Khanna criticizes tech billionaires' role in G7 AI talks
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has raised alarms over the growing influence of tech billionaires and AI executives in global policymaking, following their participation in G7 summit discussions alongside US President Donald Trump. In a post on social media platform X, Khanna wrote, “As we approach our 250th birthday, we did not fight a revolution to be ruled by tech billionaires!”
Executives including Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind joined G7 leaders to discuss coordinated AI governance. European leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for stronger U.S.-Europe cooperation to ensure powerful AI systems remain safe and trustworthy.
Khanna's concerns over concentrated private power
Khanna, who represents a district deeply tied to Silicon Valley, acknowledged knowing several of the executives personally but warned that their expanding role in policymaking reflects concentrated private power. He reiterated his support for higher taxation on billionaires, arguing that even modest wealth taxes could fund universal childcare and expanded access to public college. “They don’t want to pay a few percent tax,” Khanna said, criticizing resistance from ultra-wealthy tech leaders.
California wealth tax battle heats up
As the June 25 deadline for California's Wealth Tax nears, conversations from tech billionaires have come to light. Last fall, as a union-backed ballot measure to tax 5% of California billionaires' net worth raced toward qualification, a private Signal chat lit up with some of the richest men in America—Google's Sergey Brin, Marc Andreessen, Stripe's Patrick Collison, Coinbase's Brian Armstrong—commiserating over the threat to their fortunes. Then the kvetching turned into scheming. They talked about running candidates, lobbying the governor, even buying the very company collecting signatures so they could shut it down. Now, with California's June 25 deadline to pull the tax off the November ballot bearing down, the contents of those chats have gone public—and they paint a picture of a billionaire class that's wildly rich, deeply rattled, and mostly out of its depth.
According to The San Francisco Standard, which first reported the chat's contents, the group included Brin, Y Combinator's Garry Tan, Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen, venture capitalist Ron Conway, and dozens more. Some fired off messages constantly. Others lurked silently. "It's kind of like, 'Who wasn't in it?'" one person who saw the chat told the outlet.
Details of the proposed wealth tax
The tax itself is a one-time, 5% levy on Californians worth more than $1.1 billion, crafted by the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West union to plug holes left by Trump-era federal healthcare cuts. It targets roughly 200 billionaires and aims to raise about $100 billion over five years. For the people in that chat, it was personal.
When someone pitched the signature-company buyout, it landed as pure Silicon Valley logic. "Of course, that's what they would think," a source told The Standard. "If there's an impediment, just buy it."
