This essay appeared in the Dec. 13, 2025 edition of the Fortune 500 Digest newsletter, which rounds up the headlines driving the week’s most important business news and coverage of Fortune 500 companies. Subscribe to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
Last week, the internet lit up over a New York Timesarticle about David Sacks, President Trump’s AI and crypto czar.
Sacks is a tech-industry mainstay: He was one of the OG PayPal Mafia (as COO in the company’s early days), became a founder and successful venture investor, and has earned a national following through his All In podcast.
Five Times reporters dug into hundreds of Sacks’s investments, made primarily through his firm Craft Ventures. The article concluded that Sacks “has positioned himself to personally benefit” from his role in Washington, which Sacks has denied. A number of Silicon Valley titans, including Sam Altman, Marc Benioff, and Elon Musk, came to Sacks’s defense.
On the surface, it’s another billionaire-vs.-legacy-media spat. But at the heart of the matter is an important question: Can we have competence without conflict in Washington?
