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 politics, and media narratives shaping the 2026 midterms. The conversation, published September 20, 2026, offers a skeptical take on the AI safety debate, regulatory capture, and the political weaponization of data centers, with implications for how the technology sector and its critics frame the next phase of AI development.
Calacanis, 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, pulled no punches on the AI safety debate. He argued 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.
The discussion also covered 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,' and the political weaponization of data centers by candidates like Texas Democrat James Talarico. These stories, Calacanis and Curry suggested, illustrate how AI is being used as a political football and how safety concerns can serve as cover for anti-competitive behavior.
Beyond AI, the episode touched on Trump's revocation of press credentials for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, as well as rising diesel prices tied to Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries. Calacanis also shared backstage detail from the All In Summit, recounting Jensen Huang fumbling the speakerphone button when President Trump called mid-panel, and describing pressing Meta's Dina about the company's record $17 billion settlement during a data-center segment. He revealed that This Week in Startups sells out its ad inventory a year in advance at $3,000 per spot, and discussed the origin story of All In as a pandemic-era poker group with David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg.
Curry pivoted to Bitcoin, predicting a $430,000 peak, while Calacanis discussed parenting in the smartphone era. The pair also reflected on the late John C. Dvorak, whose memory drives the show's ongoing Order of the Ant tribute campaign. The episode is available now wherever podcasts are heard, and for those interested in the intersection of media, technology, and politics, it provides a contrarian view on the forces shaping AI policy and public perception. As the 2026 midterms approach, the narratives deconstructed in this episode are likely to intensify, making the perspectives shared by Calacanis and Curry a valuable counterpoint to mainstream coverage.
