The Legion of PCAST

I wrote about David Sacks the other day, in the context of his being one of the Trump 2.0 gang that might get left holding the bag if this Jensen Huang/Nvidia scandal blows up the AI boom/bubble. Sacks was the administration’s “AI czar” — until March, when he announced his time was up. (His position as a “special government employee” was limited to 130 days. Sacks is definitely special.) At the moment Sacks remains co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a Legion of Doom-style committee of billionaire Trump backers, whose members include, in alphabetical order after the co-chairs: David Sacks — Co-chair Michael Kratsios — Co-chair Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz) Pam Bondi (fired as Trump attorney general for insufficient cravenness, no background whatsoever in science or technology) Sergey Brin (Google) Safra Catz (Oracle) Michael Dell (Dell Technologies) Jacob DeWitte (Oklo — nuclear power startup, fission) Fred Ehrsam (Coinbase — crypto) Larry Ellison (Oracle) David Friedberg (Ohalo — biotech) Jensen Huang (Nvidia) John Martinis (Qolab — quantum computing) Bob Mumgaard (Commonwealth Fusion Systems — nuclear power, fusion) Lisa Su (AMD) Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) Not represented: anyone from Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon. There’s a game of reverse musical chairs here, and, amongst the multi-trillion-dollar tech Goliaths, it’s Nvidia, Google, and Meta who are still sitting in seats, soaking up the stench of a historically unpopular president — whose unpopularity is fueled first and foremost, according to election exit polls, by his abject corruption. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon have seemingly made their Irish goodbyes. Being associated with Trump now doesn’t just put you on the wrong side of popular party politics, but on the wrong side of being perceived as crooked. Curiously absent from PCAST is Elon Musk, who I think got his licks in all at once with the DOGE fiasco in Trump 2.0’s first year.  ★