How David Sacks crashed and burned in the White House
How David Sacks crashed and burned in the White House
大卫·萨克斯（David Sacks）是如何在白宫折戟沉沙的
The Trump administration pulled a 180 on AI oversight, inducing Sacks’ worst nightmare: more government regulation on technology. 特朗普政府在人工智能监管问题上来了个 180 度大转弯，这引发了萨克斯最担心的噩梦：政府对科技行业的监管进一步加强。
On Monday, The New York Times reported that the White House was considering having the government review AI models before release. To the casual Verge reader, it appeared to be a total reversal in Donald Trump’s policies. For the past year, he had been a vocal champion of pro-industry deregulation, repealing former President Joe Biden’s massive executive order on AI safety, lifting export controls on advanced chips, and signing executive orders that would have legally punished states for passing and enforcing AI laws in the vacuum of federal legislation. Now, the Trump administration has seemingly pulled a 180, demanding federal oversight and vetting of pre-market models. 周一，《纽约时报》报道称，白宫正在考虑由政府在人工智能模型发布前进行审查。对于普通的《The Verge》读者来说，这似乎是唐纳德·特朗普政策的彻底反转。在过去的一年里，他一直是支持行业去监管化的坚定拥护者，废除了前总统乔·拜登关于人工智能安全的大规模行政令，取消了对先进芯片的出口管制，并签署了行政令，旨在从法律上惩罚那些在联邦立法真空期内通过并执行人工智能法律的州。现在，特朗普政府似乎来了个 180 度大转弯，要求对上市前的模型进行联邦监管和审查。
But to Washington, the shift in the White House’s policy was due to three major changes. First, Anthropic’s Mythos has genuinely spooked the national security apparatus, forcing the administration to confront a new threat: the possibility of adversaries using American AI models to attack America’s public and private sectors. Second, other countries are now beginning to lay out their own AI regulations, potentially in a manner that would go against the interests of the United States. And third, David Sacks was pushed out of his job as the AI and crypto czar, giving Silicon Valley one less mechanism to pitch an industry-friendly, “innovation-at-all-costs” agenda to Trump himself. 但在华盛顿看来，白宫政策的转变归因于三个重大变化。首先，Anthropic 公司的 Mythos 模型确实惊动了国家安全机构，迫使政府面对一个新的威胁：对手可能利用美国的人工智能模型来攻击美国的公共和私营部门。其次，其他国家现在也开始制定自己的人工智能法规，其方式可能会损害美国的利益。第三，大卫·萨克斯被解除了人工智能和加密货币主管的职务，这使得硅谷少了一个向特朗普本人兜售“不惜一切代价进行创新”这一行业友好议程的渠道。
The definition of political influence can be squishy and amorphous, especially around Donald Trump, who will pick up anyone’s calls and then act on that advice if he feels like it. But what’s legally certain is that Sacks, the billionaire venture capitalist and Trump fundraiser in 2024, no longer has the privileges available to him as a special government employee, such as the ability to review sensitive information, to speak on behalf of the White House, or to hold official influence over government employees and agencies. 政治影响力的定义往往是模糊且不确定的，尤其是在唐纳德·特朗普周围——他会接听任何人的电话，如果他愿意，还会根据这些建议采取行动。但法律上确定的是，作为 2024 年特朗普的亿万富翁风险投资家和筹款人，萨克斯不再拥有他作为“特殊政府雇员”时所享有的特权，例如查阅敏感信息、代表白宫发言，或对政府雇员和机构施加官方影响力的能力。
Instead, the “special government employee,” who was supposed to only spend 130 days working in the administration and somehow stuck around for an entire year, actively undermined the administration and torched its relationship with its political allies. During Sacks’ tenure, the White House went beyond simply advocating for less regulation. They tried twice to get Congress to pass a moratorium on state AI laws, and failing that, tried to use an executive order that would grant the Trump admin the powers to sue states passing or enforcing said laws. But his Valley-esque tactics, to say nothing of his attempts to consolidate power over AI policy by boxing out existing agencies, ended up infuriating Republican and MAGA allies, while alienating vast swaths of Trump’s base. 相反，这位本应只在政府工作 130 天，却不知何故待了一整年的“特殊政府雇员”，积极地破坏了政府的工作，并烧毁了其与政治盟友的关系。在萨克斯任职期间，白宫不仅限于倡导减少监管。他们曾两次试图让国会通过一项针对州级人工智能法律的暂停令，在失败后，又试图利用行政令赋予特朗普政府起诉那些通过或执行此类法律的州的权力。但他那种“硅谷式”的策略，更不用说他试图通过排挤现有机构来巩固人工智能政策权力的企图，最终激怒了共和党和“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）的盟友，同时也疏远了特朗普的大量支持者。
Even if Sacks hadn’t crashed and burned — to say nothing of publicly criticizing Donald Trump, a man who does not like being criticized, for continuing to wage war against Iran — the job is also getting harder for one part-time employee maintaining ties to the private sector to handle. In recent months, the aperture of America’s AI policy has widened to a scale much, much broader than Sacks’ pro-innovation 2025 remit, into areas where a lack of regulation would be wildly irresponsible: national security and geopolitical stability. 即便萨克斯没有折戟沉沙——更不用说他公开批评唐纳德·特朗普（一个不喜欢被批评的人）继续对伊朗发动战争——对于一个与私营部门保持联系的兼职雇员来说，这项工作也变得越来越难以胜任。近几个月来，美国人工智能政策的视野已经扩大到远超萨克斯 2025 年“支持创新”职权范围的规模，进入了缺乏监管将极其不负责任的领域：国家安全和地缘政治稳定。
A major turning point was the leak of Anthropic’s Mythos, the AI model that was so powerful at finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities that the company, whose reputation hinges on acting more responsibly than its competitors, refused to release it to the public. The possibility of a Mythos-level model becoming commercially available spooked the national security apparatus and the financial industry, and seized the attention of three powerful White House figures: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. 一个主要的转折点是 Anthropic 公司 Mythos 模型的泄露。该模型在发现网络安全漏洞方面极其强大，以至于这家声誉建立在“比竞争对手更负责任”基础上的公司，拒绝将其向公众发布。Mythos 级别的模型可能进入商业市场的可能性惊动了国家安全机构和金融行业，并引起了白宫三位重量级人物的注意：财政部长斯科特·贝森特（Scott Bessent）、商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克（Howard Lutnick）和白宫办公厅主任苏西·怀尔斯（Susie Wiles）。