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The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz

Two of Silicon Valley’s famous venture capitalists make the case for backing
Trump: that their ability to make money is the only value that matters.

By [14]Elizabeth Lopatto, a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human
behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she was a
reporter at Bloomberg.

Jul 24, 2024, 12:00 PM UTC

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3D illustration of a red elephant surrounded by wireframe dollar signs.
In venture capital, you are what you fund. Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
3D illustration of a red elephant surrounded by wireframe dollar signs.
In venture capital, you are what you fund. Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Last week, the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz declared
their allegiance to Donald Trump in their customary fashion: talking about
money on a podcast.

“Sorry, Mom,” Ben Horowitz says in an episode of The Ben & Marc Show. “I know
you’re going to be mad at me for this. But, like, we have to do it.”

Marc Andreessen and Horowitz insist they voted for Democrats until now. They
are friends with liberals. They claim to be nervous about the social blowback
they will receive for this, especially because of the historically progressive
nature of the tech industry and the Bay Area.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about.”

But given the general movement among their class toward Trump, I think those
claims about being nervous are overblown, if not performative. There is, for
instance, Elon Musk’s [20]pro-Trump super PAC, which has support from Sequoia
Capital’s Shaun Maguire and 8VC’s Joe Lonsdale, among other notables. (The Wall
Street Journal reported Musk is planning to [21]donate $45 million a month,
which Musk has denied.) There’s the [22]$160 million the crypto movement has
put forward in support of crypto-friendly candidates. We can’t forget their VC
pal [23]David Sacks speaking at the Republican National Convention. And last
but not least, there’s Trump’s running mate choice of JD Vance, [24]a former
venture capitalist whose firm’s investors included Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt,
and Andreessen himself.

This isn’t a movement. It’s a clique.

The podcast itself is an extraordinary performance. At one point, Andreessen
concedes that their major problems with President Joe Biden — the ones that led
them to support Trump — are what most voters would consider “subsidiary”
issues. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care
about,” he says. If we take this podcast at face value, we are to believe that
these subsidiary issues are the only reason they’ve chosen to endorse and
donate to Trump.

These subsidiary issues take precedence for Andreessen and Horowitz over, say,
mass deportations and [25]Project 2025’s attempt to end no-fault divorce. We
are looking at a simple trade against personal liberty — abortion, the rights
of gay and trans people, and [26]possibly democracy itself — in favor of
crypto, AI, and a tax policy they like better. 

For Horowitz, “probably the most emotional topic” is crypto — [27]a16z started
a $4.5 billion crypto fund in 2022, and the pair believe that the Biden
administration has been deeply unfair to crypto. In Horowitz’s view, the Biden
administration “basically subverted the rule of law to attack the crypto
industry.” 

“We’re the largest crypto investors or largest blockchain investors in the
world.”

[28]Certainly much of the crypto industry prefers Trump. But it seems obvious
that there has been a lot of [29]intra-agency squabbling as Congress dithered
on passing any laws. To place the blame squarely on Biden is bizarre,
particularly when we have Trump’s chaotic previous term as guidance. Sure,
Trump is no longer saying Bitcoin is “[30]a scam against the dollar,” as he did
in 2021; he is scheduled to speak at the Bitcoin conference this year. But his
record in office is not exactly pro-crypto. During the Trump administration,
financial regulator FinCEN initially asked the public to provide comments on a
crypto rule change [31]over a 15-day period that included Christmas Eve,
Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day, which effectively shortened
the comment window by four working days. There is also the Ripple Labs
enforcement case, [32]in which the SEC is seeking a $1.95 billion fine; it,
too, dates to the Trump administration. 

The pair’s complaints about Gary Gensler, the current head of the Securities
and Exchange Commission, are striking. They are particularly annoyed that he
won’t pay attention to them. “We’re the largest crypto investors or largest
blockchain investors in the world, and we’ve requested meetings with him at
least a half a dozen times,” Horowitz says. Gensler has not met with them.
Neither, they say, has Senator Elizabeth Warren or Biden himself.

In fact, Andreessen makes it clear that he expects presidential attention,
something he’s been getting since he was 23. Given the number of times
Andreessen and Horowitz make references to various meetings with various
politicians, it’s easy to get the impression that they are mostly insulted that
they are being treated like ordinary constituents.

From crypto, we move to AI, which Andreessen and Horowitz don’t think is being
regulated correctly either. According to Horowitz, AI is as powerful as, or
more powerful than, the internet and the global computer industry from the
1950s on. “This may be the biggest technological boom of all time,” Andreessen
says. 

These regulations have little to do with technology and a lot to do with
old-fashioned lying

Andreessen says in his newsletter-cum-manifesto, “[33]The Little Tech Agenda
,” that he is worried that AI will face similar scrutiny to crypto. The FTC has
[34]issued guidance to the AI industry that indicated it will pursue companies
that exaggerate what their AI can do, say they are using AI when they are not,
and recklessly put products on the market without properly analyzing the risks.
Meanwhile, [35]the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has told lenders that
they must supply a reason for a credit denial that’s better than just “[36]
computer says no” when using AI models. These regulations have little to do
with technology and a lot to do with old-fashioned lying.

In the podcast, Andreessen and Horowitz single out [37]Biden’s executive order
about artificial intelligence. The order requires companies to disclose the
presence of very large models, as well as to provide the government information
about what the plans are for the model, what cybersecurity measures are taken
to protect those models, and the results of red-team testing for sensitive
subjects, among other things. This is in keeping with Horowitz’s assertion
about the seriousness of the technology. 

So what’s the problem? The two focus on computing power. The disclosure
requirements apply to “any model that was trained using a quantity of computing
power greater than 10^26 integer or floating-point operations, or using
primarily biological sequence data and using a quantity of computing power
greater than 10^23 integer or floating-point operations.” Andreessen and
Horowitz think specifying such a limit is ridiculous. Little tech “will be
snuffed out by this kind of regulation,” Horowitz says.

It is perhaps worth noting that nothing above the size specified in the
executive order — the size Andreessen and Horowitz object to — [38]even exists
yet, according to Arati Prabhakar, Biden’s top tech advisor.

The irony is so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to point it out

The fundamental complaint here is that these two believe that the Biden
administration’s approach to AI “enshrine[s] the two or three companies that
they believe are the only companies that matter as sort of permanent
monopolies,” Andreessen says. “And they’re going to just basically destroy the
startup ecosystem underneath that.” [39]Andreessen Horowitz is, of course,
invested in that ecosystem, having earmarked $2.25 billion for AI applications
and infrastructure.

The anti-monopoly rhetoric is in keeping with a16z’s latest marketing push.
According to Andreessen’s newsletter, startups are threatened by the
government, which is “now far more hostile to new startups than it used to be.”
Besides his objections to the way the SEC has increased its oversight of
crypto, he is also upset that a stepped-up interest in antitrust has made it
more difficult for him to exit investments. “Regulatory agencies are punitively
blocking startups from being acquired by the same big companies the government
is preferencing in so many other ways,” Andreessen writes. After all, the
Federal Trade Commission [40]has launched an inquiry into Big Tech’s
partnerships and investments with startups — with the goal of seeing if those
partnerships squash competition. 

The irony is so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to point it out. Andreessen
says he is upset that Big Tech is too powerful, but he opposes antitrust action
because that blocks a route for VCs to exit. Either you’re comfortable with Big
Tech getting bigger, in which case acquisitions are fine, or you want little
tech to be competitive, which means blocking industry consolidation. Mainly, it
seems that Andreessen believes in cashing out.

In the podcast, Andreessen and Horowitz pointedly name Google as a threat to
startups. “Google, I think we would all agree, is more powerful than probably
95 percent of countries in the world,” Horowitz says at one point. Google,
specifically, is a sore spot with the right wing. Vice presidential nominee 
[41]Vance has already said it should be broken up. Vance believes Google is
controlling information and [42]skewing too far left. Of course, Google’s
moderation policies don’t just apply to Google News — they also affect YouTube,
which hosts a great many right-wing podcasts without issue.

Tax reform was “the final straw for me, the thing that tipped me hard.”

It’s unclear how seriously to take Andreessen and Horowitz’s complaints about
Big Tech because the complaints don’t quite square with their behavior. For
instance, Facebook is similarly powerful and influential, especially in AI. 
[43]Andreessen sits on its board. A16z is invested in OpenAI, which has a
partnership with Microsoft — and both have lobbied strenuously for more
regulation around AI. It sure seems like if a16z wants to change things at
those big companies, someone could simply pick up the phone.

At this point in the podcast, you could squint and say maybe the concern about
AI and crypto is really about technology and progress. But from those two
topics, we move on to classic rich guy shit of the most tedious kind: [44]tax
reform. Andreessen says it was “the final straw for me. This is the thing that
tipped me hard.” They are upset about a proposal to alter capital gains taxes. 

Capital gains are paid on investment assets, and they are typically paid when
the investment is sold and the gains are, in industry terms, “realized.” The 
[45]new Biden treasury proposal means that for people whose wealth is worth
more than $100 million, any unrealized capital gains will be taxed, too. This
is what has Andreessen and Horowitz in a tizzy. It means that if they own a
clutch of highly valued startup shares, they will have to pay taxes on them
before they cash out. This is a “very scary proposal,” Horowitz says.

Startups are illiquid assets, Andreessen points out. “Startups never go up and
down.  They’re never overvalued,” says Horowtiz, dryly. “There’s no bubbles.”
Andreessen notes that the way the value of a startup is calculated for the
purposes of this proposed tax has to do with the latest round’s valuation.

“Presto chango, we’re Argentina!”

Historically, one of the ways that [46]Andreessen Horowitz has approached
startup investing is to inflate a company’s valuation; it is “[47]the OG when
it comes to doling out speculative startup valuations.” The new proposed tax
punishes this kind of behavior — a high valuation means a high tax. “This makes
startups completely implausible,” says Andreessen. “Venture capital just ends.
Firms like ours don’t exist.”

This is followed by [48]an anxiety spiral that is sort of difficult to convey
in text; I suggest you listen for yourself. “California is done,” says
Andreessen. “It’s total destruction.” The taxes won’t just target the wealthy;
they’ll come for everyone. “Once the structure gets established, the
politicians do what they do: they’ll walk the numbers up,” Andreessen says.
“Presto chango, we’re Argentina!” says Horowitz.

Finally, Horowitz gets [49]ahold of himself. “By the way, this one probably
won’t get all the way through the system,” he says. “But it might!”

There is another issue that might cause wreckage throughout Silicon Valley. It
is immigration. An awful lot of immigrants comprise Silicon Valley’s talent
pool — a huge swath of engineers in the US [50]are on H-1B visas. The Trump /
Vance ticket is virulently anti-immigrant.

“The crypto industry is uniquely international, and so immigration law is
crypto law.”

The current CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM are all immigrants. So
are Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are involved in
Fwd.us, a lobbying group dedicated to immigration reform that Musk and Sacks
both left. If there were an issue that would rally the people who care most
about progress, innovation, and talent, you’d think protecting the immigrants
who’ve built lives and careers in tech would be it.

Stopping immigration is a core issue of the Trump campaign. During the
Republican National Convention, delegates held up signs saying “[51]Mass
Deportation Now.” Trump [52]has called the H-1B, the visa many tech workers use
to come to Silicon Valley, “very bad” and “unfair” to US workers. In his
previous term, he targeted H-1B visa applications specifically; in the fiscal
year 2018, almost 25 percent of applications were denied, up from about 13
percent the year before. In fiscal year 2019, 20 percent of H-1B applications
were denied. The denials plummeted after several Trump administration rules
were thrown out by courts; the denial rate in 2022 was just 2 percent.

Immigration plainly matters for crypto — as [53]Ethereum founder Vitalik
Buterin says, “The crypto industry is uniquely international, and so
immigration law is crypto law.” Buterin is one of the most influential voices
in crypto, and Ethereum is the foundation for a swath of Andreessen Horowitz’s
investment portfolio. Among the investments that rely on it are MakerDAO,
VeeFriends, Dapper Labs, and EigenLayer. It is remarkable that the founder of
Ethereum is saying that voting for Trump is against the crypto ethos, and the
big crypto investors are doing it anyway. 

The word “immigration” is only mentioned by Andreessen and Horowitz in the
podcast when they discuss the rally in which someone attempted an
assassination: Trump had turned his head to look at a chart that [54]purported
to show illegal immigration into the US as the bullet whizzed by. I wondered
why such an important issue for tech wasn’t addressed, so I emailed Margit
Wennmachers, a16z’s PR guru, to ask. She didn’t reply.

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After I finished listening to the podcast, a few things kept nagging at me.
Take the very beginning of the podcast. Once upon a time, Andreessen says, you
could get very rich and then give the money away in philanthropy, “and you get
enormous credit for that. And, you know, it absolves you of whatever.”

At some point in the last 10 years, some people suggested that maybe rich
people should pay more taxes instead of giving their money away — that perhaps
the whims of some random rich person are not the best way to support the most
vulnerable in our society. Andreessen and Horowitz suggest that this critique
of philanthropy is simply jealousy. It also unbalanced “the deal.”

“The deal,” as described on the podcast, is vague. To my ear, it sounds like
this: Tech companies could basically do whatever they wanted, as long as people
who worked there paid high taxes and donated enough money to charitable causes.
The money — taxes, donations — made them the good guys. 

The one thing all these hype cycles had in common was VCs talking their books,
as publicly as possible

Andreessen and Horowitz point to the mid-2010s — that is, the era of low
interest rates — as the time of “the deal” unraveling. Notably, this is around
the time that the tech hype cycle became obvious even to people who weren’t
paying attention. This year, it’s scooters! Now it’s [55]viral media companies!
Now it’s metaverse! Now it’s crypto! Now it’s AI! 

These ideas were more or less rejected by the market, except possibly AI. The
one thing all these hype cycles had in common was VCs talking their books, as
publicly as possible. That charge was led by Andreessen Horowitz.

So now, instead of investing in things the market wants, Andreessen and
Horowitz appear to be gambling on legislation instead. Their timing is
remarkable; not even a week after their Trump endorsement, Biden dropped out of
the race, rallying the Democrats behind Vice President Kamala Harris. In the
hours immediately following the announcement, [56]small-money donors raised
$46.7 million for her campaign. By endorsing Trump, Andreessen and Horowitz
have effectively lost whatever leverage they might have had with the Harris
campaign.

But maybe that doesn’t matter. Near the end of the podcast, Horowitz says that
he was shaken by the assassination attempt on Donald Trump because he’s friends
with Ivanka, his daughter, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. “Ivanka and the
kids were just at my house,” Horowitz says, of learning Trump was shot. “We
went to see David Copperfield and all that. So my brain was almost frozen
because I had this feeling about, ‘Oh my god, Grandpa just got shot.’”

“Ivanka and the kids were just at my house.”

[57]As for Andreessen, he has been inveighing against [58]“woke” capital,
engaging in [59]Twitter culture wars, and complaining about [60]what he views
as the media’s hostility to free speech for [61]a while now. In Andreessen’s
2023 “[62]Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” he lists what he terms “patron saints” of
the movement. They include Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist who
was [63]also the co-author of The Fascist Manifesto; Nick Land, [64]whose
writing is a foundational text for the so-called alt-right; Neven Sesardic, a
philosopher who [65]argues that race is biologically real and not socially
constructed; and [66]Vilfredo Pareto, who [67]argued that [68]democracy is an
illusion. 

And this talk about democracy brings me to Curtis Yarvin, [69]personal friend
of vice presidential candidate Vance. Yarvin, a software developer, [70]is
openly anti-democracy. (Yarvin’s [71]recent newsletter, in response to Biden
dropping out, enthusiastically advocates for a return to monarchy. Freak shit.)
One of Yarvin’s ideas, called “retire all government employees” or RAGE, is
part of [72]Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation proposal for what Trump should
do if he wins. This rhetoric [73]was echoed by Vance in 2021, who called out
Yarvin by name. 

So this VC cabal is trading against the basic principles of America — not
merely against personal freedom, but democracy itself — in the hopes of profit.
It’s not the first time tech has made the trade against freedom; [74]IBM made
it during the Holocaust.

In venture capital, you are what you fund. Andreessen and Horowitz understand
this, even embody it. But they aren’t just funding the issues they discuss on
their podcast; they are funding Trump and Vance. That means those donations are
anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and possibly even anti-democracy because that
is what the Trump / Vance ticket stands for. These are not subsidiary issues:
these are now what two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures now stand
for, too. Is that a good investment?

Correction July 24: An earlier version of this article misstated the donation
strategy of a crypto super PAC. The group also spends money on Democratic
candidates, not just right-wing ones.

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[77] https://www.theverge.com/games/24216389/psvr2-pc-adapter-review
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