Venture capitalist and All In Podcast co-host Jason Calacanis joined Adam Curry on episode 1905 of the No Agenda Show, titled 'Nerdballs,' to deconstruct the AI hype cycle, Silicon Valley power dynamics, and the media narratives shaping the 2026 midterms. The conversation, published September 20, 2026, offers a skeptical take on the AI safety debate, arguing that companies like Anthropic have convinced themselves they are building a deity rather than software. 'They actually think that they are creating a god. They're not. They're creating software,' Calacanis said, comparing Anthropic's effective-altruism roots to the doomed engineers in the film Prometheus. This matters because it challenges the dominant narrative that AI safety concerns are purely altruistic, instead framing them as a competitive moat for frontier labs.
Calacanis pulled no punches on regulatory capture, insisting that the real story is frontier labs lobbying Washington to gate open-source competitors like DeepSeek, GLM, and NeMoTron. Curry played clips of University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos describing a reported Anthropic 'funeral' for a retired Claude model, underscoring the quasi-religious culture inside the company. The episode also touched on Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's new code of conduct and his public criticism of Anthropic's 'model welfare' doctrine, as well as the reported Hugging Face security incident and calls for an AI 'kill switch.' These segments highlight growing tensions within the AI industry over safety, openness, and control.
The discussion extended to the political weaponization of data centers by candidates like Texas Democrat James Talarico, and Trump's revocation of press credentials for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico. Calacanis recounted backstage details from the All In Summit at the Shrine Auditorium, which drew 3,000 attendees and surprise call-ins from President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. He described Huang fumbling the speakerphone button when Trump called mid-panel and pressing Meta's Dina about the company's record $17 billion settlement during a data-center segment. For more on the All In Summit, see All In. These anecdotes illustrate the intersection of tech, politics, and media in Silicon Valley.
Calacanis also shared the origin story of All In as a pandemic-era poker group with David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg, and revealed that This Week in Startups sells out its ad inventory a year in advance at $3,000 per spot. Curry pivoted to Bitcoin, predicting a $430,000 peak, while Calacanis discussed parenting in the smartphone era. The pair reflected on the late John C. Dvorak, whose memory drives the show's ongoing Order of the Ant tribute campaign. The episode's mix of insider access and contrarian analysis makes it a must-listen for those tracking the intersection of AI, politics, and media. For more information, visit No Agenda Show.
