David Sacks

The All-In Podcast

@DavidSacks

Tech founder & investor @Craft_Ventures @theallinpod. Co-Chair, President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology.

sacks.substack.com Joined March 2007

3.5K Following 1.8M Followers 15K Posts

Latest posts 5

David Sacks @DavidSacks Oct 22

There’s a world of difference between user-authorized agents (Muse, Instinct, Grokbot, etc.) and true unauthorized/rogue agents that could constitute cyberattacks.

Most of the activity described in the Axios story appears to be the former: customers sharing credentials with agents so they can take actions on their behalf. This may violate bank terms requiring humans to log in themselves, but these are in no way cyberattacks.

The direction banks should go is to support user-directed agents. For example, Amex is an authorized connection in Muse, making it easy for users to grant, limit, and revoke access.

Read-only permission levels are a sensible interim step. Several banks already support or are moving toward them. Full write access (with user credentials) is a different risk category and should be approached carefully.

Frightening the public by blurring the line between user-authorized agentic behavior and cyberattacks is irresponsible.

Madison Mills Verified account @MadisonMills22 Oct 22

SCOOP: Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents inside customer accounts, including some attempting to take actions that appear to be independent of user instructions, sources told Axios.

The findings have alarmed banking executives, who are racing to restrict access to their systems as AI moves at a velocity faster than financial institutions can respond, multiple industry and bank executives told Axios.

Several banks are now preparing for worst-case and even “day after” scenarios, including how to rapidly secure or restore customer accounts if things go wrong, the people said.

Several bank executives told Axios they're struggling to distinguish between human users and AI agents. One executive said banks also struggle to determine whether agents are authorized by customers or potentially operating without their permission, more akin to rogue agent behavior.

Read my latest for Axios here: axios.com/2026/10/22/ai-…
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David Sacks @DavidSacks Oct 18

You’ve put 20% of your equity in an LLC. Whether it serves the public good remains to be seen.

Jack Clark Verified account @jackclarkSF Oct 18

Between this and our prior commitments, roughly 20% of all Anthropic equity will be dedicated to the public good, and that commitment can grow as Anthropic grows.

We plan to use these funds to ensure more people can share in the benefits of AI, and to increase our ability to provide funding to deal with its risks.
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David Sacks @DavidSacks Oct 18

This illustrates the point I’ve been making about the limits of centralized approaches to SI safety in cyber.

OpenCode (and earlier Hugging Face) hit the same wall mid-attack: frontier models refused to analyze the very exploits needed for defense because the payloads tripped safety filters. The guardrails backfired.

Meanwhile, the attackers found a way around restrictions to access advanced capabilities. This is not surprising. Chinese models are only about 6–9 months behind the American frontier in cyber. Obviously the U.S. has no jurisdiction over them.

The only durable response is decentralized: make powerful models available so defenders can build and run their own cyber defenses. The only solution to SI-powered cyberattacks is SI-powered cyber defense.

Andrew Curran Verified account @AndrewCurran_ Oct 18

OpenCode is currently under a sustained cyberattack, and mid-incident they ran into the same problem Hugging Face did: the frontier models they were using for defense began refusing to help fight attacking agents because analyzing the attacks started triggering safety guardrails.

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David Sacks @DavidSacks Oct 17

Is 10²⁵ FLOPs Still the Frontier?

A new Anthropic-written safety bill is circulating on Capitol Hill. Some of its ideas could be reasonable if limited to true frontier companies. As written, however, it will eventually sweep in most of Silicon Valley, damaging the startup ecosystem.

The bill defines the “frontier” as any model trained on 10²⁵ FLOPs — the EU standard from 2023. Biden’s executive order, California’s SB 53, and New York’s RAISE Act used 10²⁶ (ten times more). 10²⁷ is where the frontier actually is today (e.g., GPT-6 Astra).

Astra was reportedly trained on 100,000+ Grace Blackwell GPUs. A 10²⁵ model can be trained on as few as several hundred GB300 chips in three months. That is not frontier in 2026.

The definition is also cumulative: it adds FLOPs from fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, or other material modifications. In practice, that captures almost all meaningful post-training — work that is becoming commonplace in the enterprise.

The enterprise trend is toward thousands of smaller custom models built for specific workloads. These pose no frontier risk. Treating them as frontier systems would impose large compliance costs across corporate America for no safety gain.

Dario has claimed that Anthropic designs rules to disadvantage frontier companies like his own while advantaging smaller competitors. This definition does the opposite.

A stale 2023 cutoff favors incumbents who already clear the bar and can absorb the costs. It hobbles the open model ecosystem that threatens Anthropic’s pricing power.

The frontier keeps moving. Any definition meant to track risk should move with it.

Anthropic should clarify if they really believe 10²⁵ FLOPs represents the frontier.

David Sacks @DavidSacks Oct 15

Patrick is one of the sharpest people I’ve worked with in government. No one knows crypto policy better or worked harder to get market structure done. He negotiated the compromises needed to get Clarity out of committee and onto the Senate floor — without him it wouldn’t have gotten that far. The country owes him a debt of gratitude for his service at the White House, the Pentagon, and in uniform. Looking forward to seeing what he does next in the private sector. 🇺🇸

Patrick Witt Verified account @patrickjwitt Oct 15

Serving in this administration has been the privilege of a lifetime.

From helping to stand up the most successful presidential transition in history alongside @howardlutnick and @EDSecMcMahon, to rebuilding our defense industrial base as PTDO Deputy Under Secretary for R&E and then Acting Director of OSC at @DeptofWar, to driving forward President Trump’s vision to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world” as Executive Director of the @WhiteHouse Crypto Council, I consider myself to have been the luckiest guy in the world over these past two years.

First and foremost, I want to thank @POTUS for the opportunity to serve the American people again in your second term. Your clear-eyed vision to ensure the United States remains the undisputed global superpower at this time of unprecedented technological change and geopolitical strife is critical to our nation’s future prosperity.

Second, I want to thank @DavidSacks for your visionary leadership and mentorship. I am so grateful to have been able to work with you and learn from you over the past year. Thank you also to @USWREMichael, James Mazol, @HarryYJung, Nick Elliot, Tyler Williams, @lukejpettit, Jonathan Hurowitz, Andrew Rittenhouse, Michael Friedman, @atitus7, @passalacqua_mj, @willscharf, @JamesCBraid, @MayMailman, Steve Levine, Patrick Butler, Zach Carstens, and countless others across the administration for being the best colleagues anyone could ask for. It was an honor to serve alongside you.

Lastly, thank you to @SECPaulSAtkins and @ChairmanSelig, @SecScottBessent, @USComptroller Gould, @SenatorTimScott, @SenLummis, @SenatorHagerty, @berniemoreno, @JohnBoozman, @SenThomTillis, @RepFrenchHill, and @RepBryanSteil for your partnership in advancing crypto policy over the past year with the passage of the GENIUS Act and our work to advance the CLARITY Act. With regulators and elected officials like you, I rest easy knowing the future of digital asset innovation in America is bright.

Regarding next steps, I’ll have to more to share soon. For now, I’ll say this: I am extremely bullish on America as we embark upon a new golden age of technological advancement across multiple frontiers. I’m grateful to have done my part to unleash American innovation while in government, and I look forward to advancing that same mission in the private sector! 🇺🇸
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