Ben Napier

Government Affairs @a16z | Prev Floor Director for @SteveScalise, @RulesReps, @OHRGOPCaucus

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

The state-level patchwork of AI laws is growing, and competition with China is intensifying—putting pressure on Congress to set a federal baseline.

Many stakeholders (including @a16z) have called for a national framework, and public support for AI regulation remains high and bipartisan.

In this piece, @MattPerault and I unpack what actually determines whether a bill moves—committee jurisdiction, floor time, leadership support, bicameral negotiations, and must-pass vehicles—and what that means for AI legislation.

Read more 👇

[Matt Perault @MattPerault]

https://t.co/nACV0SRAhx

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

"When a founder looks at the regulatory landscape and concludes that the compliance costs are too high or the legal uncertainty too great, that decision never registers as a policy outcome. But aggregated across all founders and the entire American economy, these decisions represent significant foregone innovation, competition, and economic and social value."

Great piece by my colleagues @Collin_McCune & @MattPerault on why it's crucial for startups to have a seat at the table 👇

[Matt Perault @MattPerault]

https://t.co/5RKwdmSOnK

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

This may go down as one of the most ill-conceived state laws in modern US history.

[miles jennings @milesjennings]

This is one of the most anti-crypto laws in the U.S.

It taxes the exchange, transfer, or storage of digital assets—you buy BTC, you pay a tax; you hold your BTC on Coinbase, you pay a tax; and so on.

There is effectively no comparable state financial transaction tax on stocks, bonds, or derivatives anywhere in the country. That means crypto is being singled out in violation of several federal laws.

Further, the approach makes little sense—you aren’t taxed if you exchange a stock, bond, or derivative in paper form, but you are taxed if they happen to be recorded on a blockchain? That’s like taxing email.

So, rather than embracing innovation and the cost efficiencies blockchains can deliver for ordinary people in Illinois, the state is poised to punish its entrepreneurs and citizens that want to use crypto.

This is a shame—it was only just recently that Illinois embraced a constructive approach to blockchain technology through the adoption of the effectively-scoped Digital Assets and Consumer Protection Act. This new tax is a complete 180.

When states adopt discriminatory, asset-specific taxes that drive builders and users elsewhere, we all lose.

[Taylor Budowich @Budowich]

Shallow analysis and wrong.

On June 10, 2026, Dario posted: “Frontier AI models, like airplanes, should be required to go through technical testing and auditing, and their release should be blocked or reversed as a threat to public safety if they do not meet high standards of safety.”

Days later, their own commercial partner, Amazon, raised concerns that Fable “did not meet high standards of safety.” Instead of addressing this, Anthropic told them to F-off. Not nice!

The timeline is simple:

(1) Dario argues Mythos is a cyber weapon comparable to a nuke.

(2) Dario argues frontier models should meet high standards for safety or be blocked/reversed.

(3) Amazon alleged Anthropic’s new model failed that test, and the vulnerability was validated by USG.

(4) Anthropic rejects calls to address the vulnerability. (To put a finer point on this, according to Dario’s framing of the tech, Amazon was housing a vulnerable nuclear weapon, and its maker didn’t want to secure it.)

(5) The USG, which Anthropic has gone to great lengths to convince administration officials of the dangers of the tech, felt its hand was forced and had to reluctantly take extreme measures to secure the potential threat.

Time for Anthropic to recognize that pro-safety and pro-innovation MUST coexist. Stop the fearmongering and start working to solve the problem!

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

"The internet democratized access to information (read), then democratized the ability to create and publish it (write). The next step is to democratize ownership: giving users direct economic rights in the networks and services they use. Crypto networks are one of the clearest and longest-standing expressions of the “own” era."

Great piece from my colleague @rhackett 👇

https://t.co/SseBO0gahp

[David George @DavidGeorge83]

Today, SpaceX begins trading publicly on Nasdaq under the ticker $SPCX. Congratulations to @elonmusk and the entire @SpaceX team from @a16z! Ad Astra 🇺🇸

[Katherine Boyle @KTmBoyle]

Never. Give. Up.

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

Report from @OpenAI: “In this case, the operators attempted to covertly insert themselves into an ongoing American debate about the future of the country’s AI capabilities while hiding who they were and what motivated them.”

Concerning stuff👇

https://t.co/voRI2tdGlt

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

This is what overly prescriptive AI “safety” looks like

[Derya Unutmaz, MD @DeryaTR_]

This is true. I spent most of my life trying to solve diseases & help humanity. Now I am banned by Fable 5 because of that-can’t even say "human" as a biomedical scientist! Incognito mode works fine. I am protesting @AnthropicAI in the strongest possible way. Shame on you people!

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

First AI was a bubble, then it was going to take all the jobs, now it’s causing inflation.

The AI fear narratives keeps evolving.

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

It's been nearly one year since the House passed the CLARITY Act and sent it to the Senate. Since then, Senators have worked diligently to refine the legislation. It's now time to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

[Stand With Crypto🛡️ @standwithcrypto]

Stand With Crypto and over 200 organizations sent a simple message to Senate leadership: it's time for the Clarity Act.

The community is unified — large companies, startups, associations, and grassroots groups across the country are counting on their lawmakers to deliver rules of the road for crypto in America.

The Clarity Act passed the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan support.

Now it needs to cross the finish line. Tell your Senators you want Clarity 👇

[Collin McCune @Collin_McCune]

160 is a big number. This letter makes two clear points:

1) law enforcement and national security is a top priority for the crypto industry.
2) The reason the U.S. is the innovation capital of the world is because policymakers chose to protect developers over the last 50 years. That must continue with this new technology for America to keep its lead.

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

For years, big-government advocates and AI alarmists have dreamed of putting AI—the new information layer of the internet—under Washington's control. Now they want to own it. Very scary stuff.

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

BREAKING: Bernie Sanders will introduce a bill to have the public take a 50% ownership stake in the country's biggest AI companies.

The American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would have the government tax AI companies, take 50% of the stock, and put it under public control.

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

"When prediction markets work well, they can offer significant benefits over other forecasting methods. First of all, the simple fact that they provide a probability estimate is a superpower. Polls and surveys, by contrast, just give an opinion share — and to convert that into a probability, you have to reason statistically about how the share you measured relates to the overall population. Polls also typically reflect just a snapshot in time, whereas prediction markets can update in real time as new participants and/or new information arrive."

Great piece by my colleague @skominers 👇

https://t.co/evG9ow5o2E

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

Same groups. Same playbooks.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Anti fracking panic vanishes : anti datacenter panic rises :: Social media politics freakout vanishes : AI politics freakout rises

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

https://t.co/bGSRC6Fyab

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

Great conversation here between @ben_guggenheim and @DavidGeorge83

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

@pmarca It’s always fun to ask doomers why they believe that, in the entire history of human evolution and technological progress, THIS is the moment we should stop advancing.

[Ben Napier @BenNapier]

The AI discourse keeps cycling through fear narratives.

First it was:
“AI will wipe out humanity”

Then:
“AI will eliminate all jobs”
"AI is a financial bubble"
“Data centers will consume all the water"
"Data centers will consume all the power"
“AI is an uncontrollable cyber threat”

Every few months there’s a new reason we’re supposedly headed for catastrophe.

Like every major technology shift, AI has arrived alongside waves of these fear narratives, sensationalism, and entire industries eager to profit from public anxiety.

Reality: AI is a tool. A very powerful one. But still a tool.

Yes, there will be challenges along the way. But the real story is how dramatically AI will expand human capability, accelerate science, improve productivity, and unlock things we can’t yet imagine.

The future belongs to the builders — not the fear merchants.

[Collin McCune @Collin_McCune]

Watch this and then watch it again.