David Sacks Out as AI Czar, Joins Billionaire Council

David Sacks has used up his days as Donald Trump's AI and crypto czar.

Speaking with Bloomberg on Thursday, the entrepreneur, investor, and All-In podcast co-host confirmed his non-consecutive 130-day stint as a special government employee is over. He's moving to co-chair the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology alongside senior White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios.

I think moving forward as co-chair of PCAST, I can now make recommendations on not just AI but an expanded range of technology topics. So yes, this is how I'll be involved moving forward.

— David Sacks to Bloomberg

From Policy to Advisory

The move puts Sacks further from Washington's power centre. As AI czar, he had a direct line to Trump and shaped policy. PCAST is a federal advisory body that studies issues, produces reports, and sends recommendations up the chain. It does not make policy.

The council has existed since FDR, though Sacks made a point of noting this iteration has 'the most star power of any group like this' ever assembled. The initial 15 members include Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Marc Andreessen, AMD's Lisa Su, and Michael Dell.

Sacks told Bloomberg the council will focus on AI, advanced semiconductors, quantum computing, and nuclear power. Near-term attention will go toward Trump's national AI framework, released last week, which aims to replace what Sacks described as 'a mess of conflicting state-level rules.'

You've got 50 different states regulating this in 50 different ways. It's creating a patchwork of regulation that's difficult for our innovators to comply with.

— David Sacks

The Iran Comments

What Sacks did not address directly was whether his recent comments accelerated the transition. Earlier this month on the All-In podcast, Sacks publicly urged the administration to find an exit from the US-backed war with Iran, walking through worsening scenarios including attacks on oil infrastructure, destruction of desalination plants, and the possibility of Israeli nuclear use.

Trump responded by telling reporters that Sacks 'hadn't spoken to him' about the war. Asked about the podcast episode by Bloomberg, Sacks was careful: 'I'm not on the foreign policy team or the national security team,' he said, adding that his comments represented personal views, not official ones.

PCAST's Track Record

The council's historical influence has varied dramatically by administration. President Obama's version produced 36 reports over eight years, two of which led to concrete policy changes including an FDA rule opening the market for over-the-counter hearing aids.

Trump's first-term council took nearly three years to name members, produced a handful of reports, and made no particular mark. Biden's council skewed heavily academic and issued a modest number of reports before the administration ended.

The current PCAST is built almost entirely from executive suites of the companies shaping the technology it will advise on. Whether that proximity leads to better advice or captured recommendations remains to be seen. Sacks is now one of those unencumbered executives again, free to resume his life as an investor while occasionally advising the government he briefly shaped.