My ears always perk up when I hear that a lifelong Democrat has thrown his or her support behind President-elect Donald Trump. One of the biggest surprises of the 2024 election cycle was the sheer number of people who did just that.
Two key factors drove this shift. First, many working-class voters finally grasped that the Democratic Party, which they had blindly supported for decades, had abandoned them.
The second factor concerned Democrats at the opposite end of the economic spectrum — a group that included tech billionaires, hedge fund managers, and the ultrawealthy, many with direct access to the Biden White House. They saw that the line between democracy and authoritarianism had become blurred, or even erased in some instances, as party leaders shifted their focus from governance to the pursuit of power, showing a willingness to do whatever it took to acquire it and maintain it.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the venture capital firm a16z, was part of this second group. In a Tuesday interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, he exposed the Biden administration’s despotic plan to control artificial intelligence in the U.S. This bombshell revelation should have been front-page news last week; instead, it flew largely under the radar.
Andreessen told Rogan that he attended a series of White House meetings about the future of AI in the spring. During one session, Biden administration officials unveiled “their plan to control AI through government regulatory capture.” Horrified by the administration’s intentions, he walked out the door and endorsed Trump.
What had left the tech billionaire so spooked? Andreessen said, “The AI thing was very alarming. We had meetings this spring that were the most alarming meetings I’ve ever been in.”
He continued, “They were taking us through their plans, and it was – basically just full government – full government control. Like this sort of thing, there will be a small number of large companies that will be completely regulated and controlled by the government, they told us. They said don’t even start startups – there’s just no way that they can succeed – there’s no way that we’re going to permit that to happen.”
Rogan gasped.
But Andreessen wasn’t finished. “They said that this [control of AI] is already over. It’s going to be two or three companies and we’re just gonna control them and that’s that. Like this is already finished.”
Rogan asked, “When you leave a meeting like that, what do you do?”
Andreessen smiled and replied, “You go endorse Donald Trump!”
Andreessen also claimed the Biden administration has “debanked” more than 30 tech startups, including cryptocurrency companies. (Debanking occurs when a bank abruptly closes an individual’s or organization’s account or refuses to open one for a new customer. This usually happens when the person or entity is perceived as a risk—whether “legally, financially, or to the bank’s reputation.”)
The use of debanking as a control mechanism began under the Obama administration. It was called “Operation Choke Point.” The government began debanking “marijuana businesses, escort businesses, and gun shops,” Andreessen said.
He walked Rogan through what debanking would look like for a business owner. “So, if you’re running a marijuana dispensary in 2012, then, guess what, you’re doing your business all in cash. Because you literally can’t get a bank account. You can’t get a Visa terminal. You can’t process transactions. … You’ve been sanctioned.”
“This administration [Biden] extended that concept to apply it to tech founders, crypto founders, and just generally political opponents,” Andreessen said. They use it “primarily against their political enemies and then to their disfavored tech startups. … We’ve had like 30 tech founders debanked in the last four years. It’s been a big recurring pattern.”
Summing up, he noted, “This is one of the reasons we ended up supporting Trump. … We can’t live in a world where somebody starts a company that’s a completely legal thing and they literally get sanctioned and embargoed through the United States government through a completely unaccountable [authority].”
He added, “By the way, no due process. None of this is written down. There’s no rules. There’s no court. There’s no decision process. There’s no appeal. Who do you appeal to?”
Of course, this is just one man’s perspective, and Rogan asked very few follow-up questions. Still, I find Andreessen’s claims to be credible given the vast amount of evidence of the Democratic Party’s corruption that’s been revealed over the past decade. Nearly all of it centers on their efforts to consolidate power through control over people, information, and language.
Control of the media in particular has been a cornerstone of the Democrats’ strategy. It has enabled them to shape the narrative. The party secured its dominance over the legacy media a long time ago. Ahead of the 2020 election, it extended this control to major social media platforms, leveraging its influence to censor free speech and to take back the White House.
Fortunately for Republicans, the landscape has begun to shift. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022, the public’s growing distrust of the legacy media, and the rise of alternative news sources such as online platforms and podcasts have collectively helped level the information playing field. This shift has weakened the Democrats’ grip on political discourse in the U.S. and likely contributed to Trump’s victory.
Still, Andreessen’s revelation about Democrats’ intentions for AI should have us worried. AI, still in its early stages, is both awe-inspiring and terrifying. While most of us can’t fully grasp where it will be in five years, we understand its immense potential. Those who control AI will wield extraordinary power.
Does anyone actually believe that the Democrats would pass up the chance to dominate AI?
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Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner and the Western Journal. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
