All right. Well, congratulations, David, on the incredible speech that the president has given and we're so grateful that the US administration has come to Davos and with such a large presence and so grateful to you for being part of that. And this is your first World Economic Forum, is that right?
It is. Yes. Yeah. It's an honor to be here and thank you for thanks to the US delegation for including me, but thank you for being such a great host.
Well, we're thrilled to have you. And you know, I think that one of the reasons we wanted to have this session was first of all, a lot of folks haven't met you. They maybe they saw you on the All-In podcast or maybe they seen you in one of the speeches from the White House on AI or on cryptocurrencies, but I think they'd like to hear directly from you. Maybe you can kind of give us your vision of what the role is. You're the AI and crypto czar, right? But you also are the chairman of PCAST, the president's committee on science and technology, but you've really become one of the president's closest confidants in regards to the overall administration and technology policy. So, can you just give us your vision of what is the role that you're trying to accomplish and what the first year has been like?
Well, I'm really a policy adviser for innovation on two key issues, which are AI and crypto. And I have a special status with the government. It's called a special government employee where I can work half the year for the government and then the other half the year I get to kind of keep my old day job which is being a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and entrepreneur. And the way I see the role is being a bridge between these two worlds that we have this world in Silicon Valley of innovation and then we have the world of policymaking in Washington and I feel like I can make a contribution if I can sort of bring that Silicon Valley perspective to Washington.
Well, you've kind of mentioned before you kind of see a gap in consciousness sometimes between DC and Silicon Valley and it's more than just the tyranny of distance between the two coasts, but it's kind of the tyranny of a total misunderstanding of what's happening in the tech industry. How do you look at it today?
Well, there are two very different cultures. It's probably true that there's a cultural divide just between politics and business generally, but then I think it's turbocharged when you're talking about Silicon Valley, which is a culture of disruption. It's a culture of moving fast, innovating. It likes to find new disruptive things and it has a very open sort of mentality. Has a partnership mentality. People want to build new platforms and invite people onto those platforms. Sort of a critical ingredient of any big tech company that becomes successful, they always want to build an ecosystem around themselves. They want to have lots of participants. So, you know, they want to have the most apps in their app store. They want to have the most developers working on top of their API. So, it's a very open and sort of inclusive mindset. Now you get to Washington and it's and I think this isn't specific to Washington. It's more of a policymaking or more of a bureaucratic mindset where it's more about it's just a more naturally command and control. It's about a little bit more about process. It's more rigid and established. And so these two worlds can sort of collide. But I would say that the greatest asset and advocate that innovators have in Washington is President Trump because he really wants the United States to win. He wants it to be innovative and economically great and he understands the importance of entrepreneurs and innovators and so he's really been I think the greatest supporter of the technology industry in Washington. And it's not just the tech companies that already exist. It's the founders who just have an idea and are starting off and building something. Making sure that we create the space for that innovation, experimentation is very very important.
Well, you are working in a technology industry that is going incredibly fast, especially in AI and cryptocurrencies, but everything the committee on science and technology is looking at is immense. But you've been able to go remarkably fast. So what's been your secret? How is it that you've been able to go so fast on the first year?
I mean, honestly, as President Trump, he has a tremendous bias for action. I mean, I think you saw it during his speech. This is a tremendously consequential American president. He has a tremendous sense of agency. He wants to get things done. And you know, I've been in meetings in the Oval Office where you'll describe a problem to him. His first instinct is to pick up the phone. It's like get so and so on the phone and that could be a senator or it could be a business leader or you know it could be anybody and his first instinct is just get him on the phone. Let's work this out right now. You know any other president would not be like that. You know you might get a favorable audience and then the president would say well go see this staff person and then basically nothing would happen. This president wants to get things done as quickly as possible in that meeting even if he can and he works incredibly hard. I mean just constantly working and so when you compound that effect of just meeting after meeting day after day of that problem solving mindset and wanting to get things done it really adds up. And I think you can now see the results one year later you see the results in the American economy. It's really pretty incredible. If anyone had said that these would be our numbers after one year, I'm not sure anyone would have believed it. But you know in Q4 GDP growth rate 5.4% despite a government shutdown. That just you know that number just kind of blew everyone away. 2.6% core inflation again much lower than anybody thought. I think that beat the expectations by 40 basis points. Productivity gains were the highest in years. And then you know there's other gas prices coming down. unemployment at historic lows. So, the numbers have just been phenomenal and the administration, the president's been able to do this, I think, in a remarkably short amount of time and I think things are only going to get better this year as his full economic program goes into effect.
Can you take us into one of those meetings, something that was you're especially grateful for getting done and completed and how it got done?
Well, I mean one issue that I think is very important on AI is and I think one of the great threats to innovation in the United States right now is that we have 50 different states running in 50 different directions wanting to regulate AI themselves. We have 1,200 bills going through state legislatures right now. It's a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction I would say. Some of those regulations may be warranted but it's entirely too many. And the fact that you've got 50 different states means that you're going to create a patchwork of regulations. The big tech companies are going to figure out how to comply with that, but it's a tremendous burden for small tech, for startups, for entrepreneurs. One of the great advantages that the United States has had is this huge seamless national market. Historically, you've only really had to in most industries certainly in the internet business, you only had to worry about complying with a single rulebook. Now we're in danger of having 50. And I think the president has been very clear that he would like to see us have a single federal framework for AI regulation. And he's really pushed for this. He spoke to it in his speech on AI in July of last year. And you know in my last two meetings with him, he's really made this an issue. And some of those meetings are ones where he'll say get, you know, so and so a senator on the phone and, you know, we'll work out their issues right then and there. And so, you know, just that's just one example. But he really is the difference maker there.
When you think about regulation, you're here, you're in Europe. We're right now we're in Switzerland. Well, we've seen a lot of tech regulation in Europe. Some of it has been good, some of it has been not so good, but we haven't seen really this kind of acceleration of a tech economy in Europe. Do you think it's because of the regulatory environment?
I think that's a big part of it. I mean the US has other advantages as well. We have this history I think culturally of accepting failure and risk-taking and it's you know if someone fails it's okay. You just dust yourself off and then in fact investors will back you again. There's this tremendous culture of risk-taking and there's a huge venture capital ecosystem to support that. So I think that's very important. But in addition to that, I do think the regulatory environment makes a big difference. And you know, you look at something like AI. We're just starting to regulate this. Now, as I understand it, the European AI act was actually passed before the launch of ChatGPT. So that was in anticipation of something that hadn't happened yet. Well, if the thing hasn't happened yet, you're really regulating based on hypotheticals and fears. And I think a better approach would be to study the issue, see how it's actually being used, see what risks or dangers actually materialize, and then respond to those things. So I do think that our lighter touch is important. And I think the way and I think there's a difference a little bit in mentality. I don't want to be too much up on our European host because I am very grateful to be here. But you know in his AI policy speech last July, the president said that you know we had to win the AI race that we're in a race. It's a globally competitive race. The US has to win it just like we declared that just like John F. Kennedy declared that we were in a space race and we had to win that. President Trump declared we had to win the AI race. And he then defined several pillars of our strategy. The first one was being pro innovation. And what he said though is that it's not up to the government to do the innovation. It's up to great entrepreneurs. It's our innovators, companies. And you're one of our great entrepreneurs, Mark.
