Venture capitalist and All In Podcast co-host Jason Calacanis joined Adam Curry on episode 1905 of the No Agenda Show, titled ‘Nerdballs,’ to dissect the AI hype cycle, Silicon Valley power struggles, and the media narratives shaping the 2026 midterms. The episode, published September 20, 2026, offers a skeptical counterpoint to mainstream AI coverage, with Calacanis arguing that leading AI safety firm Anthropic has succumbed to a quasi-religious belief in its own mission. ‘They actually think that they are creating a god. They’re not. They’re creating software,’ he said, 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, underscoring what Calacanis calls a dangerous cult-like culture. The conversation also touched on Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s new code of conduct and his public criticism of Anthropic’s ‘model welfare’ doctrine, as well as a reported Hugging Face security incident and calls for an AI ‘kill switch.’ Calacanis insisted the real story is regulatory capture: frontier labs lobbying Washington to gate open-source competitors like DeepSeek, GLM, and NeMoTron. This matters because it exposes how AI safety rhetoric can serve as a competitive moat, potentially stifling innovation and concentrating power among a few firms.
The episode also covered the political weaponization of data centers by candidates like Texas Democrat James Talarico, Trump’s revocation of press credentials for CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, and rising diesel prices tied to Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries. Calacanis shared backstage details from the All In Summit at the Shrine Auditorium, which drew 3,000 attendees and surprise call-ins from President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. He recounted Huang fumbling the speakerphone button when Trump called mid-panel and described pressing Meta’s Dina about the company’s record $17 billion settlement during a data-center segment.
Calacanis also revealed the origin story of All In as a pandemic-era poker group with David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg, and noted that This Week in Startups sells out its ad inventory a year in advance at $3,000 per spot. Curry pivoted to Bitcoin, predicting a $430,000 peak, while Calacanis discussed parenting in the smartphone era. The pair reflected on the late John C. Dvorak, whose memory drives the show’s ongoing Order of the Ant tribute campaign.
By framing AI development as a battle over narrative and regulation, the episode highlights the growing tension between open-source advocates and closed-model labs. It also underscores how media deconstruction can reveal the financial and political incentives behind tech coverage, especially as the 2026 midterms approach. For listeners, the takeaway is clear: the AI debate is as much about power and money as it is about technology.
