Trump's First Week: Inauguration Recap, Executive Actions, TikTok, Stargate + Sacks is Back!

Chamath and others argue that Trump 2.0 is explicitly aligning the federal government with private-sector leaders, especially major tech and industrial CEOs. The inauguration guest list (Musk, Zuckerberg, Sundar, Arnault, Ambani, Altman, etc.) and early outreach signal a ‘Team America’ posture that rejects picking favorites and instead attempts to mobilize all leading innovators to project U.S. economic and technological power.

Friedberg reports that nearly every policymaker he spoke with in D.C. is skeptical of deep domestic spending cuts because political incentives reward bringing more money and jobs to districts, not cutting programs. Even Republicans like Mitch McConnell focus on earmarks (e.g., a delayed $60M ag lab), highlighting how entrenched incentives may limit DOGE’s ability to materially reduce deficits despite its institutionalization as a formal agency.

Thomas Laffont estimates TikTok’s U.S. asset could justify a ~$100B valuation under Meta-like monetization, with ~100M DAUs and time spent equivalent to Facebook+Instagram. Yet he and Chamath emphasize it’s regulatory risk that has driven investors to conservatively value ByteDance mostly on China operations. Trump’s floated idea of the U.S. owning 50% of TikTok US would technically ‘seize’ half of investor value but may still be preferable to a total shutdown, while also setting a powerful and possibly dangerous precedent for government equity claims.

Chamath argues that if the U.S. is going to de-risk and permit critical assets (TikTok, energy leases, data centers, advanced manufacturing), it should negotiate small equity or royalty stakes—something he calls a missed opportunity in past programs like Tesla’s DOE loan. He cites LVMH’s Dior deal and federal bond backstops as analogs, predicting the TikTok fight will normalize the idea that taxpayers should capture a slice of upside in mega-projects, so long as competitive bidding and neutral rules prevent political favoritism.

Laffont’s data show China’s electricity generation has exploded to ~9,000 TWh vs. ~1,600 TWh in the U.S., with China adding far more nuclear and other capacity over the last two decades as America largely flatlined. Both he and Friedberg argue that without a rapid buildout of nuclear (including Gen-4 technologies) and streamlined permitting—especially now that Biden’s restrictive EO is rescinded—America cannot win the AI or industrial automation race, regardless of how many GPUs it buys.