Ro Khanna warns Americans on Sam Altman and Dario Amodei attending G7 summit with Donald Trump; says: As we celebrate 250th birthday of the US, we did not fight to ...
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has raised alarms over the growing influence of tech billionaires and AI executives in global policymaking, after their participation in G7 summit discussions alongside US President Donald Trump. In a post on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) 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.
Ro Khanna’s concernsKhanna, 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.
As June 25 deadline for California's Wealth Tax nears, conversations from tech billionaires
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.
Ro Khanna’s concernsKhanna, 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.
As June 25 deadline for California's Wealth Tax nears, conversations from tech billionaires
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.
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