Calacanis on No Agenda: AI Safety Debate Is 'Regulatory Capture,' Data Centers Become Midterm Weapon

Venture capitalist and All In Podcast co-host Jason Calacanis joined Adam Curry on Episode 1905 of the No Agenda Show, titled 'Nerdballs,' published September 20, 2026, for a wide-ranging critique of the AI safety debate, Silicon Valley power politics, and the emerging political battle over data centers. Broadcasting from the Texas Hill Country, Curry framed Calacanis as 'the get of the week,' fresh off an All In Summit at the Shrine Auditorium that drew 3,000 attendees and surprise call-ins from President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

The conversation moved quickly across the week's most-discussed stories, including Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's new code of conduct and his public criticism of Anthropic's 'model welfare' doctrine, the reported Hugging Face security incident and calls for an AI 'kill switch,' the political weaponization of data centers by candidates like Texas Democrat James Talarico, Trump's revocation of press credentials for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, and rising diesel prices tied to Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries.

Calacanis pulled no punches on the AI safety debate, arguing that Anthropic's leadership has convinced itself it is birthing a deity. 'They actually think that they are creating a god. They're not. They're creating software,' he told Curry, comparing the company's effective-altruism roots to the doomed engineers in the film Prometheus. Curry played clips of University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos describing a reported Anthropic 'funeral' for a retired Claude model, while Calacanis insisted the real story is regulatory capture: frontier labs lobbying Washington to gate open-source competitors like DeepSeek, GLM, and NeMoTron.

For Texas, the episode's focus on data centers carries direct implications. As the state continues to attract massive AI and cloud infrastructure investment, the political weaponization of data centers by candidates like Talarico signals that the industry's rapid growth is becoming a midterm flashpoint. The outcome could affect permitting, incentives, and community relations for the tech and energy sectors that underpin Texas' economic development. Calacanis's warning about regulatory capture also matters for Texas startups and open-source developers who could face higher barriers if frontier labs succeed in shaping federal rules.

The episode delivered rare backstage detail from the All In Summit. Calacanis recounted Jensen Huang fumbling the speakerphone button when President Trump called mid-panel, and described pressing Meta's Dina about the company's record $17 billion settlement during a data-center segment. He 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 and the pair reflected on the late John C. Dvorak, whose memory drives the show's ongoing Order of the Ant tribute campaign.