David Sacks is made out to be the king of AI — here’s what he does instead

David Sacks spent his days as Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar.

Speaking to Bloomberg on Thursday, the longtime businessman, investor and podcaster confirmed that his 130-day non-consecutive stint as a special civil servant has ended and that he is moving on to chair the President’s Council on Science and Technology (PCAST) and White House chief technology adviser Michael Kratsios.

“I think that moving forward as PCAST ​​chairman, I can now make recommendations not just on AI but on many technical topics,” he told Bloomberg via video interview. “So, this is how I will be involved going forward.”

What that means is that Sacks will be further away from the center of power in Washington than at the beginning of this second Trump administration. As the chief of AI, Sacks had a direct line to Trump and a hand in shaping policy. PCAST ​​is a federal advisory body, so while it researches issues, produces reports, and sends recommendations through the series, it does not make policy.

The council has existed in one form or another since FDR, though Sacks made a point in Bloomberg noting that this particular iteration is “more powerful than any group like this” ever put together, and it’s hard to argue that he’s wrong. The original 15 members include Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Google founder Sergey Brin, Marc Andreessen, AMD’s Lisa Su, and Michael Dell, among others.

A bunch of billions.

Sacks told Bloomberg that the council will take on AI, advanced semiconductors, quantum computing, and nuclear power, and that close attention will be focused on pushing Trump’s national AI framework, released last week. The draft is intended to replace what Sacks described to Bloomberg as a mess of conflicting state-level regulations. “You have 50 different states regulating this in 50 different ways,” he said, “and it’s creating a regulatory framework that’s difficult for our founders to comply with.”

What Sacks didn’t address specifically is why the change is happening now and whether his recent comments were the cause. Earlier this month, on the popular “All In” podcast he co-hosted, Sacks urged the administration to find an exit from the US-sponsored war with Iran, citing a series of worsening scenarios — attacks on oil infrastructure in neighboring countries, destruction of desalination plants, possible nuclear use by Israel — and asking for a dignified way out. Trump responded by telling reporters that Sacks had not spoken to him about the war.

Asked about it Thursday by Bloomberg, Sacks threw his hands in the air: “I’m not on the foreign policy team or the national security team,” adding that his podcast comments represented his opinion, not an official one.

For all the tentacles that Amasaka brings to PCAST, it’s worth thinking about what the council has historically been, an advisory body that has real influence in some jurisdictions and almost none in others.

President Obama’s version proved to be the most productive in history, issuing 36 reports over eight years — two of which led to substantive policy changes, including FDA legislation that opened up the market for over-the-counter hearing aids.

The council of the first term of President Trump, in contrast, took almost three years to name its first members, produced few reports, and did not make a particular mark, while the council of President Biden rowed more in academics – Nobel laureates, fellows of MacArthur, members of the National Academy – and issued a limited number of reports before the end of the administration.

The current PCAST ​​is a completely different animal, formed almost entirely from the top rooms of the companies that build the technology it advises on.

Now, Sacks is one of them again and may be free to continue his life as an investor and entrepreneur. A spokesperson for Craft Ventures, the company Sacks founded and where a partner lives, has not yet responded to related questions, but TechCrunch reported last year about the ethics waiver Sacks acquired to protect AI funds and crypto companies while shaping federal policy in both areas — an arrangement that drew sharp criticism from ethics experts and lawmakers.