Podcast Host (interviewer) (3:04)

And it's funny, because you started out your career on the software side at Google, right?

Jacob Helberg (3:07)

That's right.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (3:08)

And then you realize that hardware, now you're spending more time there in your new role. Why don't you flesh out exactly what were the sort of key risks you identified on the hardware side, and how have they played out? How have they changed or stayed the same?

Jacob Helberg (3:19)

Yeah. So, I mean, really what we're talking about is if you have a foreign government that controls, that can instrumentalize its tech companies that operate the hardware of the Internet, it fundamentally challenges our traditional conception of sovereignty because it raises the question of what does it mean to be sovereign when you have a foreign power that knows all the deepest, darkest secrets of all the judges, journalists, and jurists in your country and politicians in your country. And the definition of sovereignty starts to look very, very different in a world like that. And so the first Trump administration carried out and prosecuted a very comprehensive campaign that basically argue that Huawei, NZT are national security threats. That campaign has been sustained across administrations since then, including this one. And so today, obviously, to your earlier question, we live in a world that's the same in some ways, but that has evolved and mutated in really interesting ways with the AI revolution that actually was arguably prompted by the release of ChatGPT a year after my book. And the AI revolution has really heightened the stakes of this whole technology race in pretty fundamental ways, because it's really put on steroids the capabilities that governments can have to actually carry out these types of operations.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (4:39)

Yeah. And so let's now get to your work in the administration. Why don't you talk about your main priorities, goals, and achievements today?

Jacob Helberg (4:46)

Yeah. So our cognizant and recognizing the fact that the AI revolution is going to totally transform economic power and military power, and I'd love to talk a little bit more about that. The administration has laid out a policy to win the AI race. The President proclaimed a very, very, very historic speech last July at a summit that David Sachs and I co hosted called Winning the AI Race, where he rolled out the AI action plan. And in that speech, he basically laid out that he acknowledged that America was in a race, and he proclaimed that America was going to win that race. And it was very aspirational. And David likes to reference that it was almost reminiscent of JFK's speech to the moon, which I actually happen to totally agree with him on that. I think it very much echoed that. And so then that raises a question for agencies like ours. How do we actually him achieve that goal? From our vantage point, we see three conditions that need to be met to win the AI race. We need to have the world's best technology and AI innovation on a qualitative basis. So our models need to be superior than all the other models on Earth. That's number one. Number two, we need to have the most market share, because if we have exquisite models that no one uses, as we know from the world of consumer technology, we're kind of irrelevant. So we need to have the most users, we want to have the App Store that has the most apps, we want to be the platform for the rest of the world. And number three, we need secure supply chains. Because if we have technologies that are firing on all cylinders and technology companies that are firing on all cylinders, but if one tiny cog gets loose and trips up the whole machine, we are in a very brittle, precarious position. And so we need to make sure that our companies, who rely on many different types of inputs and components that come from very different corners of the globe, actually have supply chains that are reliable, that are cost effective, and that are secure. And so we're working very hard to do that. We launched an initiative called Pak Silica that aims at securing the supply chain and partnering with some of the world's most technologically advanced economies to develop partnerships to secure offtake agreements, joint ventures, and the like. And so we're very excited about having this three front strategy to win the AI race.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (7:00)

Yeah, let's go through the three fronts that you just mentioned, and you've mentioned a little bit about what we've achieved. Let's talk more about that. But then also what needs to happen in order for those conditions to be met.

Jacob Helberg (7:09)

Yeah. So having the best AI innovation on a qualitative basis is really an effort. First of all, let me just say that we already have the best AI innovation on a qualitative basis. So the question is, how do we maintain our lead? One of the big thorny challenges that's new and very apparent to everyone is the challenge of model distillation, which is fundamentally it undermines intellectual property and fundamentally undermines the unit economics of the industry. Because when companies invest hundreds of billions of dollars in capex investments and then to develop fancy model ways, but then other companies can just take them, that's a major problem. So that is an issue that we obviously are tracking and our administration as a whole is engaged in conversations with companies to try to find solutions to this. But the government, the companies and the AI labs are the ones in the driver's seat when it comes to developing, to ensuring our lead on a qualitative basis, as they should be with respect to market share. We believe in the power of that our products are superior and therefore more people like them. With that being said, we also recognize that they're competing on a playing field that's not always fair and leveled. And so we are actively engaged with governments to basically ensure that we have a preferential preference for technologies that are secure. And this is really an extension of the work that we've done on Huawei. A lot of our focus has been on hardware infrastructure, but I think there's a lot of intellectual work being done for what does that mean at the AI age? What does that mean in a world where you have open model weights that are fundamentally harder to contain? So market share is very much a part of the thinking that is the premise for the AI Expert program. We want to grow our market share worldwide. David Sachs and Secretary Lutnick have done a lot of really great work and Crazios has done a lot of really great work to help launch the AI export program. And the State Department is very involved in helping evangelize that and actually onboard more users. We launched the chip concierge service that provides white glove support for the AI Expert program for a subset of countries which are the Pacsalika countries. So we're certainly trying to contribute in ways that are constructive and in ways that help be an accelerant to get more users and then for securing our supply chains. That's where I think the government probably can play the most important role because we can catalyze partnerships, we can catalyze joint ventures. Our supply chains are very frail. What we have realized since COVID is obviously China has very vertically integrated supply chains because they have a lot of state owned companies. Our supply chains are not vertically integrated at all. They are totally geographically dispersed, thousands of different vendors. Many of them are mom and pop shops in different parts of the globe full of information asymmetries. A company in Santa Clara or San Jose has no idea where some of these parts come from who makes them because there's so many different layers of vendor partnerships. And so as a result, you end up with a system where companies have very low visibility, there's a lot of inefficiencies by virtue of the sheer number of people involved and the lack of coordination. And so one of the things that we're looking at doing is actually using tools that the government can be a catalyst for to actually bring a little bit more efficiency and coordination to how the supply chains for our large, you know, arguably systemically important companies work. And so, and those tools include offtake agreements, they include joint ventures, they include co investment opportunities. And the last one is market incentives. So this sort of gets at, you know, one of the concepts around, you know, creating some sort of preferential trade zone. We have, you know, obviously our administration has pursued an incentives based agenda very heavily with respect to the imposition of tariffs to encourage investment in the U.S. but the government has tools to actually create, to incentivize behavior and create the environment that will actually lead the private sector to, to deploy capital in ways that are strategic.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (11:30)

Yeah. And by the way, on that note, what is the right way of making sense of, you know, of tariffs, the effect of since Liberation Day? Is it that they were largely a negotiating tool that that was, you know, effective in achieving its goals? Is it that it's also an economic policy that had certain goals? What's the right way of making sense of it while also realizing that it's still early?

Jacob Helberg (11:53)

Yeah, so the, the, the fundamental thesis and view is since, you know, over the last generation or so, we've lost 66,000 manufacturing plants, we've lost over 2 million manufacturing jobs. Our industrial base has been completely hollowed out. And not by an act of divine destiny, you know, manifest destiny, but really by choices, policy choices that have been instituted over the last 25 years that have been terrible. And so the tariffs are actually a recalibration of, based on the recognition that we need to have an economic policy that is tethered to our national security imperatives. They're in pure and perfect markets. When you have a trade deficit, typically you have changes in the value of a currency that allows a trade deficit to go back to an equilibrium level of zero. But it is not a natural phenomenon to have consistent trade deficits for a 25 year period on a, on a quarter by quarter basis. That is the result of, of markets that are not functioning in, you know, that are not functioning correctly. And so the tariffs actually help helped correct those deficit, those long term Secular trade deficits. And if I could just add, if I could digress and just really hammer this one point, when the President took office, we had a trade deficit with our top 12 trading partners of over a trillion dollars a year. I mean it was astronomical. And so we took, you know, the same view that that level of trade deficit on a year by year basis is completely unsustainable after Liberation Day and when the President instituted tariffs. We've seen a complete change in the, in the trajectory in a lot of these numbers. Our trade deficit with China, which has long been our largest trade deficit country, has been plummeting, you know, in a way that's, that's really historic. Our trade deficit overall has been receding in. And, and we have actually seen, we've actually seen record investment in capex investment in the US which doesn't even show up in trade data yet because the capex investment hasn't, you know, these things are early indic. It hasn't yet converted into production capacity because a lot of these plants are being built as we speak. But it's, it's, as someone in the tech industry, you understand the difference between a lagging indicator and an early indicator. And so it's really encouraging and actually quite exciting to see a lot of these investments being made. And, and so you know, the basic thesis is we used to have a policy worldview that said, you know, potato chips, computer chips, doesn't matter and you could have a national security untethered from policy. We want to, we believe that it's important to bring our economic policy in line with our national security. And that includes having, having an economic policy that does not run trillion dollar trade deficits on a year by year basis.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (14:59)

And, and same more about with the positive benefit of having a much reduced trade deficit. Is it that on the employment side that will now, you know, you know, employ more Americans because we're building more here? Is it that will also just take care of some of the industries that are most important? Is it more, more benefits?

Jacob Helberg (15:19)

Well, first of all, the treasury will have more resources to actually fund a lot of the things Americans care about. So you know, it has really, it has a very big impact on the resources at our disposal to actually fund, you know, the government as well as, you know, important programs. Second of all, it has a very big impact on, you know, fundamentally one of the things that we realized during COVID is it is incredibly, you can't defend a country with Facebook ads. You need to be able to make things and the national security strategy that we released actually has a line that's very apt which says the future will belong to builders. And that's our belief. What the tariffs do is they change the economics of building. They provide American builders with a re leveled playing field that makes it economical for them to compete if they build in America. And fundamentally that's why we've seen historic capex investments because of the tariffs. The ingredients of, you know, the Trump industrial revolution are tariffs, deregulation, energy and energy abundance and tax incentives which include, you know, capex investing through the one big beautiful bill. Those building blocks totally change the game when, when it comes to the unit economics of building things in America. And so, and so it's actually in total contrast to what Europe is doing, sadly, where you have super high energy prices, insane regulation, insanely high taxes and you see the result, which is a continued sustainment of deindustrialization of Europe, which is very regrettable. And so we think these things are choices and you can actually reverse them. And we're seeing that play out in real time.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (17:07)

On the note of Europe, there's some people that point to, hey, there's maybe some countries that are increasing their defense spending. Do you think that's, that's for real? Do you think that's good for us? How should we make sense of what's

Jacob Helberg (17:19)

happening in Europe right now? So I think the political will is real. But, and you know, one of the, the things that I'm sure you and your viewers will appreciate, you know, for folks in the technology industry is the political will can be there. But that, you know, translating that political will into capabilities will require companies. It will require builders, building technologies and weapon systems that are at least comparable or superior to what is already on the market. And in order to do that you need founders who are exceptional because building companies are very hard, especially hardware companies that are, are very advanced and capital intensive. And you need an environment that actually makes it somewhat conducive to actually build a company. And it's really hard for Europe to put those pieces together because they, you know, the culture in Europe has been really not favorable to encouraging risk taking, which is a necessary, which is the lifeblood of starting a business. You need to have a risk taking culture and, and then they have the unit economics problem where it's just really expensive to build stuff in Europe because your energy bills are really high. You have to spend a ton of money on legal fees before you even start. And so it's, you know, those parts are very challenging. So it's not that starting Things in Europe will be impossible, but they have major headwinds. They will start on day one with significant disadvantages compared to American companies where, fortunately, because we have a federal system, the states are the laboratories of democracy. And so if some companies, many of whom we know, have a hard time building things in one state, they can always move to a different state that has a favorable tax environment and regulatory environment. And so we actually have a system that still makes it quite easy to build things. And so our policy is we want a strong Europe. And so we have really invested a lot of efforts into having a truthful, candid conversations with our friends in Europe to actually share our concerns. And, you know, the media, some elements of the legacy media, has inaccurately portrayed our. Our stance as being antagonistic towards Europe. But it'll be no surprise that that's a total misrepresentation. The truth is, is that when you actually care about someone, you can actually be candid with them. Clear is kind. And so you know it is because you care if you have a relative who's unwell. Is the empathetic view to pretend like they're perfectly fine and tell them everything's going to be okay when you know that they have cancer? Or is the empathetic view to actually let them know that there's a problem that they need to take care of? I think the latter is clearly the more empathetic position. We care about Europe. We want them to be strong. And so we are, you know, trying to draw their attention towards policy issues that we think are serious headwinds for them.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (20:27)

Yeah. Similarly, you know, some people critique and say, hey, it's better to have these countries dependent on us. Whereas similar to your example, if you really care about someone, you want them to be sovereign, you want them to be independent, you want them to be. To be strong. And that doesn't mean that we're are, you know, drifting apart and no longer going to support each other. It means that perhaps we could support each other better because you bring that.

Jacob Helberg (20:47)

Exactly.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (20:48)

To the table.

Jacob Helberg (20:48)

Exactly.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (20:49)

And go for it.

Jacob Helberg (20:51)

I was just gonna. And Americans are positive. Some thinkers. I mean, unlike. And this is fundamentally, you know, something that doesn't always. That people underappreciate overseas is. It's not like there is a central, essentially planned, maniacal plan in Washington to get the rest of the world dependent on America because we are positive, some thinkers. And what that means in practice is Americans also do a lot of joint ventures because we don't see the world as a finite pie that needs to be subdivided into smaller slices. We see a world where the pie expands and where there is an opportunity. And a lot of American companies are very comfortable doing co investments and joint ventures. And so it's just a very different lens. Yeah.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (21:40)

How should we make sense of the sovereign AI investments that are happening in the, in the Middle East? Is that also strategic for us or say more about that?

Jacob Helberg (21:48)

Yeah. So fundamentally, the Middle east has a lot of capital. They're going to invest it in artificial intelligence one way or the other. They are. You know, some of the investors in the region are incredibly sophisticated, and a lot of them have rightly recognized that they want an economy that is diversified away from hydrocarbons. And AI is fundamentally a path that allows them to shift from a paradigm where they export hydrocarbons to a world where they export intelligence and tokens. They are, as you know, a fundamental building block of having of large, of training, large computing capacity is cheap access to cheap energy. An integral function of the cost of compute is the cost of energy. And in the Middle east you have a lot of very cheap energy. And so that is the comparative advantage that they have identified accurately and that they want to capitalize on. So our view is let's work together to have a mutually beneficial approach. We want to enable, you know, because we have a positive, a positive sum view of the world. We, we believe in a world where we help them achieve their aspirations that they've set for themselves in a way that actually grows the pie and offers our companies opportunities to collaborate on something greater. And so we, we see our approach to the Middle east as an opportunity to allow our companies to expand their lead because it's actually a market that gives our companies access to a lot of cheap energy. The uae, the Qataris, the Saudis, the Israelis, all of them are interested in AI. If they want to make available large compute capacity to our companies, we think that's a great thing. And so we've been having a lot of conversations with them. The UAE and Saudi Arabia. We signed an AI, an AI deal. We signed two large AI deals with them. I was in Israel, where we signed a bilateral joint statement on technology cooperation, which we're very excited about, which included artificial intelligence. And so, you know, we're very supportive. It's a fascinating region because I think for a long time the stereotype was that the Middle east was an unstable place and East Asia was an engine of growth. And part of what we've seen over the last 20 or so years is really that region emerge economically in a way that has caught a lot of people by surprise. So it's exciting to see a lot of the developments.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (24:36)

Yeah, absolutely. And to that end, you've talked about how if the 20th century ran on oil and steel, the 21st will run on compute and minerals that feed it. Why is the right analogy, you know, compute and oil?

Jacob Helberg (24:53)

Well, because oil and energy were fundamentally functions of economic growth and economic activity. And when you had the Industrial Revolution, the integration of industrialized energy, industrial scale energy production, really led to a step change and a secular acceleration of economic growth. And part of what we are likely to see with artificial intelligence, and I actually co authored a paper at the White House Economic Council on the Great Divergence is the superintelligence revolution, I think is likely to lead to a secular acceleration in economic growth similar to what we saw during the first Industrial Revolution, where you start to see the growth band of GDP growth start to shift to the right, basically. So, you know, when we had societies that were primarily agrarian, growth was between 0 and 1% year by year. If you're between 0 and 1%, that means you don't have compounding growth because, you know you're under 1%. After the industrial revolution, we had between, you know, 2 and 3%, 1 and 3%, roughly on a year by year basis. All of a sudden that unlocked compounding growth. That's when you started to see economic growth grow up exponentially eventually, like a hockey stick. And part of what we're likely to see with the AI revolution is actually a shift upwards in an economic growth where you start to see growth pick up between 3 and 5 or maybe even 6% on a year by year basis, which is really a dramatic acceleration of growth, what evidence do we have to point to that while we've already had growth break 5% in the US and that's huge because the US is the world's largest economy. So when we're growing at 5%, that's like adding a GDP the size of Saudi Arabia to our economy. I mean, it's massive and it's a massive movement and creation of wealth. And so that's Number one. Number two, the other big indicator is we're seeing productivity break 5% growth in productivity. So if you believe that productivity is obviously going to accelerate growth expansion, you're seeing that data. The other early indicators that we're seeing is we're seeing record demand. Demand pick up for everything from energy, minerals, components, compute capacity, all of that demand is massively going up. And so we're actually seeing an economy that's Almost supply constrained, where demand is just so intense it's outpacing the rate of supply. And so to me, that shows an economy that's actually really running on all cylinders. And so it's quite exciting to see this economic acceleration.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (27:52)

And it's funny because it really came at the perfect time where for a while, the total factor productivity statistics weren't super strong. We're reducing, whereas the debt was also increasing. You know, local to San Francisco. You know, people were moving during COVID and people were saying, oh, you know, is San Francisco, you know, what's happening there? And then, of course, boom happens. SF but who said that? Yeah, exactly. Some good friends. But also, you know, just for the US in general, it seems like this is our godsend in terms of, you know, because people were saying, you know, during Doge, et cetera, like, you know, we've really got to take care of the debt. And there just seems to be, you know, you can limit it to some extent, but there just seems to be this spending monsters, and maybe it's just easier to grow our way out of it.

Jacob Helberg (28:40)

Yeah, I mean, it is true how. And it's such a quintessentially American story where, you know, we somehow figure things out at the 11th hour. Covid hits. I mean, it is true that San Francisco did not seem like it was

Podcast Host (interviewer) (28:54)

in a great spot.

Jacob Helberg (28:56)

I mean, we spent some time in Miami for a little bit.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (28:58)

Yeah, totally good times.

Jacob Helberg (29:01)

And, and so, you know, a lot of people were very, very concerned about the explosion in the deficit and all the rest. And obviously Ray Dalio spent a lot of time talking about how we're in a debt spiral, et cetera. And what we've seen is the AI revolution catches the economy by storm. San Francisco makes this shocking comeback, and hopefully it lasts. And, and, you know, productivity picks up, growth starts to accelerate. And. And it's. It's actually really amazing because growth solves a lot of problems. I mean, it solves the debt problem. It solves, you know, a lot of problems. And this is actually something that the President really understands so well. I mean, one of the things that is one of the things that I really took away from my time in tech is, you know, when you really great founders understand the importance and the power of prioritizing and isolating signal from noise, they understand how they're able to identify what are the one or two things that, if I don't get right, are decisive. And we are actually really lucky in a way to have a president that really has that kind of thinking And a lot of those attributes because he really understands that, you know, if the economy grows really fast, a lot of the other problems go away.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (30:29)

Yeah.

Jacob Helberg (30:30)

Just completely on their own. And, and so it's actually really amazing how, how, you know, this has actually, you know, come together so quickly in, in a year. Totally. I mean, it's been one year. It's really amazing.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (30:43)

Yeah. I want to gear towards closing by going back to this idea of economic security that you talk about. You know, I believe China processes like 90% of, of, of, of. Of mineral stuff. We were discussing. And I'm curious, is there a way of actually diversifying or what do you identify as the critical bottlenecks or risks that we have to solve?

Jacob Helberg (31:04)

So I'm actually incredibly bullish that we're going to solve this. So the, the big picture is obviously, as we mentioned earlier, is we need to secure our supply chains, which requires putting a lot of pieces of the puzzle together. It's very complicated. With that being said, we have the world's most talented founders. Unlike some places, we actually empower those founders. You know, we don't send them hiding to Japan. And we're very creative. And you know, look, we are a country from our earliest days, we're a country of underdogs. You know, we were, our country was started as an army of ragtag, you know, rebels that overtook, that rebelled against an empire at the time. And that's just part of our DNA. So we tend to perform really well at the 11th hour. And, and I'm totally confident that we're actually going to solve this. The question is time is how fast can we actually turn, you know, reverse 25 years essentially and you know, we'll see. But I will say President Trump's only been in power a year.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (32:12)

Yeah.

Jacob Helberg (32:13)

And just look at how different the world is. I mean. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that it's look really different. And the, the running expression, I mean it's, it's really one of the fascinating things about, about doing the, the role that I, that I, that I'm currently doing at the State Department is I really get a front row seat into having conversations with foreign leaders and, you know, getting an up close feel for, you know, our country, our administration and the amount of admiration that they have for President Trump really can't, you know, be overstated. They know that he's a sample of one and they really kind of have the same kind of admiration that you would actually, that, you know, that people would typically be accustomed to feeling in the tech industry when they admire founders because they kind of know that he's just such a, you know, a leader and also just so unique, you know, unlike anyone else. I mean, it's just like when people in the tech industry talked about Steve Jobs. You know, he's kind of like this unique person that had a unique sets of attributes and, and so that has actually been really, really striking. But, but people also want to work with America. I mean, people fundamentally like our country.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (33:32)

Yeah.

Jacob Helberg (33:33)

And, and I think it's because subconsciously, I think, think I really do think it's because people know that we are positive sun thinkers. And so they inherently know that that is a less threatening, you know, worldview, that working with America does not mean that it is, you know, zero sum. And so I think that's, you know, really plays to our advantage.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (33:56)

I'll make that my last question. Some people predicted that this sort of era, this administration would be in all forms kind of a retreat from globalization and weakening of our alliances. But Paxilica represents, you know, great global partnership and strengthening of alliances. When you. And one thing you talked about is how different countries bring their own specialization and superpower to the table and we're stronger together. Why don't you just share some examples of what that looks like?

Jacob Helberg (34:20)

Yeah. So I would characterize, you know, you're right, some people said it's the end of globalization, et cetera. I would obviously counter that it's not the end of globalization per se. Globalization was a banner that was really used to describe a period of time where we engaged in unilateral trade concessions that were completely one sided with the rest of the world. And when people say globalization, what does that mean? That means a world where we were running massive trade deficits, where we basically exported almost nothing while importing everything from the rest of the world. That was globalization. And so what we're doing is actually re engineering our trade architecture to have a world where we continue trading. But our trading architecture is on fundamentally more favorable terms that are fair and more reciprocal for American workers than American builders. That doesn't mean that we're against partnering people. We started Paksilica, the president started the Board of Peace. We actually welcome partnering with a lot of other countries who share our interests and our worldview. So the idea that somehow revisiting a lot of the globalization era arrangements is a retreat from the world, I think is obviously completely false and, you know, very partisan. We're engaged in almost every place on earth and we just do it in a way that is fundamentally more favorable to our national security interests.

Podcast Host (interviewer) (35:51)

Yeah, that's a great place to wrap. Jacob, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Jacob Helberg (35:54)

Thanks for having me.

Podcast Host (a16z representative) (35:58)

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