Pod Insights Big Technology Podcast The Taiwan Semiconductor Dilemma — With Congressman Ro Khanna About this episode Congressman Ro Khanna represents California's 17th congressional district. He joins Big Technology Podcast fresh off a visit to Taiwan, where he visited with Taiwan Semiconductor leadership and Taiwan government officials. In this episode, we discuss TSMC's strategic importance to the global economy, the prospect of conflict in Taiwan, and the U. S. effort to build manufacturing capacity at home. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss why Big Tech regulation has stalled, the latest on TikTok, SVB, and plenty more.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Alex Kantrowitz? LinkedIn Presents.
0:14 Alex Kantrowitz? Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond.
0:21 Speaker 01 Welcome back. China has declared its military ready to fight after completing three days of exercises around Taiwan after the Taiwanese president's meeting with Speaker McCarthy here in the US.
0:31 Alex Kantrowitz? China may not be ready to invade Taiwan, but it's certainly making no secret of its ability and perhaps its desire to do so. The country is fresh off a days-long exercise to practice blockading Taiwan. It's declared itself ready to fight, and it's even released animations of what hitting targets inside Taiwan would look like. Now, Taiwan is a nation of 23 million people, including many descendants of China's nationalist movement who left the mainland as the communists took over. And it's also home to one of the most important companies in the world, Taiwan Semiconductor. The chips that Taiwan Semiconductor produces are differentiated and ubiquitous. They're found literally everywhere, and many are so technically sophisticated that no one else can produce them.
1:15 Alex Kantrowitz? Taiwan Semiconductor's chips are in iPhones and refrigerators, they're in watches and tea kettles, and should US companies, for instance, lose access to Taiwan's chips, the country's GDP could take an instant hit, perhaps, into the double-digit percentage range. It would be a disaster, which is why everyone is watching this so closely. Congressman Ro Khanna is our guest today. He is fresh off a trip to Taiwan and is here to share his perspective on the state of the region, the importance of TSMC, as it's called, and the likeliness of a conflict. Congressman Khanna has been involved in legislation. He's met with leaders in the Taiwanese government and Taiwan Semiconductor, and he represents Silicon Valley, so he's keenly aware of the challenges and the opportunities here, and I think you're going to love hearing from him.
1:57 Alex Kantrowitz? My conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna, coming up, right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put Agentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, head of enterprise business solutions at Voya Financial to go inside a large scale Agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute.
2:41 Alex Kantrowitz? How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay? Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for free consultation. Congressman Ro Khanna, welcome to the show.
3:08 Speaker 02 Thank you. Thank you, Alex, for having me.
3:09 Alex Kantrowitz? Great to see you again. We've spent time hanging out in San Francisco in the past, and it's awesome to have you on the show. You're recently back from a trip to Taiwan, and I definitely wanted to speak with you about that. Obviously, this is going to be the core of one of the key messages that you have right now about America becoming more independent from manufacturing standpoint. But I'd like to just really set the stage. So can you describe where Taiwan looks like geographically compared to China? And where it sits strategically in terms of the importance of the manufacturing there to the United States economy?
3:45 Speaker 02 Well, Taiwan is very close to the coast of China. In fact, one of Taiwan's islands is a few hundred yards from China. And
3:59 Speaker 02 Taiwan has huge semiconductor manufacturing. The reality is that Morris Chang, who I met when I was in Taiwan, set up the entire semiconductor industry. He's an American expat. He was at Texas Instruments for 25 years, the number two person there. He was educated at MIT and Stanford. And he was passed over for CEO because of his Asian heritage and because he wanted to manufacture here. And Texas Instruments said, no, we don't want to manufacture. So he goes to Taiwan and sets up TSMC, the whole semiconductor industry. That was a big strategic mistake of ours. And now we're way too dependent on Taiwan in terms of chip manufacturing.
4:39 Alex Kantrowitz? And so something like what's, I think 75% of US chips that we use come from East Asia. And I mean, a large chunk of those come from Taiwan. Is that sort of, we think about the scope of this, is that the right way to think about it?
4:52 Speaker 02 That is, and there are two challenges. One, TSMC in Taiwan is challenging us with the most advanced chips because when you're manufacturing so much, you're also learn to innovate. So they actually now are neck and neck with Intel. But the other thing to think about is that for most of our chips in cars, in refrigerators, they don't require the 5 nanometer or the most advanced chips. They actually require chips that are 50, 60, 70 nanometers. And a lot of that production actually will be done in China. And so we have a double challenge. One is to maintain the lead in advanced manufacturing. The other is to make sure we don't just give the entire market for the non-advanced chips to China.
5:34 Alex Kantrowitz? Right. And I've heard that something like 5 to 10% of our GDP could go away overnight effectively if we lost access to the chips that come out of Taiwan Semiconductor. Now, when you think about it in Congress, is that the type of number that you're thinking about?
5:51 Speaker 02 Yes, I mean, it would be devastating to the economy if we lost that chip. TSMC makes so many of the chips for so many of our advanced companies. And that's why we want to have diversification. We've had TSMC come to Arizona to build facilities. We're helping Intel build facilities. And this is my Chips and Science Act that I helped draft initially as the Endless Frontiers, co-authored it then with Schumer. It passed, and that provides 52 billion to build, bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S.
6:27 Alex Kantrowitz? Right, so I think we should talk quickly about the Chips and Science Act. In particular, there are big subsidies for chipmakers. We have TSMC setting up its own plant in Arizona, but we're still very far behind. I mean, what's your most realistic, even if like everything goes according to plan, what's your most realistic prediction for how long it will take the U.S. to get on par with Taiwan in terms of the ability to make chips?
6:51 Speaker 02 It's going to take a decade, and we need to do more. This is just, chips is just the start. We particularly need to focus on legacy industry chips, which is a lot of the chips that are going to power consumer goods. And we need to continue to focus on the supply of the most advanced chips and help more chip companies emerge that are doing the manufacturing like TSMC. So it's a good start. It's a down payment, but it's not the panacea.
7:23 Alex Kantrowitz? Yeah, it's incredible to hear the timelines on this. Like, we think that, okay, we're going to put tens of billions of dollars. We should, in a couple of years, be up, you know, basically independent in terms of our ability to make chips. But a decade is a long time. So I have a couple of questions about that timeframe. First, what happens afterwards? Then we can look at it if something happens beforehand. But... There have been some people who say, okay, like, is the fact that we're going to have this capability going to then weaken Taiwan from a strategic defense standpoint? Because part of the reason why Taiwan is in, you know, might feel secure is because it has the US support, knowing that that, you know, that 10, that 5 to 10% of our GDP is dependent on that, on that company being safe in Taiwan for the next 10 years.
8:08 Alex Kantrowitz? But when we start to build that, you know, that capability in the US, do we then risk, you know, not having people in the US, for instance, not wanting to stand by Taiwan in the same way? And potentially opening up the door for China to come in and try to take it over?
8:25 Speaker 02 No, because our commitment to Taiwan is one based on their freedom, their sense of the rule of law. It was made in 1979, the Taiwan Relations Act, along before they had any semiconductor industry. And it simply is not in the United States' interest for China to become a hegemon in Asia. So we're always going to push back there. Second, TSMC isn't going anywhere. I mean, there's a whole world that's going to need production of chips. They're, they're going to always be important for the US market. But even if they're not central to the US market, there's the European market, there's Chinese market, Indian market. And so I think TSMC is always going to have a significant role.
9:08 Alex Kantrowitz? Okay, but don't you think, so one of the worries is that the world is sort of dividing, right? That we're having these two spheres of influence, US and then China, Russia. So, you know, I mean, we never thought we could see a world where we're completely disentangled from Russia economically, but here we are. And, you know, if China invades Taiwan, for instance, then potentially that could happen also. I don't want that to happen, but I'm trying to think through the scenarios.
9:32 Speaker 02 I think it's a... Won't happen if we have the right policy and the right policy is helping Taiwan have its own defense, making sure we are strong in the Indo-Pacific and have our submarines, have our bases, making sure that we're continuing to affirm the One China policy, which is the affirmation of the status quo while recognizing that they have to have deterrence against China's ambitions. And that's what I learned when I was in Taiwan. And that's what all the parties there want, DPP, KMT, and the TPP, they all are for stronger
10:13 Speaker 02 defense, but they all want to engage China because 40% of their exports go to China. And so I believe it's possible to avoid conflict with the right policies and strength.
10:23 Alex Kantrowitz? It always kind of struck me as strange that we have this like One China policy that views Taiwan as part of China, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but then we're also, on the other hand, worried that there's a chance that China might want to take Taiwan over. How do you view the contradiction in that policy and the reality?
10:39 Speaker 02 Well, the One China policy simply states that we acknowledge the status quo that while we can have relationships with Taiwan and we can have economic relationships, that ultimately Taiwan and China need to work out their future through peaceful means. Now, in Taiwan, some of the people who want the One China policy want it under Taiwanese terms for freedom and democracy for everyone. They think Taiwan is the true China. And I guess the point is that even under the One China policy, what is not permitted is a military invasion or military force to change the status quo. And that is where you have China ratcheting up its rhetoric now, saying not just that they want to persuade
11:24 Speaker 02 Taiwan to unify with China, but that they want to use military force. And part of the reason they are no longer thinking of persuading is because of Hong Kong. It's made Taiwanese much more skeptical of any kind of unification. That said, the KMT candidate right now is leading in the polls for 2024. KMT has been much more sympathetic to reunification of or some kind of relationship with China than the DPP. So a lot also depends on the presidential election in Taiwan.
11:53 Alex Kantrowitz? Right. And we certainly saw this in the TikTok hearing, and we're starting to see it now. What do you think is behind this fraying of? Of the relationship between the US and China. It seems like things are getting worse and worse, but I'm also like looking for a catalyst. And I wonder what it is. What's your, you're sitting there as a lawmaker. You know, what do you think is behind this distancing?
12:14 Speaker 02 Well, one, I think Xi Jinping has consolidated a lot of power and that is a material difference. I mean, he has moved away from any efforts at liberalization, privatization and consolidated power. He's exerted much more China's nationalistic ambitions. And there is a growing sense in China that they want to be the hegemon in Asia, if not more dominant in the world. And I think that has led to, to conflict.
12:47 Alex Kantrowitz? Right. And so where's, I mean, I guess the US is, is, it seems obvious the US is not interested in seeing that future play out. Then again, I think about what's going to happen with Taiwan and like, if you have, if you think about the China that you just described, right? And you think about an independent Taiwan, which is this linchpin to the global economy. It almost feels like even before that 10 years where the US has Taiwan Semiconductor producing chips on par in the US, if everything goes according to plan, there's a good chance of, of, you know, potential Chinese aggression towards Taiwan. So I'm curious how, I mean, obviously you said like, okay, if we have the right policy, it shouldn't happen. How concerned are you about the possibility that, that that will happen?
13:31 Alex Kantrowitz? Cause a lot of people weren't concerned about the fact that Russia was going to invade Ukraine and then it did. So is, can we see a similar thing here?
13:38 Speaker 02 Again, I think if we talk to people in Taiwan, they will tell you that if they have the right defense, if they have the right defense capability, that they can deter it. I mean, they've deterred it for, for decades, not to say that it's a, it's not something we should be prepared for, but. China has a lot to lose. I mean, China's economy and technology is dependent on the Taiwanese exports and things like Foxconn and other Taiwanese companies and TSMC supplying semiconductors. Taiwan is very dependent on the United States for two reasons. One, they're dependent on us to protect in the straight of Hormuz to allow them passage to the Middle East to get their
14:22 Speaker 02 own energy and oil. I mean, if we were to cut off that passage, it would be devastating for the Chinese economy. And they're dependent on us in a more mundane sense as were their buyers. I mean, they unfortunately have a huge trade deficit. So China has a lot, lot more to lose than Putin never had to lose. Putin, Russia was a has been power, it didn't have much economic connection, there wasn't much to lose. China is literally a peer competitor that would be devastated economically by taking that step. Not to say they couldn't be irrational, they could, but I don't think it's in their strategic self-interest.
15:01 Alex Kantrowitz? So then talk a little bit about your visit there, right? What was, I mean, when you, when you're going to meet with someone like Morris Chang, who's the, who runs Taiwan Semiconductor, you're going to have these conversations like, okay, are we safe or we not? So what was the mood there? And what were these conversations like when you were out there?
15:17 Speaker 02 Well, Morris Chang was talking about how America really made a mistake for 40 years, the over-financialization of the economy, the non-recognition of the importance of manufacturing. He was skeptical that we could now do it. He thought that the moment had passed that Taiwan really had built the manufacturing culture. But, but what we, what I took away from it is two things. One, a mistake to have an anti-immigrant sentiment. I mean, I wish Morris Chang became American, it stayed American and invested here instead of in Taiwan. And secondly, the importance of manufacturing and building a manufacturing culture with government financing, which we're doing with the Chips and Science Act, but we also need to do with the legacy chip industry, with steel, with aluminum, with paper, with textiles,
16:01 Speaker 02 with drug manufacturing. There needs to be a massive effort to make America manufacturing superpower again. And Chang was a reminder of what we lost in America.
16:11 Alex Kantrowitz? When you met with leaders in the Taiwanese government, were there questions of asking for defense assurances?
16:18 Speaker 02 There was in terms of getting the defense supplies that we have authorized in Congress. Unfortunately, because of our commitments to Ukraine, which I support, the production has been backlogged and we haven't been able to produce all of the defense weapons that the Taiwanese want. And one of the bipartisan commitments in Congress should be to get those defense weapons to Taiwan to increase our manufacturing output for those weapons and also to make sure that the United States is actively involved in training Taiwan, which are all legal under the Taiwan Relations Act that we passed in 1979.
16:54 Alex Kantrowitz? Yeah. And now, when I think about the fact that we're even in this situation, and you've brought it up so far, right? It does seem like a failure in some ways of US policy to allow such a critical part of our infrastructure to be produced offshore. Who bears responsibility for that? And, you know, what lessons are there to learn on this front?
17:12 Speaker 02 Well, I think both parties bear responsibility. There was a sense that manufacturing did matter, that we will be able to just invent our way and have Nobel laureates and manufacturing is kind of the low skilled work. And it turned out to be a terrible theory. Not only was it false that manufacturing leads to innovation, it also hollowed out our working in middle class. It created polarization in this country. And now that we've woken up to say, well, maybe we shouldn't have let all the production go to Asia and we're bringing our production back. But it's like turning the Titanic and it's a challenge.
17:53 Alex Kantrowitz? I mean, it's pretty short sighted. You know, I guess on behalf of any policymaker who thought that manufacturing going elsewhere would, especially if like key technology. I mean, obviously you couldn't see where semiconductors were going, but where key technology was going to be to push that offshore or allow that offshore is just, I mean, everything's easier in hindsight, but my God, I mean, that's, that's pretty bad.
18:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, and it was corporate greed to some extent. I mean, look, you had cheaper wage labor, you had deregulation there, less environmental labor standards. People said, well, we could just do the quote unquote higher end work here. We can make the manufacturing cheaper. That's going to make profits higher. It's going to make consumer goods cheaper. And we worshiped at the altar of high stock prices and low consumer goods and lost the balance in a productive economy that is necessary both for innovation, for economic growth, and to sustain a working and middle class, and I would argue for national security when it comes to something like semiconductors.
18:59 Alex Kantrowitz? Congressman Ro Khanna is here with us on Big Technology Podcast. We're talking about Taiwan Semiconductor. After the break, we're going to talk a little bit more about our geopolitical strategy in terms of where our economy lies, where manufacturing might figure into that, and then we'll cover some of the more of the fun stuff, looking at Tik Tok and Silicon Valley Bank. All right, back right after this. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Copilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data, and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what App Point does. For 25 years, they've
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21:24 Alex Kantrowitz? And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Congressman Ro Khanna. Congressman, thanks again for being here.
21:29 Speaker 02 Thank you.
21:29 Alex Kantrowitz? You're talking a lot about how we need to bring our manufacturing back to the US, talking about how this is going to be a national economic and security advantage. What do you make of the fact that our education system seems will also have to change, right? Why, there's a quote in the Wall Street Journal recently talking about how like companies, if they need someone to drive a truck for $90,000, they can't find them. But if they need an MBA, they'll be able to hire them for $60,000 without a problem. Right? So do we have to now change the way we think about work and education in this country if we're going to also try to bring some of the manufacturing back as well?
22:06 Speaker 02 What we need to do, have a better sense of the skilled trades and the certificates for the 60% of people who don't go to college. And one of the reasons that that was devalued, that we stopped teaching shop in high school, that we stopped career technical education, was the sense that those jobs were going offshore. So if you were a parent, if you were a community leader, you would be hesitant to have your kids go into that, that work because you're reading all these headlines of how manufacturing is going offshore and all these headlines saying you have to go to college. That was a mistake. We need to be focused on making sure we have enough electricians and plumbers and folks to do all of the certificate skilled work that's going to be necessary to build the new factories.
22:51 Speaker 02 That doesn't mean we don't need MBAs or PhDs or college graduates. I mean, college graduation unemployment was about 5% even in the recession and the pandemic. So we don't have to be anti-intellectual or anti-college education to also be for developing the skilled trades workforce.
23:10 Alex Kantrowitz? Definitely. Okay, so I'm just going to wrap up our discussion about Taiwan and manufacturing in the US. You're actually the most optimistic person I've ever spoken with on this issue in terms of Taiwan's ability to maintain its relative independence. Does that, I'm kind of curious what your reaction is to that. Like, is it surprising to hear? Because so many people that I've spoken with seem to believe that a conflict is inevitable.
23:34 Speaker 02 I would just ask, are they talking to people in Taiwan?
23:36 Alex Kantrowitz? Definitely.
23:37 Speaker 02 I mean, my, my view is that the people who know most are the Taiwanese leaders.
23:42 Alex Kantrowitz? Right.
23:42 Speaker 02 And, and they, when you talk to the Taiwanese president, who by the way is more of a hawk on China, President Thay, I'll be seeing her later this week. She will say, look, we've led, we've lived with the Communist Party through ups and downs for 40 years, and we know how to tackle this. And now, I think it's important to be alert and it's important to be prudent and to make sure that Taiwan has what it needs to have defense. But to say that there's going to be inevitable war is a failure of imagination and statesmanship. I mean, why, why then be in politics? Why be a state, why be a leader if you're just going to think that there's a default to that?
24:24 Speaker 02 Fortunately, ChatGPT doesn't control foreign policy. I mean, we would have.
24:29 Alex Kantrowitz? That is not the people I've been speaking with, just letting you know.
24:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:33 Alex Kantrowitz? Yeah, okay. That, that is interesting. Well, I hope you're right.
24:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, I mean, look, I mean, obviously, there's no guarantee, but I think it can be avoided. I think if you have an alliance with India, Japan, Australia, that may think it's to push back on China's aspiration to become a hegemon in Asia. And I think they're getting that message.
24:54 Alex Kantrowitz? Yep. Okay, let's run through a couple of big tech topics before we have to go. First, you brought up ChatGPT. What do you make of this wave of AI? And like Congress's job is to regulate technology and regulate business, among other things that you guys do. Can you, can you, let's say we get to a place where AI is as smart or as intelligent as a person, like, what do you do then?
25:19 Speaker 02 Well, ChatGPT has a long way to go. The few prompts I've put in, I don't think it does. And so far, I haven't seen anything that even make it up to like Cliff Notes level of analysis. I had asked a question about Thoreau and Gandhi and how Thoreau was influenced by the Gita that influenced Gandhi. And out came ChatGPT saying Thoreau read the Gita, Gandhi read the Gita, they both believed in civil disobedience. So it's a, something that finds the patterns of language, but it still doesn't, in my view, have the depth of analysis for people to actually know the, the topic. That said, it poses risks, and that is that if you can have patterns detected with some error,
26:01 Speaker 02 and you could do that at large scale, and you could do that quickly, it leads to the possibility of massive disinformation spewing in a society. I mean, for example, Google search or Yahoo search, you have a, a link, a source everywhere. Now, let's say you go to ChatGPT, you don't have a source, you come up with some, some explanation. And if there's falsity there, that's a problem. And then it could lead to decision making that could have wrong consequences or harmful consequences. So we need regulation on safety and quality and human judgment, and that's something Congress needs to do.
26:37 Alex Kantrowitz? Yeah, I think you should try the Bing Chat or the ChatGPT with the upgraded GPT four. And that will, it'll be more impressive than the whatever you've played with. Because once these things connect to the internet, they become much smarter and it's kind of wild to watch them go.
26:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, although the model itself is it's taking all of the language on the internet and finding patterns and trying to, to, to analyze that. But that is different than. David Thoreau, sitting there, reading the Gita and thinking, well, what does this mean for human freedom and happiness and our duty? And if it were that, you know, the thinking happens not in the aggregation of patterns, but in figuring out what it means for drawing conclusions. And Chomsky has a great op ed, actually, in the New York Times, talking about the different modes of thinking. And this is an important one, but just one of them.
27:34 Alex Kantrowitz? Yes, okay. Well, I think, we'll see how this technology develops, but I think the conversation might change in a few years or even a year.
27:43 Speaker 02 Certainly possible.
27:44 Alex Kantrowitz? In the meantime, you and I first met talking about the regulation of big tech. Nothing's happened. Why?
27:52 Speaker 02 It's shameful. I mean, we need to be regulating and we haven't passed a privacy bill. The part that is most frustrating is we haven't been able to protect minors. I mean, you have one third of teenage girls in this country contemplating suicide, according to the New York Times. And we know social media is a cause, not the cause, a cause. And we can't regulate a standard that social media should take into account the well being and mental health of minors. I mean, they have that in Europe. That's something that should pass. We should allow people to have control over their own data. It's caught up in partisan politics. The Democrats are saying we want the floor to be California
28:33 Speaker 02 standard. Republicans are saying we want a national standard that isn't necessarily everything in California. I just say, let's get something. Let's start.
28:44 Alex Kantrowitz? Right. So it's dysfunction in Congress that's holding it.
28:46 Speaker 02 It is. Yeah. I mean, I think that's fair.
28:49 Alex Kantrowitz? When I think then about like, what might happen with TikTok? I mean, even though there's so much support to either restrain it, ban it, force a sale, that's why when people ask me what's going to happen, I'm like, I don't know. Can you, this Congress can't do anything when it comes to tech. So is there any reason to expect a different outcome with TikTok?
29:10 Speaker 02 Well, the TikTok, the president has the authority to force a sale and we need to make that clearer and the president just needs to force a sale for a very simple reason. We wouldn't let a Chinese CCP company control ABC News. We wouldn't let them control a radio station. Why are we letting them control one of the biggest platform broadcasters to the American people? And the president and the Commerce Department has the ability to force the sale. Congress can just make that clearer.
29:40 Alex Kantrowitz? And do you, I mean, do you think he's going to do it as he reached out to you for advice on this?
29:45 Speaker 02 The president? No, the president has not reached out for, nor, nor does he need to. He has the authority and, and if, if the White House needs more clear authority, they should come to Congress with that request.
29:57 Alex Kantrowitz? Right.
29:58 Speaker 02 With narrowly drafted legislation.
29:59 Alex Kantrowitz? And so what's the, what is the prevailing mood among lawmakers in Washington about whether this might actually happen? Is there most, are most people leaning yes or no, or are they just caught up on other things?
30:11 Speaker 02 I think most people want the sale.
30:13 Alex Kantrowitz? Okay.
30:14 Speaker 02 There are some people who are understandably concerned with overbroad protective provisions in legislation. They want to make sure commerce doesn't have the ability to monitor internet traffic. But what my view is the easiest way to go after this is just to say that TikTok is a foreign-owned company by our adversary, the Communist Party, and they should not be allowed to operate.
30:40 Alex Kantrowitz? Right.
30:41 Speaker 02 And that doesn't mean that the Department of Commerce needs to monitor internet traffic to enforce that.
30:44 Alex Kantrowitz? So the argument against this from ByteDense has been 60% of ByteDense is owned by shareholders, 20% by employees, 20% by the founders. Forcing a sale is not that easy. What's the response to that?
30:58 Speaker 02 Well, the United States government can force the sale. I mean, we can make it clear to them that they need to sell or they can't operate in the United States. I mean, the, the reality is that China doesn't allow Twitter, Facebook, any of our companies to operate and, you know, we can take consequences against the executives if they don't sell.
31:21 Alex Kantrowitz? Okay, let me ask you two more questions before we have to go. First is about Elon Musk's Twitter. You famously appeared in the Twitter files being like, hey, maybe we should slow down a little bit on some of the content removal. How do you view Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter? And, you know, independent of that, what do you do? Do you think the Twitter files are good? I mean, it does seem like they're putting like the algorithm online. Like, there's some good transparency that's happening, even if it's, you know, motivated to serve an agenda. What's your overall perspective on that company?
31:53 Speaker 02 I'm all for getting everything out transparent. There's some ideas I agree with with Musk in eliminating bots. I think bots are a huge problem. Making sure that we can get transparency, though it has to be transparency across the board, non ideological. The only place I would say is, and I've said this directly to Elon, is you don't want to be the person calling the bulls and strikes. You don't want to be the umpire, you know, calling the automatic strike because the clock runs out. You want to have an independent board do that. Who wants to be facing Congress saying you made the wrong call? It seems that and Musk is doing SpaceX. He's go find how we get to Mars. Like, really, you want to be involved in this sort of stuff?
32:38 Alex Kantrowitz? But isn't that what he spent the 44 billion on? Was to be able to be the person that's the ump?
32:44 Speaker 02 I don't think so. I think he wanted to just maybe open up the platform because he thought that the platform wasn't being transparent enough, but he could have other people do that. I'd rather Elon Musk try to figure out how to do electric vehicles and how to do Starlink and how to do SpaceX. And he's genuinely, I mean, what everyone thinks of his politics, he's genuinely one of the most innovative people of our time.
33:06 Alex Kantrowitz? And No doubt about that.
33:08 Speaker 02 And that's, that's what I hope he will focus on.
33:10 Alex Kantrowitz? So now that the Twitter files are out, the algorithm is, you know, on GitHub, is it time for him to just say, mission accomplished and move on?
33:19 Speaker 02 He's the, he, he, he makes that call. But what I would give him advice if I, is I do what Bezos did with the Washington Post, create a wall of separation, create an independent editorial board and, and don't be in the day to day decision making of who gets a blue mark and who doesn't. And whether Ro Khanna's tweet was factual or should be having a flag. I mean, it just seems beneath his time.
33:44 Alex Kantrowitz? Well, if he does that, then I will give him credit for a truly altruistic purchase of Twitter, but I don't think he'll ever do that. Okay, last one for you. Silicon Valley Bank, you were involved in the rescue there. Do you think we've averted a crisis with the other regionals? Because it seemed like, okay, we had made it past the potential worst of the matter. And then there's still turbulence when it comes to the regional banks. So how does it look from where you're sitting?
34:11 Speaker 02 First, I'm proud of the role I played. I went on to the nation and basically contradicted Sack to Yellen because she was not willing to get to all depositors need to have their money protected by Sunday night. And she was saying, well, maybe, maybe not. And I'm proud of the fact that the depositors were protected because otherwise we'd have had a run on the regional banks and we would have had four banks in America. JP Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or Citi. And we also would have heard a lot of the tech startups and climate tech and biotech and AI in so many fields. So I think now the administration did the right thing. They took the action before the Asian markets opened. But we still need to provide reassurance.
34:54 Speaker 02 And I'm working with a Republican senator on a legislation that says if you're in an account over 250,000, you have to pay mandatory insurance. You can't be an uninsured driver. We have about 10 trillion in this country that's insured, 8 trillion that's uninsured. We've got to have some mandatory insurance fee for that. And that would stabilize the regional banking system.
35:14 Alex Kantrowitz? But I didn't, I guess I'm reading between the lines here and asking, you know, whether we're out of the woods now. It seems like you don't believe we are, that there could still be further trouble unless we take more action.
35:25 Speaker 02 I, I, I, look, I think we're out of the worst part probably, but I'm not a, I don't have a crystal ball and I, you know, making an economic prediction. I will say that there's still a systemic problem, which is you've got 8 trillion dollars of uninsured money lying in banks. And until we have a way of insuring that money, because 250,000 is just so little for payroll. It's a lot for most Americans saving, but for payroll, it's not enough. And we've got to devise a system where people can insure their money. And until you do that, you're going to have a risk for regional banks.
35:58 Alex Kantrowitz? Congressman Rokana, thanks so much for joining.
36:01 Speaker 02 Thank you.
36:03 Alex Kantrowitz? And that'll do it for us here on Big Technology Podcast. Thank you Congressman Rokana for coming on. Always great to speak with you. Thank you again for coming on. We hope to do it again soon. Thank you to the listeners. Really appreciate you being here. Another midweek short one. We'll get back to our regular length, starting next week with Josh Brown from Ritholtz Wealth Management. You're going to love this one. I know many of you have come from Josh Brown's Compound and Friends podcast, so we'll bring the band back together and talk about the market, talk about big tech earnings next Wednesday. In the meantime, Ranjan Roy and I come back on Friday for our weekly recap of the news. We'll be live on LinkedIn and we will also be posting the conversation to the feed here.
36:44 Alex Kantrowitz? So stay tuned on my LinkedIn page for the timing of that. Okay. Thank you Nate Gwatney for handling the audio. As always, thank you LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. Thanks to all of you listeners. Appreciate you coming back week after week. If you haven't yet and you can rate the podcast five stars on Apple and Spotify. That would mean a lot. Those ratings help us get great guests like Congressman Rokana and Josh Brown. So appreciate that. And then, well, that's it. That's the entire thing. We thank Nate. We thank LinkedIn. We thank you, the listeners. And now we say farewell. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.
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Previous The Economy is Fine?, VC Funding Declines, Non-Negotiable Expectations Next State Of The AI Wars, Google's Counterpunch, Elon's 4/20 Page updated October 13, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
