Why is former President Trump the best candidate for the technology industry and the venture capital industry that supports it? Yeah. Look, I'll give you a simple answer to a straight question you asked, which is that he is the president in favor of mass de-regulation and massive reform of the administrative state. I think the administrative state and the regulatory state is the single greatest impediment to innovation, to new business formation, to business growth in this country. The actions of three-letter agencies who are never elected, by the way, from the EPA to the FTC to the FCC, to the FDA, you go straight down the list. Those three-letter agencies are making most rules that govern businesses in this country today. Those rules were never passed by Congress, by democratically elected representatives. The current Supreme Court, which Donald Trump actually gave us, much of the composition of that court, has declared many of those regulations unconstitutional.

And Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants to go in and not just incrementally tinker around the edges of that bureaucracy, but really to shake it down to its small core that it should have been in the first place. And so I think that's the case I would make to technology investors, to entrepreneurs, that Donald Trump is going to be the president who stands for training in that regulatory state, which currently acts as a wet blanket on the economy and innovation in particular. Vivek, could I ask as an extension of that, is there a specific area, be it crypto, electric vehicles, be it space, that you feel former President Trump is most focused on in the list of priorities? Well, I think that he's more focused on an overall American revival. All of those fit on the list. I think energy is big on the list for Donald Trump, reviving the production of American energy, all forms of energy where America can be the leader.

Donald Trump favors drilling, fracking areas where America can actually establish energy abundance. That's what Donald Trump favors. And especially in this era of AI and the increasing demands for electricity, for power, for energy, that's particularly important for the United States to remain competitive. You think about baseload power generation for the electric grid. Coal and natural gas are key inputs. A lot of Democratic policy has been hostile to both of those anti-fracking policies. Anti-coal policies that contrast Donald Trump's pro-energy policies are not just good for bringing that energy prices that's important, but also for powering and fueling the future generation of air-based technology revolutions that are going to require cheap and abundant energy inputs. So that's one example. But I could go into each of the areas you named, and I'd be happy to do that. We had a venture capitalist, well-known founder in the area of AI and Social. We had Reid Hoffman on the show yesterday.

Now, he, of course, favors the other side of the equation. And Harris is running the administration, wanting consistency, wanting a steady hand, but also is worried about sort of forms of retribution. Can you just take a listen to what he said yesterday? Sure. Trump in Trump presidency won. You know, his early presidency has shown a certain amount of grifter capitalism. It's like trying to penalize his opponents using the instruments of state. Will there be any penalization of those who voiced against him? Vivek. No, I think there's going to be no political retribution under Donald Trump. But I do find that comment a little bit rich coming from a couple of areas supporter where there's only one president in administration in US history that is prosecuted or attempted to prosecute their rival in the middle of a political election. And it wasn't Donald Trump. It's the party that Donald Trump is

running against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. So I think this idea of a steady hand, I also want to give some airtime to this, the idea that Kamala Harris is going to be some kind of steady hand when she has reversed her position in a matter of months on central questions, whether she favors bans on offshore drilling, whether she favors a ban on fracking, whether she favors universal health care. All of these are positions that she held very shortly before running for US president, that in a matter of months, foundational questions about energy policy, the health policy that have changed in a matter of months, I don't think is a strong case for a so-called steady hand. And one more point, investors, and particularly I know this is a technology-focused show, particularly to entrepreneurs who have founded successful tech companies that may still be privately held. Here's a big one that really matters. Kamala Harris stands by her support.

This is one area where she hasn't changed her stance. She stands by her support for a tax on unrealized capital gains. That means many entrepreneurs, technologists, biotech entrepreneurs who may have paper gains that a private company would actually have to pay taxes with cash they don't actually have. That would stifle innovation across Silicon Valley and across this country. And I think it could be the single greatest trigger for a stock market crash and a second Great Depression, especially for a technology-focused audience and a market-focused audience. That's a big difference between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. It could be a single-issue voter on that alone, I would argue. I think many would feel at the moment that the articulation around unrealized capital gains hasn't been made so substantively by a Harris campaign. And I'm just going to go back to the technology focus, and I'm glad that you went there for us, Vivek, because there is a technology focus that is chips in

particular. You are currently sat in Ohio. Ohio is going to be a beneficiary in many ways of the CHIPS Act, billions of dollars going to building fabrication manufacturing within that state. And there is a potential concern that Donald Trump is against the CHIP site. He voiced out vehemently against it on a podcast recently. Do you worry about that perhaps being overrun, changed in direction? No, I don't. In fact, the reason I was against the CHIPS Act is because there's a lot of other baggage in there that shouldn't have been there. Hiring impediments such as many of those companies, semiconductor companies are hiring people outside the United States because of the regulatory burdens of doing so right here. There was also extra baggage and changing the way the National Science Foundation, the NSF, makes grants on the basis of race and gender and other criteria that don't relate to merit. So that's the problem with Washington,

D.C. is every time they pass one of these laws, the Inflation Reduction Act or the CHIPS Act, there's so much other baggage they sneak into there that it dilutes the original vision or purpose of the act in the first place. You want to foster semiconductor production in the United States, as I do. Here's how we do it. Mass deregulation that lifts those regulatory constraints in the United States. And I'll tell you, the reason video has become a multitrillion-dollar company is not because of the CHIPS Act. It's because of booming demand for chips led by the advent of AI and the recent revolution in the AI boom that we've seen. And that lowering of the cost of capital is far more valuable for semiconductor companies than the incremental money in the pocket of the largesse that came from the CHIPS Act. That's my view on the matter. Vivek, may I just jump in on that point on a video in video, not in isolation,

but many of the chip companies have had their access to the China markets impacted by those export controls. And simply put, China is the biggest end market for consumer electronics, but critically important for cloud. Are you able to explain to our audience President former President Trump's position vis a vis China on key American companies being able to do business in that market? Well, I'll give you a basic principle that I hope people can agree with, regardless of partisanship. We should not depend on our adversary for our own national security. You know, talk about chips. 40% of the semiconductors feeding our Department of Defense, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, actually come from China. That doesn't make any sense for our own military industrial base, our military stockpiles to depend on our adversary to provide, God forbid, were in a conflict scenario. And that's something that nobody wants for sure.

But God forbid we are in a conflict scenario with an adversary. They're not going to keep supplying those inputs. And so I think it is sensible policy. And I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat for the United States to say in sectors critical to our national security, at least for our military industrial base, we should not be dependent on our chief adversary. And I think that's sensible policy. Donald Trump I think above all, one of the things I like about him, he's a businessman, but also a pragmatist when it comes to these foreign policy dealings. He was respected. And I think that put the US in a stronger position in a lot of those negotiations. Mr. Ramaswamy, there was some interest in you when I said on social media you were coming on the show. We got a number of questions from the audience, but I'm going to put one to you if that's okay.

One user says, Please ask him how much of his own money was spent on his campaign. I think a reference to your early run as a candidate. Has it given you an acceptable ROI, and what was the exposure and network effect for you in doing this? Supporting former President Trump? Yes. So the answer of this all public record, I believe round numbers was a little over $30 million of my own hard-earned money. By the way, I didn't inherit money. My parents came to this country with no money. But I'm a self-made entrepreneur who founded multibillion-dollar companies. And the other line that I measure is not related to me. It's related to the impact we have on our country. I was the youngest person ever to run for US president as a Republican. And one of the things I was proud we were able to do was to bring nontraditional, disengaged citizens back into politics to actually caring about our country, especially young people.

I showed up on a college campus in Pennsylvania yesterday. There were 2000 plus young people that showed up just to hear the conversations. We were having one on one at a time. That gave me a sense of inspiration. It gave me a sense of deep gratification and satisfaction to say that this journey that I began in February of last year where nobody knew my name, let alone could pronounce that I was at 0.0% in the polls. And by the end of the race, less than a year later had beaten the vice president and multiple governors and a former senator. It proves what's possible in the United States of America. So was it worth it? Absolutely. And I hope that our best days as a as a country and my own ability to have an impact on that is still ahead of some of those young people. Perhaps you're talking to care about crypto. One of those companies that you formed, Thrive Asset Management $1.7 billion in assets under management is going to be

going and buying in on Bitcoin for the first time. Can you just articulate for us what you think the crypto policies will be under Trump? Yeah. First of all, I'm incredibly proud of Strive as a business I co-founded. I stepped down as chairman before I ran for president, but I'm so proud of the team and what they've accomplished. Matt Cole, he's the CEO who was formerly a successful bond portfolio manager at CalPERS, is really leading stride with a vision for financial freedom, which I'm so proud of what they've done. My own view on the future of crypto policy is it's less related to helping one sector and more related to just reviving the principles the country was founded on in the first place. Unbridled innovation. Competition as the answer. But there should be some regulation. It shouldn't totally be unbridled. Well, the first thing I would say is unbridled innovation. What we really need is regulatory

clarity. So I think it is a sad state of affairs where you see a paradigm of regulation by enforcement, where many participants in the industry don't know what the rules are in the first place. So we could debate what the rules are, what they should be. I think that's a reasonable debate to have. But what we can't have is a situation where people are guessing at what those rules are. I'll give you one example of that. When the head and lead commissioner of the SEC could not answer before Congress whether Ethereum was even a security. Maybe it is, and maybe it shouldn't be. But either way, at least the industry deserves to know. And so I think regulation is the first principle. Whether you're on the left or right should be clarity. And I think that's missing in this sector, as in so many others today.

Ramaswamy: Need Regulatory Clarity in Crypto

Welcome to the Bloomberg Technology YouTube channel. Subscribe for original series and mini-docs on game-changing technologies, profiles on innovators, live conversations with experts, and breaking technology news & analysis from Bloomberg TV.

Ramaswamy: Need Regulatory Clarity in Crypto

Ramaswamy: Need Regulatory Clarity in Crypto

Scripts