How Silicon Valley Infiltrated the White House

Ed Elson is joined by Liz Hoffman, Semafor’s business and finance editor, to break down the New York Times investigation into David Sacks. Then Robert Sockin, Citi’s Global Economist, returns to the show to analyze Black Friday sales and what’s really behind the surge. Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Follow Scott on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Speaker 00

  Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them? That's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

• 0:09Speaker 01

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• 0:30Speaker 02

  Energía baja, falta de concentración, nebla mental. You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders han sido diseñados científicamente para ayudarte a mejorar el balance de hidratación en el cuerpo. Hechos con la mezcla número uno de electrolitos, sin colores ni sabores artificiales. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Signos de dehidratación leve y moderada. Consulta a tu médico si los síntomas persisten.

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• 1:29Ed Elson?

  Today's number, 3 million. That's how many dollars Mariah Carey makes every year from her hit single, All I Want for Christmas. Meanwhile, the rest of us pay a far greater price having to hear it.

• 1:45Speaker 07

  Money markets mad. If money is evil, then that building is hell.

• 1:55Ed Elson?

  Welcome to Roff G Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is December 2nd. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices all fell after five days of consecutive gains. It was a cautious start to the month with traders eyeing the Fed's decision next week. Meanwhile, yield on Treasury Treasuries rose and finally Bitcoin had its worst day since March, falling below $85,000. The decline also dragged down crypto exposed companies such as Coinbase and Robinhood and MicroStrategy.

• 2:26Ed Elson?

  Okay, what else is happening? The White House's AI czar David Sacks is under fire after a New York Times investigation accused him of cashing in on the job. The paper reported that Sacks has pushed policies that could benefit companies that he and his friends have backed. Sacks then blasted the Times on X, calling it a "hoax factory", and his supporters dismissed the story as a "nothing burger". Critics, however, view the story as more proof of grift in the White House. The debate raises a serious question, and that is, is David Sacks using his position in the White House to enrich himself? And beyond that, who actually is David Sacks? Who is this person who has been tasked with regulating the most important technology of our time?

• 3:11Ed Elson?

  Well, we are going to discuss this with Liz Hoffman, Semaphore's Business and Finance Editor. Liz, welcome back to Prof G Markets.

• 3:20Liz Hoffman?

  And?

• 3:21Ed Elson?

  So we want to get your reactions to this article. I think there's sort of a larger question here. Who actually is David Sacks? Some people may not actually know who he is. I mean, I can tell you that he is the AI and crypto czar for America right now. But this article came out, it's titled "Silicon Valley's Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends". It has been very controversial. Many people saying that it's kind of a hit piece, it's a smear on David Sacks. Others saying, no, it's accurate and fair. Who is David Sacks? And then let's just also get your reactions to this article and why it's important.

• 3:56Liz Hoffman?

  Yeah, David Sacks, as you said, you know, is the crypto czar of the White House. He's sort of the multi hyphenate of the Trump White House. He's an investor, he's a podcaster, as one is. He also has a really important job without technically being part of the administration. He is sort of one of these special government employees and has stayed longer than you might expect from what is sort of supposed to be a kind of a temporary way for the public sector to tap the expertise of private sector individuals. Look, I did not write the story, and a lot of the reporters who did, they're very good. I think that probably the chief complaint is perhaps with the headline, and reporters will be the first to tell you that we don't usually write our own headlines.

• 4:40Liz Hoffman?

  I think it's totally fair to look around the Trump White House and see a lot of grift and self-dealing. And I think that there's places where that's clearly true. It's not as obvious to me that that is what is going on here. And, you know, if you look around and say, would Donald Trump's children be in the position that they are financially? If they were not adjacent to the White House, I think the answer is almost certainly no. Would David Sacks be doing as well as he is if he were not adjacent to the White House? I think he is probably doing better. And I think that AI is one of those things, and depending on how you feel about it, you know, whether you're kind of a doomer or an absolutionist or kind of somewhere in between.

• 5:24Liz Hoffman?

  It's clearly here, it's clearly important geopolitically, economically for the US to get this right. And I guess I would say that that probably means bringing in people who really understand it and having them close to the seat of power and not kind of lobbing paper planes in trying to get their voices heard.

• 5:42Ed Elson?

  Yeah, this question of where the line is in terms of grift seems to be important. And that's kind of at the crux of this conversation. That's why it's probably important because, you know, on the one hand, he is an AI investor. He runs his VC firm, Craft Ventures. He's invested, as the report talks about, in almost 500 companies that will benefit from looser AI regulation as he is pursuing. That is sort of the doctrine of David Sacks right now is let's loosen up the regulation, let AI run its course. That's at least been sort of the stance from the administration. But at the same time, and his argument would be, this is okay.

• 6:23Ed Elson?

  Because as you say, he has this position, which is he is a, what is known as a special government employee, meaning he's sort of part-time at the White House and he's also part-time doing his normal private sector job, which is he's investing in companies. And according to the law, that is okay. So I look at those two things, I'm like, okay, all of those things are true. He's benefiting from AI and probably benefiting from the policies that he is enacting himself. That feels grifty, but at the same time, he's technically allowed to, right?

• 6:57Liz Hoffman?

  That's also just kind of like. Basic Republican governance? I mean, I think part of what's been slightly confusing with this administration is that it's sort of pulled in two different directions. You have this, you know, like base Republican DNA is to kind of have a light touch on regulation and, you know, tap a lot of CEOs for their advice and, and, you know, be, be pretty light touch on that. And like the Secretary of Energy is an energy CEO and like his entire industry will benefit from, uh, from deregulation. And that's also true of financial services. You know, the Treasury Secretary had a long career on Wall Street, like no one on Wall Street wants more regulation. Um, that is often kind of tempered this administration by more of a populist, like slightly, and

• 7:39Liz Hoffman?

  like pretty actually, um, clearly anti-business strain that at the moment is a little quieter. But I think it makes it like if this were happening in like the Mitt Romney White House, we'd all be like, yeah, it seems about right. You bring in private sector people who know what they're talking about and believe in it. And so you get policies that are more accelerationist. You know, the difference is that like AI might kill all of us. I don't really know. I, that's not my, my base point of view, but it is such a powerful technology that, um, that you do need to kind of think about who is regulating it. Um, but that said, there is also the strain in the AI community and, and look, I, I think you have to take what Elon Musk says on, on this with a grain of salt, but I actually

• 8:23Liz Hoffman?

  think there are things they care about more than money. I mean, they are real idea absolutionists. I mean, they believe so strongly in technology and like, yes, they've obviously made financial bets and they will be very rich when they all, when they all work. Um, but when you talk to these guys, like they really think it's crucial for the US to win the global AI race and that if China's not going to put handcuffs on its AI companies, we shouldn't be either. Um, and that's just like a broader political fight that we're going to, we're going to have and we are having, we're starting to have it. You're starting to see these kind of dueling AI donor communities, you know, roughly sorted along the lines of should this thing be more tightly regulated or should we let it, let it run or not?

• 9:02Ed Elson?

  Yes, it's becoming increasingly a political conversation. It's also becoming kind of just a dinner conversation. I certainly talked about AI a lot at Thanksgiving, which invariably means it's going to show up in in politics. You've written about this. There are these AI packs that are emerging. You you've talked about this leading the future pack, this Silicon Valley led $100 million AI pack. Tell us about that. What is happening with these with these AI packs and these donor communities?

• 9:31Liz Hoffman?

  Yeah, leading the future has raised tens of millions of dollars, more than $100 million from, among others, Andreessen Horowitz, big venture firm and AI investor, co-founder of a family office, the co-founder of OpenAI is in there too. And they basically say, look, like it is both a bad idea to try to control this technology, also just like probably ultimately a fool's errand and we need to win because if we don't, China will. And do you want a global AI, you know, tech stack that is built on on Chinese code? And plenty of people on both sides of, you know, the political aisle right now in the US would say no. And so that's that's one camp. And there is sort of comically this this local congressional race in Manhattan, where I am right now,

• 10:15Liz Hoffman?

  that is shaping up to be one of the most expensive congressional races in history because the candidate running in an Alex Boers, he has background in computer science and really thinks we need to regulate this stuff. And leading the future has identified him as as kind of enemy number one.

• 10:30Ed Elson?

  Wow.

• 10:30Liz Hoffman?

  We're talking about a New York Times story. The New York Times also had a story last week on on a slightly looser, but but sort of contrarian donor community, largely, it seems, pulling from the deep pockets of Anthropic employees, which is a is a rival to OpenAI. It was really founded on the idea that this is dangerous technology and we need to regulate it more carefully. The CEO of Anthropic has had some like really dire predictions about, you know, how many people will be put out of work by AI and how, you know, the the sort of slippery slope of of what it might do. And so these are going to be political fights. And, you know, it's interesting. Most conversations at Thanksgiving dinner are kind of downstream of politics. I think politics, for the moment, it's kind of downstream of this and catching up a bit.

• 11:13Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I mean, just in terms of purely political question, you spend a lot of time in DC, speaking with these people, speaking with the business leaders, speaking with political leaders. And there seems to be a rift right now, at least in the Republican base, on do we like Silicon Valley or not? And I mean, the perfect example of someone who definitely does not like Silicon Valley would be Steve Bannon, who's sort of leading this MAGA movement away from the technocrats, saying that these technocrats are forming an oligarchy, they're taking over the White House, people like David Sacks, people like Jensen Huang, all the people who are, you

• 11:54Ed Elson?

  know, showing up to these dinners with Trump and spending more and more time in the White House. Just how do you think this is all going to kind of politically shake out? And based on your time speaking with these people, I mean, who wins this political war? Will it be the guys in Silicon Valley? Will it be people like David Sacks? Or will it be people like Steve Bannon, who say that we need to say no to Silicon Valley?

• 12:20Liz Hoffman?

  I think David Sacks has proven to be a pretty sure and effective operator. And in fact, you know, the moment that this exact discussion, this tension you're talking about kind of spilled into the open was when Elon Musk kind of puffed his way out of the White House earlier this year. And the sense was that like, that that entire orbit would sort of lose Trump's ear. And in fact, you know, plenty of people were sort of had started a clock on David Sacks at that time. And yet, he's still there and actually appears to have been pretty effective. And again, you can, you can absolutely quibble with the sort of melding of personal, private financial status and government employees. But like, you know, ultimately, we seem to have like, the framework within the AI plan and like,

• 13:05Liz Hoffman?

  industrial policy is a real thing again. And I think that if you are looking for things to make you squeamish about personal enrichment in the Trump White House, and that doesn't exactly where I would land.

• 13:18Ed Elson?

  Just final question before you go here. We've identified David Sacks is sort of in charge of AI, he's the AI czar, the crypto czar, whatever that means. But he's got a big job because AI is sort of-

• 13:30Liz Hoffman?

  I mean, two very different things, right? Like, it'd be kind of hilarious to conflate those two. But-

• 13:36Ed Elson?

  He's the head of the buzzwords.

• 13:38Liz Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 13:41Ed Elson?

  Which begs the question, like, who is really in charge of AI policy in the White House right now? We know David Sacks has a role to play, but do we know who's really in charge here?

• 13:54Liz Hoffman?

  For the moment, the, you know, he's holding the keys. We'll see there is a slightly kind of inside baseball, but legislative fight that's shaping up to that the Trump administration wants a 10-year moratorium on the ability of individual states to sort of pass state-level AI regulation, kind of a federal preemption. It was in the one big beautiful bill over the summer. It got kind of kicked out at the last minute. I think it is back now in the defense authorization bill, which tends to be kind of a Christmas tree bill because it absolutely has to get passed. And so people throw a lot of things there. We'll see. But again, like, should we have 50 kinds of AI regulation or one? Or is it really a question between 50 or none? And there's not a great sense of whether

• 14:38Liz Hoffman?

  the White House feels that there should be any, any kind of guardrails on this. But again, it goes back to this other strain of MAGA that is actually, as you say, like, it's a little amorphous. And sometimes it's JD Vance, who kind of takes up the mantle of, you know, anti-big business and sort of anti-trust enthusiasm. Sometimes it's Steve Bannon. But it has a more populist feel to it. And the other thing is that, like, people don't love AI. It is starting to become a very local political issue. People see these faceless data centers going up, which will employ no people inside of them, like, doing weird things to the water table. And there's some conspiracy theory stuff around this. But it is not like a warm and fuzzy industry. And I think particularly as it becomes, you

• 15:23Liz Hoffman?

  know, you know, there's an impact to people's electricity bills and whatever it might be. I do think that there is a populist strain that Trump, who is like fairly plugged into those, he swims in those currents, is going to have to listen to and pay attention to.

• 15:36Ed Elson?

  Right. Okay. Liz Hoffman, Semaphore's Business and Finance Editor. Great chatting with you, Liz. Thank you.

• 15:43Liz Hoffman?

  Thanks. I'd any time.

• 15:45Ed Elson?

  After the break, White Black Friday hit a record this year. If you're enjoying the show, give Prof G Markets a follow.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 16:29Speaker 02

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• 17:32Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof you Markets. Black Friday crushed records this year with the best day for online sales ever. Online sales hit $12 billion, up 9% from last year. That is $12 million spent every minute. And Cyber Monday is on track to reach $14 billion in online sales this year, up 6% from last year. The Trump administration hailed these results as a win, claiming that, quote, "Incomes are way up under President Trump. Thus, people are spending more." But is that really what is going on? Well, we are speaking with Robert Sockin, global economist at Citi, to break this down. Robert, thanks for joining us.

• 18:12Speaker 10

  Thank you.

• 18:13Ed Elson?

  So we want to discuss this Black Friday. Online sales hit $12 billion, up 9%. Kind of a record year, at least for online sales. And the administration appears to be very happy about it. Your initial reactions?

• 18:30Speaker 10

  Yeah, and I think the first thing to note is when I look at all the data, which is not the official kind of read on the retail sales number yet, we'll get that from the government much later on. But the initial reports seem to be coming in better than I would have expected. And in particular, that online component that you mentioned has performed quite well. And I think there are structural reasons for that, that we've seen more and more sales drifting online over time. But there's also new technologies that are helping drive more of that business and maybe accelerate that move towards online shopping.

• 19:12Speaker 10

  So net, net, I would say this is shaping up to be a better holiday season than I would have expected, especially because I was looking for the consumer to pull back some, given the headwinds that we've seen this year.

• 19:25Ed Elson?

  We also saw buy now, pay later usage was up quite significantly, up 9%. Pretty much in line with the overall online sales growth. Any reactions to this trend of buy now, pay later, i.e. debt?

• 19:42Speaker 10

  Yeah, exactly. And this has been also a trend that we've seen growing over the last few years of these buy now, pay later schemes. It's an area that economists are struggling to get our hands around because we don't have great overall data on how pervasive and big this theme is throughout the economy. But to me, when I look at those types of numbers, it says that the consumer is still willing to spend in this environment. It's still willing to come out for the holiday season, but there are challenges and they're going to lean more on various types of debts, whether it be on credit cards or buy now, pay later schemes.

• 20:23Speaker 10

  So to me, there's a movement to that over time, but I think it's a, it highlights this in this environment, the consumer continues to face a lot of challenges. And that points to risks within the system, even if consumption holds up relatively well.

• 20:39Ed Elson?

  You mentioned that some of the tools that the consumers are using might have contributed to the growth in sales this Black Friday. I assume you're talking about AI tools. I know AI traffic has grown pretty significantly, at least this Black Friday. Is that, is that what you're referring to?

• 20:59Speaker 10

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what we've seen, and then, you know, again, a lot of the reporting on this has been quite positive, that these new AI tools coming out from major retailers that are improving the ability of consumers to search, match with products they're looking for, find discounts, that really grew significantly this season. Now, it's challenging to know what is the overall effect of that, because, you know, how much of these sales would have happened anyway without these tools? We have seen a structural move towards more and more online spending over time. And so it's hard to know the counterfactual of those tools weren't there. But all of the reports are really consistent with AI acting

• 21:43Speaker 10

  as an enhancing tool for the shopping experience. And it makes sense that, given how many options there are within the retail space, how challenging it can be to sift through a lot of these online retailers, that AI would really enhance that experience. So while it's hard to know the counterfactual, what it would be without those tools, I view it as a mechanism that is going to push more and more sales online over time. So really, an accelerant of that online trend.

• 22:13Ed Elson?

  Yes, it seems like the, the big drivers of that big number are we've got prices rising, we've got increased AI adoption, we've got perhaps some more debt that is being used to finance these purchases. But Kevin Hassett, the, the economic council director, he said that the reason this is happening is because incomes are, he said, quote, way up in America. Um, you know, this is a, obviously going to be a political

• 22:45Ed Elson?

  Conversation, but what do you make of that? Do you think that that's right? That that perhaps Black Friday sales are up because of incomes?

• 22:54Speaker 10

  I think that there are some things you can point to that have occurred this year that are supporting spending. For one, you know, we continue to see this sort of K shaped economy where the upper income consumers are performing quite well, are going out and spending. There's more strains at the lower income side. And one thing that's powered that upper income component has been, you know, equities overall this year are still up quite a fair amount under this administration. We can debate how much is attributable to the administration versus other factors. But that is certainly one thing that's supporting spending has been the equity performance.

• 23:34Speaker 10

  Now, when I look at the broader economy, areas like the labor market income, you know, you are still seeing a relatively okay labor market backdrop. The unemployment rate is still relatively low. Wages have moved sideways this year at levels that still point to fairly solid real income. So overall, it's still a decent labor market picture. But I would still describe it as an environment where the stresses on the consumer have grown this year. The labor market is in a more vulnerable place than it was a year ago. You've seen the unemployment rate rise, even though it's still relatively low levels. You've seen consumers' assessment of the labor market worsen.

• 24:17Speaker 10

  And you've seen the tariffs put upward pressure on goods prices as we discussed. So overall, there's some positives here that have helped support the consumer. But I still think that there have been a lot of headwinds this year as well.

• 24:29Ed Elson?

  All right. Robert Stocking, Global Economist at Citi. Robert, really appreciate your time. Thank you.

• 24:38Ed Elson?

  So Black Friday, the Super Bowl of the consumer economy was a success, not necessarily for in-store sales, but certainly for online sales, up nearly 10% year over year. And perhaps that says something positive about the consumer. That is certainly the position that was taken by the president. And as expected, he made this all about him. He said the Black Friday success is a result of the Trump bump, and he has generally positioned this as a win for the administration, which is maybe fair at face value, but also kind of ironic, because I don't think this is really the win that he thinks this is.

• 25:20Ed Elson?

  Because the reason that people spent a lot more this year, it isn't because they're buying more stuff. It's actually because prices have gone up. Inflation is up. In fact, Salesforce data has shown that while prices rose 7% this year on Black Friday items due to inflation and, yes, tariffs. Remember, these are highly tariff-sensitive items, things like electronics and appliances and furniture, et cetera. So while prices rose 7%, overall order volume, i.e. the amount of stuff that people actually bought, that number fell by about 1%. So, yes, America paid more, but also America bought less.

• 26:03Ed Elson?

  In dollar terms, it was a success, but if we were to measure the number of gifts under the tree this year, well, we'd learn it wasn't actually a success at all. It was actually a regression from last year. So that is the first point here. This, this isn't the win that the administration seems to think it is. The second point here is that the real winner of Black Friday wasn't the consumer, and it also wasn't Trump or the White House. The real winner of Black Friday this year was actually AI.

• 26:33Ed Elson?

  Which turned out to play a massive role in the shopping experience. And it also had a large part to play in why sales rose as much as they did. And here is the data that confirms this. This is according to Adobe Analytics, which found that AI-driven e-commerce traffic, so clicks to shopping sites that were routed via some AI tool like a ChatGPT or a Gemini, AI-driven traffic rose 800% this year. So it nine Xed. Meanwhile, if you went to a site because an AI tool sent you there, you are also 38% more likely to buy a product than if you hadn't used AI.

• 27:14Ed Elson?

  In other words, the conversion rate also skyrocketed because of AI. And so it appears that AI is actually finding its feet in the real world, in the real world of value. It appears that it has reached a critical mass. Over 60% of Americans are using AI multiple times a week, and it has reached a level of quality where lots of people want to use it to shop. And in fact, more than half of Americans are now using AI for this very reason. So if you were to build your AI bull case, if you were to construct an argument as to why we are not in a bubble, or at least as to why there is more to this AI thing than many people might suggest,

• 27:59Ed Elson?

  then this Black Friday would be your evidence. It wouldn't be the amount of money that startups are raising. It wouldn't be how many data centers Meta is building. Rather, it would have to be how much money consumers are spending because of AI. And this Black Friday, we saw it in what was one of the first real examples of how AI is actually changing the way we transact, and also how the value of AI is being captured in the real economy. Now, there are many more implications to this AI shopping trend that we will discuss at a later date. The obvious one being if Gemini is driving conversions up by 40%, well, then how will Gemini capture that value? How will the recommendation system

• 28:44Ed Elson?

  change? How will the advertising system be brokered by these chatbots? These are all open questions that AI has really yet to answer. However, the fact remains, AI played a huge part in this Black Friday, and it appears that it will continue to do so as the holiday season rolls on. And if AI is changing anything in the real economy, well, it would appear that it is changing the way we shop. And that is certainly a big deal.

• 29:17Ed Elson?

  Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Our research team is Dan Shalane, Isabella Kinsel, Chris Noddenhugh, and Mia Silverio. And our technical director is Drew Burrows. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.