thing from this Greg Brockman, like 50 million bucks. He's going to drop on Alex's head for him to dare to come up with any of God.

One of the one of the top executives that opened AI president. President. And then they try to say, no, that wasn't opening. Of course it was. It was a strategy.

And so that was just wrong. You know, we wanted to show that people, you know, like Alex and obviously Scott Weiner here. And many root now in Colorado who did win. We put a million bucks in in that race. That they're going to have, we're going to have their backs.

And we're going to support you to defy this big money. And we're talking about big money in AI. It's so big now. It's, it's so scary. Or what could be coming down the pipe here.

But money doesn't always buy results when you have that much opposition.

Right. So I think that was important. You know, obviously Alex didn't win, but he came pretty close. Right. But that you just talked about money.

The guardrails alliance and new super act backed by tech workers, labor unions and other rank and file workers backed for us. They were up against leading the future, which is, as you noted, funded by Open AI's president Greg Brockman. It is an operating budget of a hundred million dollars compared to guardrails goal to raise 15 million dollars. You told the times the Open AI was, quote, trying to destroy and intimidate and send a clear message. If you do come up with clear guardrails, we're going to crush you.

So talk a little bit about this. No, I mean, I just, I'm sorry, let me do one thing. You're an investor in anthropic, which is Open AI's main rival. Well, that's actually not true. Okay.

I mean, it is true. I mean, I have indirect investments in Open AI and Robbic and space X. Okay. So all the same.

Right. Okay. So all different people that we're doing. Okay. So talk a little bit about this money differential because it's vast and there's plenty more coming.

It is, but I think the good news here is when you have that much opposition to what's going on and it's clear you do.

I think it's kind of ineffective.

And you compare that to the crypto industry where you really didn't have a lot of opponents. You had sort of an Elizabeth Warren wing.

But there isn't really sort of a populace that was sort of anti and on the other side you had 50 million Americans trading crypto.

That was, that was a big plus. That's not the case in the AI thing. Well, the AI thing is different. It's, this is not Airbnb. This is not Uber.

It's not crypto. All of those had lots of policy implications. Lots of political action committees. But those are like incremental things in how the world works. AI is like an existential threat to like human existence.

It's a different thing. I mean, it is fire. Like a reinvented fire. And then they're trying to say, oh, we don't need fire stations or fire proofing. You know, it's just crazy.

So it's a whole different beast. And I think the money isn't working. And if it had been working, you wouldn't have this kind of backlash. Right. And now they're trying to un-backlash.

They're backing off, right? Yeah. They're trying to talk about how all the positive. And there are, don't get me wrong. Right.

This is potentially a fantastic, you know, future that we could be living in. But only if we take the very very difficult middle path between this AI and sanity, we're on now. This aren't this un-mitigated arms race, which, by the way, you know, anthropic and jarred, they're doing better, but they're still in the arms race.

They're still releasing another powerful model with, okay, it seems to be fine.

Yeah. And warning about all the dangers that will happen. So we can't be on that path. And we can't be on the Bernie Sanders, shut it all down. You just walk away from it, Pat.

It's as Tristan Harris and Center for Humanity Technology that you'd a great work on this. Yeah, he's about to come out with some new stuff. He's so good. Yeah.

But like he says, this is a very difficult middle path we need to walk. That means you need extraordinary, you know, brave political leaders who are knowledgeable.

“And you need a lot of, I think, the people in tech to stand up and to push back on the folks.”

That are in the arms race bubble. They don't even, some evil people, mostly good people doing really good. I don't think just one evil person's not good. And we know which one that you can do a lot of damage, right? Yeah.

They're in a bubble, though. They're not seeing this. So why aren't they seeing this? Well, I mean, a couple of things. I think many of them have.

I mean, if you look at people that donated to Alex Boris, let me give some props to a lot of the open AI employees. Like, their leaders were doing one thing. But the employees were actually backing the Alex Borises. And if you look at a lot of the anthropic employees,

and anthropic, I think it does a much better job across the board. What is it now that they're involved in this Alaska race? Because back in the candidate who's really good on AI regulation. That's encouraging. So maybe it's the leaders running a bubble.

But the employees see the power and the danger of these things. Well, you know what, you know them. Why do you think they're this way? I mean, I do think you get in a bubble with anything. It's super exciting work.

You know, this is the reaction of the world. I mean, in like what four years, it's the only thing we talk about. It's pretty intoxicating. I'm sure.

And they're also super working. Probably nonstop by no time to sleep, right? You do. I think you do get in a bubble. Getting a bubble.

Probably don't meet a lot of folks in places that are really concerned about this though. Mm-hmm. Yeah, they don't. They don't. That's for sure.

They go from their planes to their houses to their.

“But when thing I would say, I think the social media mess.”

I mean, that would. We let that get away from us, right? I think that actually is some good news because we've seen this movie before. Right. And so it's pretty hard to do.

To pitch all that BS. It's all good. And you're seeing that in these cases, these social media cases, which are going their way and using product liability versus Section 230 or free speech. They're now losing.

Yeah. And you saw this giant settlement, which is a small, but it's bigger than. Then I expect it. It's a good development. It's a good development.

And it's still not over. I think that's right. That's exactly right. So do you switching gears and this thing. You're against the billionaires tax.

Because people are mad at billionaires. I don't know if you know that, but they are. Even people who like money like myself, I'm mad at billionaires.

I can't wait to get back to $900 million.

I can be a good person. Okay. All right. That's a good billionaire joke. And there's not that many.

I can tell you. But, but talk about this because one. That's I think the issue. And the one time 5% tax. What's the big deal?

We'll look at it. Also, we need your money. Just give it to us. Okay. Everybody hates billionaires.

“If you want to get even with the billionaires.”

Make them stay in California, where they take 13%. They don't get capital. They make the state. It's such a terrible place to live.

Well, I mean, it's good for the state.

Okay. All right. Okay. Yeah. That's one thing.

But look, it's a terribly designed bill.

“And I think Mark Cuban has made this point.”

Right. We both know in tech and many small businesses. And we both know in tech and many small businesses. And we both know in tech and many small businesses. And we both know in tech and many small businesses.