policy

“If America is going to be America in the next one hundred years, we have to get this right.” - Ben Horowitz

This week on “The Ben & Marc Show”, a16z co-founders Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen take on one of the most hot button issues facing technology today: tech regulation and policy.

In this one-on-one conversation, Ben and Marc delve into why the political interests of “Big Tech” conflict with a positive technological future, the necessity of decentralized AI, and how the future of American innovation is at its most critical point. They also answer YOUR questions from X (formerly Twitter). That and much more. Enjoy!

Resources:

Watch full episode: https://youtu.be/dX7d6bRJI9k

Marc on X: https://twitter.com/pmarca

Marc’s Substack: https://pmarca.substack.com

Ben on X: https://twitter.com/bhorowitz

Ben’s Article: “Politics and the Future” bit.ly/3PGKrgw

Stay Updated: 

Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z

Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/

Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. But despite the hype around personalized avatars or podcast language translation, artificial intelligence is not only impacting the creative spheres; in fact it’s hard to find an industry that isn’t being touched by this technology – and defense of our country is far from excluded.

In this episode, originally recorded in the heart of Washington DC this January during a16z’s American Dynamism Summit, a16z General Partner Martin Casado and a16z enterprise editor. Derrick Harris are joined by the first-ever CTO of the CIA, Nand Mulchandani.

In this wide-ranging conversation, they discuss the evolving relationship between analysts and AI, how governments can keep up with this exponential technology, and finally, how it’s impacting both offense and defense.  

This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, national security, and policy-making in the age of artificial intelligence. Stay tuned for more exclusive conversations from a16z's second annual American Dynamism Summit in Washington DC.

Topics Covered:

00:00 - Intelligence in the Age of AI

02:28 - Rethinking Jobs and AI's Asymmetric Power

05:00 - The History of AI in the Intelligence Community

07:00 - Operational Utilization of AI

10:40 - Analytic Capabilities and Uncertainty

12:56 - AI's 'Hallucination' Concerns

16:37 - Analyst Skill Sets and AI Tools

26:29 - Supply Chain and Open Source

31:35 - Public-Private Partnerships

41:33 - Government as a Customer and Partner in Tech

42:43 - Policy, Technology, and Regulation

Resources

Learn more about AD Summit 2024: www.a16z.com/adsummit

Watch all of the stage talks at AD Summit 2024: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM4u6XbiXf5pAKmk1AeZ9964KGScf4lHM

Read the CIA’s announcement around the new CTO role: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/cia-names-first-chief-technology-officer/

Find Nand Mulchandani on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nandmulchandani

Find Martin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/martin_casado

Find Derrick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/derrickharris

Stay Updated: 

Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z

Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/

Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

On Into America presents: Uncounted Millions: The Power of Reparations, award-winning MSNBC correspondent Trymaine Lee dives into one of today’s most pressing debates: reparations. 

Months ago, Trymaine discovered the little-known story of Gabriel Coakley and it blew his mind. In the midst of the Civil War, Coakley was among a handful of Black people who found a way to get compensated for slavery by the US government. On Uncounted Millions, Trymaine talks to Coakley’s descendants about how reparations forever changed their family’s trajectory. And as more cities and states consider the issue at a policy level, he imagines how reparations might shape the whole of Black America.  

Listen to the first episode now. And follow the show: https://link.chtbl.com/iapum_fdlw

"The Ben & Marc Show" features a16z's co-founders Ben Horowitz & Marc Andreessen. In this episode, Marc and Ben continue their in-depth exploration of the current education system. While Part I of their discussion unpacked the crisis facing higher education, Part II presents solutions to overhaul the modern university.

In this one-on-one conversation, Ben and Marc delve into actions that existing institutions can take to improve their current and future situations. This includes exploring new methods for talent recruitment, providing a more individualized education experience for students, and reducing administrative bloat. They also apply an entrepreneurial lens to each university function, revealing startup opportunities poised to emerge – including the building of brand new institutions, nonprofits, and research entities. Enjoy!

Resources:
*Watch Part I: https://youtu.be/7J2_G4oHRQ0
*Watch Part II: https://youtu.be/EeIdalo2huI

Marc on X: https://twitter.com/pmarca
Marc’s Substack: https://pmarca.substack.com/
Ben on X: https://twitter.com/bhorowitz
“South Park” episode mentioned in this discussion: – Eps 1505 (stream on Max): https://bit.ly/3HrZQg0

Stay Updated:

Find us on X: https://twitter.com/a16z
Find us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

How do you prevent a heat stroke? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly learn about stopping heat illness deaths and the challenges of increasing heat waves with kinesiologist, Bud Cooper, and climate scientist, Radley Horton.

NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/heat-stroke-with-bud-cooper-and-radley-horton/

Thanks to our Patrons Zammo Taylor, Bill wessale, Korey B Helms, Kevin Browning, and Justin for supporting us this week.

Photo Credit: James St. John, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There's no question technology played a huge role in the recent/current pandemic, including especially in the plug-and-play engineering and incredibly fast development behind the mRNA vaccines... But is there an even bigger role for the private sector, not just government, to play (and partner) when it comes to key infrastructure for future such emergencies, and even beyond?

Especially given how faulty the translation of institutional science to policy and public health measures turned out to be -- for instance, with "6 feet" of social distancing, or with fomite (vs. aerosol) transmission of COVID. And why are we still talking about the same, not specific, vaccine booster for the Delta variant? What can we learn about real-world evidence, other clinical trial approaches, and progressive (vs. binary) EUA approvals when it comes to public health emergencies? Are capabilities like genomic surveillance and mapping strains -- which require layers of technology, real time -- sitting in the right places?

In this special book-launch episode of the a16z Podcast, former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb -- author of the upcoming new book, Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us, and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic -- shares insights on the above, and revealing stories from behind the scenes. Do we need a new entity to manage public health through a national security lens, and is the government capable? Gottlieb debates this and other probing questions from a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen (who famously wrote "It's time to build"); a16z bio general partner Vineeta Agarwala MD, Phd (who has spoken about the trials of clinical trials, practiced medicine during the pandemic, and more); and founding a16z bio general partner Vijay Pande PhD (who, among other things, founded the distributed computing project Folding@Home which pivoted to COVID proteins).

One thing's for sure -- with this COVID crisis, we're at an inflection point between old and new technology -- whether it's in how we make vaccines, or how we apply the fields of synthetic biology and genetic epidemiology in public health response. So now's the time to look both backward, and forward, to really change things...

How did we save the ozone layer? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice break down the campaign to save the ozone layer with atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon and sustabaility expert Stephen Andersen. What can we apply to the climate crisis?

NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:
https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-in-the-o-zone-saving-the-world-with-susan-solomon-stephen-andersen/

Thanks to our Patrons ryan ogle, David Matthews, Colleen Magee-Uhlik, Ryan Atashkar, Cameron Q Myhre, Jordan Sisinni, and Mien for supporting us this week.

Photo Credit: NASA/Expedition 40 crew member, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

All about section 230 of the Communications Decency Act -- in what Wired senior writer (and host of the Get Wired podcast) described as "one of the clearest-but-still-nuanced explainers I've heard - worth listening to". 

So what does and doesn't it say? How does this law play out against broader questions and debates around platforms, content moderation, and free speech? This conversation between Mike Masnick (founder and editor in chief of Techdirt) and a16z editor in chief Sonal Chokshi was originally published on our show 16 Minutes, in the context of previous protests and presidential tweets (and an executive order then to prevent “online censorship”)-- but is exactly as relevant today... perhaps now more than ever.

https://a16z.com/2020/05/31/16mins-section-230-communications-decency-act-content-moderation-free-speech-internet-past-present-future/

image: presidential tweet activity/ Wikimedia Commons

This episode features two relevant but previously recorded episodes, discussing the relevance of the Paycheck Protection Program (or PPP) from the Small Business Administration and the role of government stimulus/ pandemic relief for the economy as well as where tech comes in. 

It combines 2 separate episodes, beginning with one recorded much earlier this year (on our show 16 Minutes), which outlines a useful analogy of "eminent domain" for government-mandated shutdowns of certain businesses and technology considerations; and then is followed by an episode (recorded later this year) on preventing fraud and the role of fintech. 

Both episodes feature in common a16z general partner in fintech Alex Rampell, who also wrote about how Small Businesses Depend on the Stimulus Package, and The Stimulus Will Depend on Fintech, which you can find at: a16z.com/pandemicstimulus

WHEN are we going to have a COVID-19 vaccine, and how the heck are we going from (what’s been traditionally been up to) 12 years or so of vaccine development compressed into 12 months or so? What will and won’t be compromised here, and where do new technologies -- like mRNA or messenger RNA vaccines -- come in? Where will vaccines likely be distributed first, who will and won't get them initially, both across populations... and nations?

Rajeev Venkayya, president of the Global Vaccine Business Unit at Takeda Pharmaceutical Company and former White House Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense (where, among other things, he was the principal author of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza) joins this special deep-dive episode of the a16z Podcast, in conversation with general partner Jorge Conde to discuss all things vaccines. Including where does manufacturing and scale-up come in -- is "plug and play" really here? -- and by the way, why have we traditionally used eggs in growing vaccines?

Where and how can startups and others participate in vaccine development, given how competitive, time-consuming, capital intensive, and risky it is to develop (and sell) them? Can we decouple the question of how we reopen schools with when we have a vaccine? And how do we maintain not just safety and efficacy of vaccines but trust and transparency when it comes to mis/information? We may actually see the emergence of a "Neo Anti-Vaxxer" thanks to the rush... but we may also be entering a renaissance for vaccinology after this pandemic. So what changes, what doesn't?

image: Jernej Furman / Flickr

Imagine a world where every country has a digital minister and technologically-enabled legislative bodies. Votes are completely transparent and audio and video of all conversations between lawmakers and lobbyists are available to the public immediately. Conspiracy theories are acted upon within two hours and replaced by humorous videos that clarify the truth. Imagine that expressing outrage about your local political environment turned into a participatory process where you were invited to solve that problem and even entered into a face to face group workshop. Does that sound impossible? It’s ambitious and optimistic, but that's everything that our guest this episode, Audrey Tang, digital minister of Taiwan, has been working on in her own country for many years. Audrey’s path into public service began in 2014 with her participation in the Sunflower Movement, a student-led protest in Taiwan’s parliamentary building, and she’s been building on that experience ever since, leading her country into a future of truly participatory digital democracy. 

#StopHateforProfit is an important first step, but we need to go much further. 

 We cover the tricky but important topic of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The 1996 law has been in the headlines a lot recently, in the context of Twitter, the president’s tweets, and an executive order put out by the White House on “preventing online censorship”. All of this is playing out against the broader, more profound cultural context and events around the death of George Floyd in Minnesota and beyond, and ongoing old-new debates around content moderation on social media. [Please note this episode was first published  May 31.] 

To make sense of only the technology and policy aspects of Section 230 specifically — and where the First Amendment, content moderation, and more come in — a16z host Sonal Chokshi brings on our first-ever outside guest for 16 Minutes, Mike Masnick, founder of the digital-native policy think tank Copia Institute and editor of the longtime news & analysis site Techdirt.com (which also features an online symposium for experts discussing difficult policy topics). Masnick has written extensively about these topics — not just recently but for years — along with others in media recently attempting to explain what’s going on and dissect what the executive order purports to do (some are even tracking different versions as well).

So what’s hype/ what’s real — given this show’s throughline! — around what CDA 230 precisely does and doesn’t do, the role of agencies like the FCC, and more? What are the nuances and exceptions, and how do we tease apart the most common (yet incorrect) rhetorical arguments such as “platform vs. publisher”, “like a utility/ phone company”, “public forum/square” and so on? Finally: how does and doesn’t Section 230 connect to the First Amendment when it comes to companies vs. governments; what does “good faith” really mean and what are possible paths and ways forward among the divisive debates around content moderation? All this and more in this extra-long explainer episode of 16 Minutes, shared here for longtime listeners of the a16z Podcast.

image: presidential tweet activity/ Wikimedia Commons

Pandemics are predictable; what's not predictable is the intensity, or the precise timing of arrival. That's where early detection -- not just rapid warning (as with something like Google Flu Trends back in the day), or even delayed warnings (as with CDC flu trackers and such) -- comes in. Because unfortunately, many disease tracking efforts old and new are "like watching the weather forecast a week after you've experienced that weather", observes a16z general partner Jorge Conde.

And this matters for saving lives; for load balancing and allocating resources (ventilators, PPE, supplies); getting back to work; and much more. Even a two-week advantage could have made a huge difference! Which is what sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis (who directs the Human Nature Lab, part of the Yale Institute for Network Science, and also author of the book Blueprint) learned from the H1N1 pandemic. Specifically, the role of social network "sensors" -- where friends in one's network graph can be like canaries in the proverbial coal mine to help detect pandemics earlier.

In fact, the lab recently released an app called Hunala (which uses information crowdsourced among networks) to determine one's likelihood of contracting flu/ influenza-like or other respiratory illnesses through a personalized daily assessment of risk. Kind of like Waze, but for illnesses not car accidents. So in this episode of the a16z Podcast, the two take that analogy far. They also discuss the role of other mobility data and population flows in China for where and when the pandemic spread; the nuances behind "superspreaders"; how bad is the coronavirus, really; and the near future of "bio-surveillance" -- not just from a personal risk perspective, but from a global public-health perspective... Can we get the holy grail here without sacrificing privacy and agency?

How can we feel empowered to take on global threats? The battle begins in our heads, argues Christiana Figueres. She became the United Nation’s top climate official, after she had watched the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit collapse “in blood, in screams, in tears.” In the wake of that debacle, she began performing an act of emotional Aikido on herself, her team and eventually delegates from 196 nations. She called it “stubborn optimism." It requires a clear and alluring vision of a future that can supplant the dystopian and discouraging vision of what will happen if the world fails to act. It was stubborn optimism, she says, that convinced those nations to sign the first global climate framework, the Paris Agreement. We explore how a similar shift in Silicon Valley's vision could lead 3 billion people to take action.

“It's Time to Build” by Marc Andreessen. 

You can also find and share this essay at a16z.com/build

with @JorgeCondeBio, @julesyoo, and @omnivorousread

In some ways, the coronavirus feels like it came out of nowhere—a kind of Black Swan event. But at the same time, it's been exposing a lot of the fundamental flaws in our healthcare system that now feel like a perfect storm coming together... and have hurt our ability to address the problem that we should really have seen coming.

In this episode, a16z General Partners Jorge Conde and Julie Yoo talk with Hanne Tidnam about some of those big forces and dynamics in the healthcare system, at the intersection of business, policy, and public health: how in healthcare like perhaps nowhere else, broken policy can lead to broken business models that, in the wrong circumstances, can then lead major failures in public health like the one we’re seeing today; where we’ve seen this before, in the markets of vaccines, antibiotics, and diagnostics; and what should be different next time, so that when a new pandemic hits we aren’t facing another perfect storm.

Wealth without health isn't wealth at all.

Let's say you're the richest person in the world. You have anything and everything you could ever want. You've started companies, written books, gone on tours—you name it. But your body isn't in the best shape. You've put it second to your career goals. And now, it's starting to show.

Your health is a different kind of wealth. Taking care of your finances is important, but so is taking care of your body. If you neglect your body, your body will neglect you. As you age, this only gets harder. You won't be able to enjoy life because you'll feel tired, sick, or miserable.

Of course, exercise is vital to maintaining good health, but so are the foods that you eat. The food we eat has an impact on our brain chemistry, our physical health, our community, and even climate change!

It's easy to eat the processed food that's offered to us daily, but if we want to start investing in our health, it's time for a change.

If there's one person who knows how to help, it's Dr. Mark Hyman.

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one revolved around using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more.

Dr. Hyman is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He's the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, is the Head of Strategy and Innovation of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, AND is the Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine.

And somehow, in the midst of all this, he's a twelve-time New York Times bestselling author and hosts one of the leading health podcasts, The Doctor's Farmacy. He's also a regular medical contributor on several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, the Today Show, Good Morning America, The View, The Dr. Oz Show, and CNN.

Needless to say, he's an expert. Dr. Hyman is one of my favorite people to learn from about health because he is so honest about what’s going on. Instead of trying to push his own agenda, he’s got humanity’s best interest at heart.

If you're wanting to invest in your health, look no further! Join me on Episode 916 with Dr. Mark Hyman to learn how eating the right foods can make you healthier and happier.

• What are the first steps someone can take to fix the food crisis? (31:50)
• Has dairy consumption been declining? (43:00)

• How many people in the U.S. are actually sick (1:01)
• The truth about what diabetes is and what causes it (7:03)
• The history of processed food and what it does to the environment (11:15)
• How much food we waste annually (16:45)
• Why the FDA doesn’t regulate food the way other countries do (18:40)
• How the food industry convinces people bad food is safe (23:45)
• Why nut milks can be problematic (45:02)
• Plus much more...

If you enjoyed this episode, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/916 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes

What difference does a few hours of Congressional testimony make? Tristan takes us behind the scenes of his January 8th testimony to the Energy and Commerce Committee on disinformation in the digital age. With just minutes to answer each lawmaker’s questions, he speaks with Committee members about how the urgency and complexity of humane technology issues is an immense challenge. Tristan returned hopeful, and though it sometimes feels like Groundhog Day, each trip to DC reveals evolving conversations, advancing legislation, deeper understanding and stronger coalitions.