David Sacks, the former White House Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, isn't buying the AI safety hype. Six days after President Trump signed an executive order asking AI companies to voluntarily submit powerful models to federal safety testing, Sacks went public with a dismissive take: he called AI safety fears 'Hollywood storytelling' and likened them to climate change scaremongering.
The timing of Sacks' tweet
Sacks' comments landed on June 8 — less than a week after Trump's executive order. That order directs federal agencies to develop safety benchmarks, assess AI models for cyber capabilities, and shore up critical infrastructure defenses. The voluntary testing window runs up to 30 days before a model's public release. But Sacks, who helped build the policy environment that produced the order, isn't treating it as a victory lap. Instead, he framed regulatory caution as a political weapon.
Same argument, two technologies
This isn't a one-off remark. Sacks has been building a single political argument against both AI and crypto regulation: safety concerns are political weapons, not technical realities. He's previously called AI safety advocates a 'Doomer Industrial Complex' and described regulatory interference in emerging tech as a power grab. On the crypto side, Sacks drove the CLARITY Act — the crypto market structure bill now working through the Senate — and saw the GENIUS Act, a US stablecoin framework, become law in 2025.
What the executive order actually says
The order Trump signed isn't a mandate. It's voluntary — companies choose whether to submit models for federal testing. But it gives agencies a framework to develop benchmarks and assess cyber risks. Sacks' critique suggests he sees any mandatory-style oversight as a slippery slope. His tweet frames the entire safety conversation as fear-mongering, not engineering.
What comes next
Sacks is out of the White House now, but his policy fingerprints are all over both the AI order and the crypto bills moving through Congress. The CLARITY Act sits in the Senate. Whether his 'Hollywood storytelling' line gains traction on the Hill — or pushes the debate further toward deregulation — is the open question. For now, the argument he's stitching together between AI and crypto is clear and consistent. The question is whether lawmakers buy it.
