This transcript is generated with the help of AI and is lightly edited for clarity.
REID:
I’m Reid Hoffman.
ARIA:
And I’m Aria Finger.
REID:
We want to know what happens, if in the future, everything breaks humanity’s way.
ARIA:
Typically, we ask our guests for their outlook on the best possible future. But now, every other week, I get to ask Reid for his take.
REID:
This is Possible.
ARIA:
Reid, so lovely to be here today. So last week we were lucky enough to talk to Sarah Longwell and we talked about our current politics. We talked about focus groups. Obviously we have an election coming up. And so a lot of people have been asking me about the state of politics in Silicon Valley. We have some high profile folks coming out as Trump supporters, but in my mind, a lot of the Valley is still blue, or at least still sort of democratic ideals and probably are going to vote for Kamala Harris. How do you see the changing landscape of the Valley leading up to November?
REID:
Well, I definitely think there might’ve been like 3% that was pro-Trump before. It has moved — it’s now like, call it 8%, right? So it’s like even more than doubled from its small percentage. But a lot of those people also tend to be the very loud “look at me” kind of people, not all of them. I mean, there’s, there’s a range, but, but there’s, there’s a set of that. And so therefore it’s created what is nationally within our media ecosystem of is Silicon Valley turning red? But The Information — great kind of tech publication in Silicon Valley — did a thorough numbers analysis. So it was rather the, “Well, you know, person X asserts that, you know, Silicon Valley’s going Trump and person Y, Reid, often asserts that it’s no, vigorously, you know, Kamala Harris for president.” And you go, “Well, go look at the numbers and go look at the polls versus the talking heads.” And The Information poll showed substantial breadth and depth of support for Kamala Harris.
REID:
Now, that being said, there are some important issues where Democrats have kind of gone somewhat wrong. They’ve kind of gone a little bit too much in the Elizabeth Warren, “Let’s, you know, declare war on Big Tech,” you know, kind of approach. That frustrates a lot of people who are otherwise in favor of the, you know, modern, you know, kind of progressive society that aligns a lot of Silicon Valley people to some parts of the Democratic agenda. They also tend to be, you know, kind of like, “Let’s build entrepreneurship and business as part of how we support things.” And there’s, you know, some parts of the Democratic party that, you know, kind of don’t understand how fundamental business is to the operating society. Because it’s like all of the economics, not just the jobs for everyday people, but like the taxes that fund the government all come from a healthy functioning business.
REID:
And if you have a bad theory of business and economics — you know, exports, scale of businesses and so forth — you just think, “Everything should be, be run through small shopkeepers and small business.” You’re like, it doesn’t work that way for the, the, the greater economy. And so if you have a bad theory of economics, that’s also frustrating to, you know, kind of the Silicon Valley, you know, kind of entrepreneurs and business people and investors or who support the modern, you know, progressive agenda for, for better society — better healthcare, better education. Part of what’s happened, you know, under the, you know, Biden-Harris administration has been a general “crypto all bad” versus “let’s shape it for what places lead to this better progressive society and let’s allow innovation to progress out that way.” I think that’s probably the loudest Silicon Valley group that has turned pro-Trump.
REID:
And, you know, because it most naturally aligns to the place where I, where I substantially disagree with some of the people in Silicon Valley who is like, “Well, it’s all about my pocketbook and so it should be my — lower taxes. That’s the only thing I should be voting on.” And I’m like, look, taxes is an important issue relative to investment and so forth. But the really key thing for a successful business is, you know, kind of stability, rule of law ability to sell our products globally within the tech Silicon Valley industry. Like one of the things that is not really appreciated is how much Silicon Valley grows towards, you know, these scale companies where greater than 50% of the revenues are overseas. That kind of export is really critical to the healthy functioning of any economy. What supports all the small businesses — like, you know, whether they’re restaurants or accounting firms, everything else — is a big influx of capital, which means you would need to have an export industry that actually works. And this is an export industry that’s working for the U.S. And that’s part of the reason why I think it’s so important to be positive on like, one of many reasons to be positive on big tech, despite kind of a bipartisan attack on big tech.
ARIA:
Yeah, and I mean, I think to your point, it’s clear that if you are, you know, most people in Silicon Valley are pro-science, they’re pro-skilled immigration. Like there’s certain things that actually just lead to this robust Silicon Valley ecosystem. And you can both be pro-big tech and having business friendly policies and also for not screwing over everyday Americans, but also helping small businesses and, you know, having that be critical. And I’ve heard you say many times that one of the most important things for functioning business is the rule of law and making sure that we understand democracy and, you know, the transfer of power. So are there things in the actual voting experience that you would change? Like how can we modernize voting? Are punching ballots and, and Scantrons [laugh] the highest that we can do? Or, or what would you change or recommend?
REID:
Well, everyone naturally in the smartphone arena kind of says, “Hey, the voting should be a smartphone app.” And that would be obviously a very good place to get to. Now one of the challenges that we have to deal with is, we have to make sure that you prevent fraud in these things. And electronics give you easier capabilities for attack and fraud. For example, I do my mail-in ballot to be able — to do that I think is actually essentially in pro-democracy, but you have to mail it in and sign it and, you know, it gives a paper trail and is, has an audit trail and is harder to scam with a cyber attack. So I think all of that is frankly, you know, kind of really good to pay attention to. Now that being said, you know, I do think that the notion of, “How do we essentially, you know, kind of rethink informed and intelligent voting in a democracy,” because it really matters.
REID:
And, you know, you could naturally say to the fact that, you know, the principal information ecosystems that citizens navigate is a combination of media ecosystems and political campaigning ecosystems. Both of those have various forms of bias. Now, I always find it entertaining that the, the most intense attacks of media bias come from the right wing, you know, with so-called mainstream media — which doesn’t mean that there’s zero bias there, but then when you go over and look at Fox News and other kinds of things and you go, “Oh my God, is this like terribly slanted.” A lot of shows formerly Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, you know, go, “We act like we’re news programs. Then when we’re attacked for slander and misinformation, we claim we’re only in an entertainment show in all of our legal paper filings.” Like, one of the things that I would actually really like to now have, like, across television and online media is that, you know, you kind of have almost like a little like, you know, header. Like, am I an entertainment show or I’m a news show.
REID:
And if I’m a new show, then I agree to those things. And so if I’m claiming that I’m an entertainment show in my legal filings for not being held accountable, just have a little barrier to say “I’m an entertainment, not news show.” Because it’s like, you know, that that’s what it should be. And you can imagine this, you know, kind of like how do we upgrade the information ecosystems into helping people make a decision about like, okay, this is entertainment stuff, this is political advertising, and this is actually in fact information that’s holding itself accountable — including legal accountability — the way that quality news organizations actually do. Which by the way includes some pieces of Fox News [laugh], right? Not the whole ecosystem, but the — like, we’re holding ourselves accountable to accuracy and reporting. And then you could imagine that this would change a lot of the voting system makeover in terms of information flows and, and the way things could work.
ARIA:
And I think, you know, you brought up people have to trust the system and I think one interesting thing that Ben Adida at VotingWorks is doing is he’s creating an open source 501(c)(3) voting machine so that everyone can come and he can say, “Listen, I have no agenda. I just want to count the vote.” Because one of the things that perhaps one side is trying to do is undermine the faith in our democracy. And so that’s going to be one of the things that will — we need people to believe in it in order to sort of continue what we’re doing in our country. And so if we step back from just the voting experience and think about the political system more broadly, of course on the AI side, we have all of these AI agents and they’re helping us and they’re doing customer service and businesses are employing them. Do you see ways that AI agents can be helpful in the political system and environment?
REID:
Well, it’s a complicated additional step to what I was just talking about in the voting experience. Because that was kind of like just pure information flows. Do you say whether or not you are, this is entertainment [laugh], right? Political advertising? Or this is factual news based on holding ourselves accountable. And to some degree we’re going to need the same kind of thing when it comes to agents together with some more questions around like, okay, so like what point of view is this agent constructed from? Because it’s kind of data sources, it’s human feedback learning. And so where then — we’re going to have the same kind of political melee that we have about information sources. Like, is Google Search biased? And so we’re going to have the same issue with AI, which is basically, okay, so how is this agent constructed? Is the fact that it’s giving us feedback in various ways, like of saying well it’s, it, you know, like the agent criticizes Trump a lot more than it criticizes Biden, which is one of the things that was happening kind of before on this stuff.
REID:
It’s like, “Okay, what’s the basis of that? Is that a systematic bias training? Is that out of data? Is that out of other things?” And then how do you navigate that? And so I think that we can use AI agents to really help us have an informed political, you know, political front, but we’re going to have to navigate what is fundamentally very difficult issues — which we’re navigating poorly right now when it comes to information and education about what counts as kind of a credible point of view. Now that being said, my hope is to say, “Well, let’s agree to what a kind of a scientific level of training is.” Kind of just like we agree to scientific facts and panels and so forth. And why I think it’s only, you know, the science view is actually in fact, objectively true — pro-vaccine minus, you know, people like RFK who have worms in their brain arguing anti-vaccine.
REID:
And then you go, okay, what are the values, the red versus blue statements on top of this? And then make sure that we have like, almost like, call it economists like trained, like trained agents, like we are trained with this point of view, but on this like on a common basis of facts and science as a way of doing it. And then you’ll have multiple agents that you’ll have available to you, like as an info-vore as an individual consumer of this. And then, for example, when you have platforms you can say, “Okay, give me the red and blue analysis of this article, the red and blue analysis of this point of view, a red and blue analysis of what’s going on in Ukraine or other places,” as ways of doing it. And I, maybe it’s because I’m optimistic about how we can shape better future societies with technology — à la Possible. But I think those kinds of things could help a lot.
ARIA:
You know, this is probably our only political episode between now and November 5th. We’re sort of getting back into the more tried and true Possible episodes. So is there — you know, this is something that you are deeply working on you know, between now and November 5th — is there any last thoughts about the election? Anything top of mind around voting or anything you want to share with Possible listeners?
REID:
Part of what Possible is, is about going forward versus going back. And the way that we create the better futures is how we shape how we go forward. And that’s part of the reason why we’re very technologically positive. That’s part of the reason why we’re very you know, kind of, what are the new ways that we can integrate technology in what we’re doing. And even when it gets to transition difficulties, whether it’s in industries or jobs or, you know, understanding of the world through, through information. So it’s that forward-looking. Now with that basis, it’s probably no surprise to our listeners that I’m very strongly in favor of Vice President Harris over former President Trump because, you know, I believe in the stability of the rule of law.
REID:
I believe in the, you know, the importance of truth telling and accuracy. When you looked at, you know, president Trump’s, you know, debate performance, it was entirely a bunch of lies and slander. The important thing about building the future is to be truth telling. And by the way, of course people say, “Hey, politicians, shade — that happens. Marketing shades — that happens.” But it’s a massive difference between the two. Vice President Harris has actually in fact grown up with a, “We understand technological innovation is what helps create our future.” And so she’s actually closer to that. And so, you know, for all of these reasons and many more, I’m obviously hopeful and very positive on Harris and will be articulating that view very consistently and very positively for pro-business, pro-technology, and pro-innovation reasons.
ARIA:
Fantastic. And I’ll just end with something that you told me, which I thought was so prescient. It’s, you know, “Imagine if it’s November 6th and the candidate that you wanted loses. What do you wish you had done? Do you wish you had, you know, given a hundred more dollars? Do you wish you had volunteered in a swing state for another few hours? Do you wish you had called that friend?” So anything that post-election you wish you would’ve done — the time is now.
REID:
Yeah.
ARIA:
So, don’t wait, and just go out there and do it. Reid, thank you so much.
REID:
Aria, as always a pleasure.
REID:
Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network. It’s hosted by Aria Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Shaun Young. Possible is produced by Katie Sanders, Edie Allard, Sara Schleede, Adrien Behn, and Paloma Moreno Jiménez. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.
ARIA:
Special thanks to Karrie Huang, Surya Yalamanchili, Saida Sapieva, Ian Alas, Greg Beato, Parth Patil, and Ben Relles.