Today, I\u2019m talking with Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California. Sen. Schiff sits on a number of committees with oversight into tech and AI: intellectual property, antitrust, privacy and technology \u2014 it\u2019s all there. I really wanted to ask him about how we might regulate anything related to the tech industry at this moment in time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/24792604\/The_Verge_Decoder_Tileart.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100\")
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nVerge<\/em> subscribers, don\u2019t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder<\/em> wherever you get your podcasts. Head here<\/a>. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But as you\u2019ll hear, he started our conversation by talking about the self-dealing and corruption present all through our politics. That of course fell against the backdrop of President Trump gathering AI CEOs to the White House to sign a non-binding pact<\/a> in which they agree to, you know, do a good job keeping AI safe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I asked Sen. Schiff if he thinks that\u2019s enough, how he thinks a more formal regulatory framework would look, and what might happen next if Democrats retake Congress in the midterms \u2014 all the way to whether he\u2019d support impeaching the President (again<\/a>) over all that corruption. We also spent some time comparing and contrasting how you might regulate AI with where we\u2019ve landed regulating social media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One nerdy note: you\u2019re going to hear me ask the senator about something called Chevron deference and a Supreme Court case called Loper Bright.<\/em> Basically, the Supreme Court overturned a Reagan-era precedent<\/a> saying courts would defer to experts in agencies when the law was vague.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now, the courts get to decide, which could cause any new regulation to get immediately tied up in litigation. That seems awfully relevant to the idea of creating a new agency to regulate AI, which Sen. Schiff supports doing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Okay: California Senator Adam Schiff. Here we go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Senator Adam Schiff, you\u2019re a United States Senator from California. Welcome to Decoder.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thank you. Great to be with you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I have been asking every politician who comes on the show this very basic question here in 2026. Senator, what the hell is going on in our country?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s a very good question. I think we have seen things take place in the last couple of years in particular that we\u2019ve never seen before. There\u2019s sadly rampant corruption within the administration. Every day, every week, it\u2019s a new thing. At the moment, I think what is most jarring is seeing campaign ads aired of the president that are paid for by taxpayer dollars. But every week it\u2019s something else. It\u2019s excluding press from the White House or Air Force One, or it\u2019s some new moneymaking scheme or some new vanity project. If you look at, for example, the triumphal arch, they\u2019re now claiming it\u2019s a national security issue because they want to store ammunition in it. And why do they want to do that? Because the best legal argument they have is that this is not just cosmetic, that they have some national security purpose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So what are we seeing in the country? We\u2019re seeing chaos and no focus on the cost of living and improving the quality of people\u2019s lives at the administration level, or by my Republican colleagues in Congress, but I\u2019m hoping that changes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The national security piece is very interesting to me in the context of a bunch of questions I have for you, because the Trump administration loves to justify every single thing it does by saying it\u2019s national security, and it can\u2019t be questioned, and this should bring more authority to the executive branch in one way or another. And they\u2019ve been doing that since the beginning.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n But just this week, we had a bunch of tech executives at the White House signing a non-binding promise to evaluate their own AI systems. And there was no national security concern that made any of that binding, even though they are among the most prominent people in the country saying they might kill everyone. Can you square that circle at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s very hard to square. It was interesting to see all those tech leaders there signing onto this voluntary pledge on the one hand and on the other hand, away from the White House grounds, away from the president, being very public and saying, \u201cWe need regulation. We don\u2019t want this to be just \u2018Trust us, we\u2019ll do the right thing.\u2019\u201d So yeah, it was very distant, very jarring. None of these companies want to incur the wrath of this very vengeful president. Apparently, they will say what he wants them to say in his presence. But the reality is, there is a real national security threat here. As these models become more and more advanced, as they advance themselves through this recursive AI, we have less and less of a sense of what they\u2019re doing, how they\u2019re deciding what they\u2019re deciding, and what they\u2019re trying to access lawfully or unlawfully.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That is a national security concern of the highest order. There are other security concerns too. The unbridled implementation of AI at the Pentagon can result in calamities, and we need to investigate what role AI may have played in target selection in the bombing of that Iranian girls\u2019 school, for example. There has been an effort to go after Anthropic, because Anthropic wanted to insist on not using AI for domestic mass surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons systems. That\u2019s a national security issue. And their response in the administration was to try to kill Anthropic, and they\u2019re still at it. So lots of national security concerns, none of them aired.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When the president was asked about this by a reporter, he said, \u201cWell, the world doesn\u2019t have to worry about this because these companies love America.\u201d I\u2019m not really sure that\u2019s much of an answer. And when he was asked, \u201cWell, isn\u2019t there anything else that\u2019s necessary?\u201d He pointed to his brain and wanted people to take comfort that he has, I guess, a very big brain, he tells us. He\u2019s a stable genius, and therefore we don\u2019t need to worry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He\u2019s passed all the tests. So I\u2019ve been told.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You are obviously on a number of committees, but most importantly, I think for this conversation, you\u2019re on a number of subcommittees as part of the Senate Judiciary Committee that are in the strike zone for AI. So you\u2019re the ranking member on the subcommittee on Intellectual Property, you\u2019re on the Privacy, Technology and the Law subcommittee, and then, of course, the Antitrust Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Committee. I just look at that list, and that is the dead center of the AI regulatory debate. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n What\u2019s the conversation in Congress like as you debate these issues? In particular, I look at the IP issues, and they seem existential to these companies. If we start charging them for training data, they might not exist anymore.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think that\u2019s right. When you look at, for example, all of the IP that\u2019s been vacuumed up by these models to train these models, that\u2019s a lot of the value of some of these entertainment companies. And so they live or die on the strength of their IP. But what makes this challenging is that not all of the players in the industry are the same. You\u2019ve got big streamers involved; you\u2019ve got big technology companies involved. You\u2019ve got companies whose AI or their technology portfolio is much more important to them than the IP value of their film library. I don\u2019t think the film library at Amazon is Amazon\u2019s most important business. If it was, they probably wouldn\u2019t have made the movie Melania. But my favorite review of that, by the way, was the Variety reviewer who said, \u201cIf you watch that movie on a plane, you would still walk out.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the IP issues are really important. Senator Curtis and I are working together on them to begin by saying, we want to know what copyrighted material, what protected material, was used to train these models. And then we can have a discussion about what\u2019s fair use and what isn\u2019t, but we need these companies to retain that information. But lots of other IP issues, some beneficial. We had a hearing on the patent office, and the patent office\u2019s use of AI to more quickly get through the backlog of patent applications. So there are going to be good applications too in the IP area, but also a lot of worry about what it means for people\u2019s creative talents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I wanted to start with IP, not just because I\u2019m a failed former copyright lawyer myself, and emphasis on the failed. I was no good at it. But it just seems like what this industry needs right now is a pretty holistic approach to regulation. So are the inputs of the models being collected in a legal way that benefits the ecosystem that created them? Are the studios going to get paid for a bunch of training data? Are website operators going to get paid for training Google\u2019s models that they scrape with search? And then you\u2019re on to, do they need an antitrust exemption so they can coordinate on safety and they don\u2019t kill us all? And there\u2019s a whole list of things in between those two ideas that also need some regulatory frameworks, that might just need some basic transparency laws.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n What do you think about that? Is our government prepared to start at the beginning, and end at the end, and do all the steps in the middle?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, how I think about it is you\u2019ve got all the input issues, and it really seems like the thought at these companies was, \u201cWe\u2019re in a race. We\u2019re just going to vacuum it all up. And yes, this probably violates a lot of the IP laws, but if we don\u2019t do it, the other companies are going to do it. We\u2019ll worry about the legality later.\u201d So that\u2019s what they\u2019ve done. And of course they\u2019re being sued by different parties, and some are settling these cases, and some are fighting these cases. But they began the process by just deciding they were going to ignore IP law, and they were just going to take [IP] and worry about the problems later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And then, in terms of the outputs, it has taken us to where we are today for these companies, I think, to consider the safety of the outputs. Do we need to start slowing down the pace of our development of these models because we don\u2019t trust the outputs? We don\u2019t know where they\u2019ll lead. We can\u2019t even control these models ourselves, let alone provide these models to the public, to good actors, to bad actors, and expect that we\u2019re not going to have some terrible result. In terms of how I think about this holistically as a legislator, this is crying out for legislation. I am, I\u2019ll be honest, very circumspect about Congress and legislating the tech sector because we did such a \u2014 I don\u2019t know what language I\u2019m allowed to use here \u2014 but such a shitty job when it comes to any kind of regulation of the harms, the societal harms coming out of social media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019re going to have to do a much better job and much more quickly when it comes to AI, because the threats are even more significant and we\u2019re already at the point of strong potential harms. It can\u2019t wait. We certainly can\u2019t take the kind of years we\u2019ve taken to try to even wrap ourselves around social media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Can I ask about that comparison? I hear it a lot. I hear it from politicians. I hear it from the industry itself. I hear it from parents, of course. It seems to me that the problem with social media regulation was never that we\u2019re too slow, or that no one can come up with an idea; it was always the very existence of the First Amendment. The thing you needed to do with social media was regulate the flow of disinformation, or keep teens from bullying one another, or from posting pro-anorexia content.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n All of that came down to being speech regulation. The companies knew this; the tech companies absolutely knew this. And I remember they would put up billboards in DC. Meta would put up billboards saying, \u201cWe welcome regulation.\u201d Then I would listen to the ideas for regulation, and they would crash headfirst into the First Amendment, and then nothing would happen.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n And it seemed like that paralyzed us from doing things like privacy regulation, because it was tied up next to the very idea of social media. It doesn\u2019t feel that way with AI. Do you and your peers in Congress draw the distinction that it isn\u2019t the First Amendment preventing you from doing a lot of the things that you might do for social media, in the AI case?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Honestly, I don\u2019t think it was the First Amendment that was the issue in regulating social media. I think the First Amendment was certainly used by companies that didn\u2019t want regulation to try to argue everything was a First Amendment issue, when so much wasn\u2019t a First Amendment issue. The threshold question in terms of regulation of the social media companies is: is the broad immunity they have under Section 230 still working? The industry asked for that one-size-doesn\u2019t-fit-all immunity because it said, \u201cWe\u2019re a nascent industry, don\u2019t regulate us, don\u2019t inhibit us. If you try to regulate us, then we will feel, or if we\u2019re not immune, that it\u2019s necessary to take down content because we might get sued over it. We want to be good actors. We want to take down offensive conduct, but we don\u2019t want to get sued for that either. So give us carte blanche.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And they got it. They got carte blanche, and they have not been good citizens, corporate citizens, and they\u2019ve allowed a lot of harm to take place, and they\u2019ve trained their algorithms for addiction. So much of the content has been harmful to young people, and so much of the content has violated their own policies, but they have been immune from any consequences because of the breadth of what Congress gave them. Now they found it, I think, strategically, a good strategy is to frame these things as the First Amendment, and to attack the other side and say, \u201cOh, there\u2019s a bias that is against conservatives,\u201d or whatever. It was all in the service of keeping that unregulated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So I really don\u2019t think the First Amendment has been the issue, but I think it has been utilized as a bludgeon to try to stop any kind of meaningful regulation. I similarly worry that all of the money around AI may result in the same paralysis if members of Congress aren\u2019t willing to do the right thing, and aren\u2019t willing to put in place safeguards regardless of how much different industry players might spend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019ve had Sen. [Ron] Wyden <\/strong>on the show<\/strong><\/a> many times to talk about Section 230. I won\u2019t go too far down that rabbit hole. The dynamic there was that Section 230 provided the immunity that you\u2019re describing, but it was immunity for speech that would otherwise be illegal. And so it was speech that was defamatory. There\u2019s a whole category of speech that isn\u2019t illegal. Are you saying that taking the 230 immunity away from the social platforms would somehow make them moderate lawful but awful speech? And I bring this up because I\u2019m very curious about how you would apply it in the AI case as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yeah, no, I think that is the case. That part of their argument was, \u201c We want to take down really nasty, offensive, racist content, but we will be afraid to do so if you don\u2019t give us immunity. So give us immunity, and we\u2019ll take all that bad stuff down.\u201d They got immunity. And I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve been on X lately; it\u2019s a cesspool. So giving them broad immunity did not allow them to enforce their community policies. And the First Amendment prohibits the government from dictating speech or prohibiting you from saying things. It doesn\u2019t prohibit a private party from saying, \u201cWe don\u2019t want racist content on our platform.\u201d So there\u2019s no problem with a private platform saying, \u201cThat violates our policy. We\u2019re not going to post it.\u201d And they\u2019re not utilizing that immunity in a good way. So why should they continue to have it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now, we may want to create a safe harbor for companies that are meeting best practices and standards. So we may want to narrow 230 instead of getting rid of it. What is the analogy in terms of AI? I\u2019m not sure what the analogy is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Let me draw you the connection that I\u2019ve been thinking about a lot. In the case of social media and Section 230, the immunity was that the platforms would not be responsible for the speech of the users. So I would post something horrible about you, and you couldn\u2019t sue Mark Zuckerberg. This is the thing that has broadly enabled the social media platforms at scale.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I opened Instagram today, and it is all but making the content for me. And in fact, a lot of content on Instagram is being generated by Meta. It is obviously their speech. And somewhere between having your Muse go and make Instagram for you, and Meta synthesizing all of the product recommendations and generating content all by itself, is a liability for Meta. It is outside of the Section 230 shield. That is their speech.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n And you can draw a lot of distinctions there. If I fully automate my Instagram account with my Meta agent, is that my speech, Meta speech, or the AI model\u2019s speech? Who knows? But it might not be under 230. So you would be outside of the immunity shield. And I\u2019m just curious if you think that will meaningfully alter how they moderate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I agree with your analysis, but I think it\u2019s a difficult enough legal analysis that they feel they\u2019ve got the money to stop, or slow down, effective litigation. Meta, or any of these other companies, decides how they want to amplify certain content. So let\u2019s say it\u2019s content that I generated. Is it still solely my speech if Meta spends a fortune to amplify it to so many users who wouldn\u2019t have heard it, but for Meta making that decision, or is it now both of our speech? I\u2019m not sure exactly where that line is. If it\u2019s obviously purely Meta content, then it\u2019s pretty simple, but there are going to be a lot of cases in between.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But I think the broader question is: is 230 in its current form still meeting its purpose? I don\u2019t think it is, but I know there\u2019s no consensus over what that ought to look like. And that is part of what has hampered us from doing anything. But even the smallish stuff, the small-bore stuff like don\u2019t allow your platforms to encourage people to commit suicide has been hard for us to do in the social media context. Really, litigation has been more effective than legislation because we haven\u2019t been able to legislate. If you look now to AI, we made some progress legislatively, at least in terms of the process in trying to prevent AI chatbots from telling kids how to commit suicide or keep it from their parents. But even those little things are still not at the finish line. So what does that say about our capacity to do the big things?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Historically, when stuff is tough like this, we wait for calamity. And in the case of AI, because that calamity could be just massive, we can\u2019t afford to do that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It does seem to me like we\u2019re about to run a fairly large-scale A\/B test on the value of the 230 immunity. Whatever ChatGPT is saying to people is very clearly OpenAI speech. And then somewhere next to that is the kind of clarification law that AI companies are talking about in terms of agents and things like the Hugging Face attack, where they don\u2019t know if a user directing an agent to do something bad is their fault. Whether that liability should pass through them if I\u2019m the person who told my agent to go do some horrible hacking attack.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I talked to the tech industry, and the thing they want from legislation is actual clarity in the law. And instead, what we\u2019ve gotten is this non-binding agreement with the Trump administration that simply says things like, \u201cThe companies will empower an internal team to ensure all of the controls, monitoring, and detection are operating as intended,\u201d which feels like nothing. To me, that is literally meaningless. Does that strike you as toothless and as meaningless as it does to me?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yeah, it certainly does. I think it really is meaningless. I\u2019ve been thinking about the question you just raised. It\u2019s interesting that you brought that up, and that is: where does the legal liability rest today? So if you have these bots hacking into Australian websites, or you have them hacking into Hugging Face, clearly that is the responsibility of these models because that\u2019s not being done at the behest of one of their customers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But let\u2019s say you build a tool for the purpose of hacking, or that can be used for hacking, and one of your clients, one of your users, uses that tool that way. How much of that is your responsibility? Is it analogous to somebody who sells a gun and then the gun seller says, \u201cWell, it\u2019s not my responsibility for how they go out and use it\u201d? Or is it someone who sells a weapon that is flawed and causes injury because of a flaw in the manufacture of the weapon? Or is it selling a weapon to a kid who\u2019s not eligible to buy it, or to a convict, or not using due diligence? What is AI responsibility? What is the company\u2019s responsibility in the sophistication of the products if they\u2019re building things that the plain use can be to commit ransomware attacks?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think that the gun metaphor is a good one. It\u2019s easy to grab onto for a variety of reasons, but I tend to think that it kind of obscures the reality of the capabilities of the model. So OpenAI\u2019s latest model, Mythos, can be used for offensive cyberattacks, and it can be used on defense too. And the cybersecurity firms that we cover, they want it. Their argument is, \u201cWe actually need to take humans out of the loop so that our cyber defenses can be as responsive and fast to incoming AI-powered cyberattacks. And if we insistently put humans in the loop, then we will be slow, and the attackers won\u2019t have the same morals or ethical qualms we do, and we\u2019ll lose.\u201d And this is all just a dance around, well, the model in this case can be used on offense and on defense, and it should be equally capable on both sides.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t see a regulatory framework that provides clarity for any of the frontier labs to be able to sell that thing and not feel like, well, if the equally capable defensive model gets used in the wrong way, that they won\u2019t be liable. And I think that\u2019s frozen some of this development in its tracks. I\u2019m wondering, again, just from a legislative perspective, these are thorny questions. If you try to write a bill to provide some of this clarity, it will necessarily have to be vague on the margins because the technology is moving so fast. What is that debate like for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, I think what it means is that this debate is going to keep evolving as AI evolves and at a speed that is really much faster than Congress has proven capable of legislating. I like to say that in the technology world, Moore\u2019s law is increasing productivity, doubling it every 18 months, and with AI, maybe that\u2019s quadrupling it every five months. The legislative calendar works more on a Murphy\u2019s law timetable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And I think that disparity is even more pronounced in the area of AI. What I think that translates into is that we\u2019re going to need a regulatory body that has real discretion and real expertise that can move a lot quicker than Congress can. Whether that looks like an FDA for artificial intelligence or some other agency, I think that\u2019s ultimately going to be necessary. That agency\u2019s going to have to have real power and teeth and real expertise. It\u2019s going to be a challenge, as with these independent monitors: if there\u2019s a government component there, how do we afford that? Because there\u2019s so much talent, and that talent can draw much bigger salaries in the private sector. But I do think we\u2019re going to need a regulatory body in addition to whatever the overarching statutory framework is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, in addition to being a bad lawyer, I was a very bad law student, mostly majored in Miller Lite, but it\u2019s fine because every foundational precedent that I was taught in law school in 2003 has been overturned by this Supreme Court. And the most important one in this context is Chevron deference. In <\/strong>Loper Bright<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, the Court said we no longer have to defer to the experts at agencies; go ahead, corporate interests, tie every regulation up in litigation, and then we\u2019ll decide. The Roberts Court will decide if these are appropriate regulations.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n This strikes me as a huge problem for the idea that we will set up a regulatory body to oversee AI. Because what you\u2019d want is a bunch of experts in that agency making decisions on the margin, saying, \u201cOkay, here\u2019s a vague enabling statute that Congress passed that said, \u2018Pass all appropriate regulations to keep us safe.\u2019\u201d And then you would write a bunch of regulations inside the agency, and until last year \u2014 no, I\u2019m sorry, until 2024 \u2014 that\u2019s how it would work. That\u2019s gone. If you enable an agency in that way, OpenAI can show up and say, \u201cThat\u2019s inappropriate. We actually don\u2019t think that\u2019s right.\u201d And they would tie it up in litigation forever. How do you get over that if you want to set up a regulatory body?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s very difficult for the reason you mentioned. The Supreme Court is a lot of things today. It is now a partisan institution. It is, in my view, a right-wing social institution, but there\u2019s one common denominator that runs through its decisions. That common denominator is not always pro-Trump. The common denominator is money. That court makes the decision where the money is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So when it involves, for example, tariff decisions, it will rule against the president because tariffs impact the money. It will allow the president to remove independent heads of agencies, except maybe the Federal Reserve, because that\u2019s where the money is. And so you\u2019re right, they are corporatists first and foremost, and they\u2019re more than content to take power away from Congress to regulate and away from regulatory bodies. It does mean that we are going to have to draft legislation in this area empowering the agency and making it as specific as we can, make these agencies as powerful as we can, delegate as well as we can, knowing that the Supreme Court will strike down anything that is in any way ambiguous if it suits the money interests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There\u2019s a lot of political realignment happening around AI and with privacy, which I want to talk about in a little bit. It feels like there\u2019s more across-the-board antipathy towards AI companies that might be harnessed into writing an actual piece of legislation and getting it passed. We see it on the right and the left. You see it in the backlash to data centers. This is a story that is happening on the right and the left.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n We have <\/strong>a big story about the Utah data center<\/strong><\/a>: Kevin O\u2019Leary got himself in trouble for calling all of his detractors Chinese agents, and he had to issue an apology because the people of Utah are not Chinese agents. That doesn\u2019t feel like a left-right breakdown to me. How does that feel to you? Is this something that you can actually channel from across the spectrum into a meaningful policy outcome?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I don\u2019t think this is a partisan issue. I mean, it\u2019s certainly true that the president is all in for AI, no restrictions, no impediments, no pacing, no nothing. And there are some of my Republican colleagues here that are going along with that agenda. There are others that are hearing from their constituents who don\u2019t want a data center in their backyard or are concerned they\u2019re going to lose their job as a result of AI or their life as a result of AI. And I think we are seeing the kind of coalition where you have populists on the left and populists on the right coming together, initially around concerns over jobs and job losses, and what it will mean for working families. But now, across a broader set of issues, the data centers are the most tangible way for people to express their concerns about their neighborhood, but also about their job, about the technology, and about the uncertainty of it all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And I think the initial concern, and I still think it\u2019s quite a dominant concern, is over the impact on jobs and the nature of work. But what has reached the fore more recently is concern about runaway AI and the danger it poses. What will the concern look like a month or two months from now? I don\u2019t know, but I do think it\u2019s not going away. And as the AI bills \u2014 and I\u2019ve introduced several \u2014 indicate, not just mine, but others, most of those bills are bipartisan. Some around the data centers are predominantly democratic bills. My bill on the data centers would force them to pay the costs so that consumers don\u2019t have to. It\u2019s not the voluntary, we pledge, we might, we\u2019d like to; just don\u2019t provide anything that will force us to observe those costs. Those are mostly democratic bills. Republicans have largely adhered to the president\u2019s line about not posing any real imposition. They want to pass fig-leaf kind of stuff, but not real stuff. But I think increasingly, as people hear from their constituents, there\u2019ll be bipartisan interest in legislating this area.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019re on the antitrust committee. One of the more surprising bits of the structural realignment that we see around AI is the notion that there should be an antitrust exemption so these companies can coordinate on cybersecurity. Lina Khan, who is Biden\u2019s FTC chair, said, \u201cYou don\u2019t need an antitrust exemption.\u201d We <\/strong>just had Jonathan Kanter<\/strong><\/a> on the show, who ran antitrust at the DOJ under Biden. He was like, \u201cYou don\u2019t need an antitrust exemption for this.\u201d But at the same time, you have David Sacks agreeing with Lina Khan, which is not a thing that happened during the Biden administration. You have a lot of what you would call the little tech players in the tech right being like, \u201cNo, no, no, this is how you\u2019re going to make a cartel. And we didn\u2019t like the Google and Apple cartel that kept a lot of our investments from going. They have to compete in the marketplace.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s surprising to me. You don\u2019t often see David Sacks and Lina Khan on the same side of an issue. You\u2019re on the antitrust committee. Do you think the companies need an antitrust exemption?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think a very narrow antitrust exemption could be very helpful in addressing foreign distillation efforts. We would want companies to be able to talk to each other to address a mass distillation effort targeting multiple companies. I was involved in helping to pass cyber information-sharing legislation about a decade ago to allow companies to talk to each other if they were the victim of a hacking attempt so that they could alert one another and alert the government as to what malware they were using so that we could help the collective defense. And I also don\u2019t want to discourage companies from pacing with each other if it\u2019s for legitimate security reasons. Now, I don\u2019t want any of this used to jack up prices by essentially forming a cabal, an anti-competitive cabal. So you\u2019ve got to have safeguards in place, but I don\u2019t want legitimate concerns about liability to stop these companies from doing what they should be doing, and some of that will be with each other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The other realignment that I\u2019m utterly fascinated by is around privacy and specifically Flock cameras, Axon cameras; people hate them. They hate them so much they\u2019re kicking them out of their communities. We\u2019ve been trying to get the CEO of Flock on the show. I think his company\u2019s in a little bit of a crisis. We\u2019ll see if we can reel him in to talk about what\u2019s actually happening to his business as he faces bipartisan backlash.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think Americans are redefining what privacy means. Famously, there is no expectation of privacy in public. This has been foundational in our law, and that\u2019s because not everybody had an always-on camera. They certainly didn\u2019t have cameras in their glasses. They didn\u2019t have watches that could record summaries of every meeting they\u2019ve been in all day. And the state wasn\u2019t putting up cameras everywhere that could track all of your movements across every state you\u2019ve ever been in, with a giant database that was enabled by AI so the police could search it easily.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s a big swirl, but to me it feels like there\u2019s an assertion of a privacy right in public by the American people. They want to have some kind of privacy in public that does not exist in our law. So society is moving ahead of the law. How would you square that? How would you be able to write a piece of legislation that affords people some sense of privacy in public?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think the Flock cameras are really disturbing. And yes, there are legitimate law enforcement uses, and they\u2019ve helped catch people who\u2019ve committed terrible crimes, but they\u2019ve also allowed a department to try to follow [people] through their license plate. Someone wrote an op-ed criticizing a police department\u2019s use of these Flock cameras. They\u2019ve also been used to try to track a woman who needed reproductive healthcare. They\u2019ve been used for a lot of illicit purposes, and I think people are waking up to all the problems that they\u2019re creating and all the privacy that\u2019s vanishing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here, and I say this somewhat hesitantly because there\u2019s a lot to be worried about with AI, but this is a cardinal concern and risk with AI, and that is: can privacy exist in the era of powerful AI? We talked a bit earlier about open models being available for defense as well as offense, and to be able to respond in real time. As those models get more powerful, and even the closed models get more powerful, you can train those models to invade people\u2019s privacy. You can train those models to find out what your health records are and what you watch on TV. You can train those models to turn on the microphone on your watch or to turn on the microphone on your Alexa device when it\u2019s turned off to aggregate all that data about you. That\u2019s quite terrifying.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We may have no privacy left unless we act to ensure that we have privacy. And even then, foreign bad actors will have access to these very sophisticated models. They\u2019ll develop their own. They\u2019ll distill ours. They\u2019ll do all kinds of stuff so that they can have access to it, and they\u2019ll be private sellers, maybe not American private sellers, but other private sellers. We see this in some of the private sellers of these hacking technologies already, some of these companies that are providing eavesdropping capabilities to the highest bidders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So we\u2019re going to have to figure out how we not just prohibit conduct, but how we beef up the privacy of American people. How do we use technology to protect our privacy? Otherwise, there\u2019ll be little of it left.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The reason I\u2019m asking about what, to me, feels like bipartisan issues to the point that there is a realignment of our politics, is because we\u2019re a month away from an election. It feels, based on the polling, that Democrats are going to win a healthy number of seats, if not outright take control of both houses of Congress.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n What should we expect to see if that happens? Is it a bunch of investigations? Is it actually getting the CEO of Flock to show up to a Senate hearing? They <\/strong>didn\u2019t do that a couple of weeks ago<\/strong><\/a>. Or is it a flurry of litigation that lands on President Trump\u2019s desk that ultimately goes nowhere?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019re going to see vigorous oversight in this area to begin with. We\u2019re going to want the leaders of this industry to come in and talk about all of the times that their own agents have gotten away from them, how it happened, what\u2019s been done about it, and what they\u2019re doing about it. We\u2019re going to want these companies to be transparent with Congress about it. We\u2019re going to want to legislate in this area, and that may come into conflict with the president, but there\u2019s a lot of bipartisan work product here. And I think that given where the country is and where it\u2019s moving, it becomes increasingly difficult for this president to veto bipartisan work product coming out of the Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So that is my hope. It\u2019s certainly a far better prospect than we have today. This is going to be a very central priority for the American people. We want to harness AI for the good it can do. We want to use it to bring down the cost of things. That\u2019s our central priority. And there are ways that AI might be useful in bringing down certain costs. We want to protect the dignity of work also, but we want to make sure that this doesn\u2019t pose a threat to the American people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019ve brought up the corrupting role of money in politics several times so far. It occurs to me that the Trump administration, the president, and his family have done what amounts to crypto scams a bunch of times throughout this administration. The second time around, they\u2019ve enriched themselves in ways that I think a lot of ordinary Americans find to be beyond the pale. You served as impeachment manager for the first Trump impeachment. Do you think it\u2019s strategically wise for the Democrats to show up and try to impeach him a third time over this?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think we\u2019ll need to see what the priority is at the time we take control of both houses, knock on wood, and what the priority needs to be. And I would put the very top priority as fulfilling the promises that we\u2019re making right now, which is to have a central focus: the highest priority on reducing costs for people. So, in the oversight area, what that means, I think, is doing oversight to make sure that the corruption of this administration isn\u2019t raising costs on the American people. And let me give you one example. I could give you about a hundred. I mentioned the Melania movie. I think the American people deserve to know: Is Amazon getting federal contracts now not because it\u2019s the best technology for cloud computing, not because it\u2019s offered the most competitive price, but because it paid off the First Family $40 million?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If they are, we\u2019re paying for that excess. We\u2019re paying for a product that may not be as good. I\u2019m not saying that this has happened, but they\u2019re not going to do any oversight of it. Their decisions on everything from mergers to government contracts to pardons are influenced by the money they\u2019re getting hand over fist. So we, I think, from an oversight point of view, need to focus on oversight that can help attack corruption that\u2019s driving up costs. In terms of impeachment, I think we\u2019ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m glad you brought up the entertainment industry, because I do want to end by talking about Paramount and Warner Brothers, which is a merger happening in your home state of California. It feels like a lot of that merger was the Ellison family in particular making promises about the news coverage of CBS News and CNN in order to get favorable regulatory treatment. We can see that CBS has softened its stance. The market has rejected CBS\u2019s softened stance towards this administration. So there\u2019s at least one check on that power, but California Attorney General Rob Bonta didn\u2019t push all the way to the finish line<\/a> to try to prevent that merger from happening. Do you think that was the right decision?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m still frankly looking at the deal that was struck, and I have a lot of concerns about it. The one that you mentioned is a very significant concern, and that is that there was some editorial independence board that\u2019s supposed to oversee CBS and CNN, and yet the Paramount company, or the merged company, the board appointed by the Ellisons, will agree on what that board is and how it\u2019s constituted. So is this real, or is this going to be fiction?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019m also concerned, frankly, about what it\u2019s going to mean for jobs. I live in Burbank. It\u2019s the entertainment capital of the world, and represents so much of that industry in California. And what we have seen in past mergers is thousands and thousands of layoffs. So that is a particular concern for me. I love this industry. I love movies and television. It\u2019s something I really deeply care about. I\u2019m carrying a bill right now, important to the whole industry, and that is a film and television tax credit to try to bring production back to the United States. There\u2019s never been a more difficult time to work in that industry, but I do have continuing concerns about editorial independence and also the degree to which CBS paid off the president, I think, because they had mergers pending. And ABC paid off the president. Those were personal sums to the president and his pet causes, with the result of completely frivolous litigation by the president that they would have won in court, which I urged them not to settle because of the destructive First Amendment precedent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The idea that the Trump-appointed FCC chairman attacks ABC because they don\u2019t like the jokes that Jimmy Kimmel tells, or cost Stephen Colbert his job on CBS because they didn\u2019t like the jokes he\u2019s telling \u2014 that\u2019s third-world dictator kind of stuff. That\u2019s not what we are used to seeing in the US, and I never want to see it here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The jobs piece is really interesting to me. One of the longest-running tropes at The Verge is that a workable antitrust policy for the United States would be simply to forbid companies from buying Time Warner because it has never worked and it may never work again, and that we should just pass one law. Just don\u2019t do that, and maybe everything will be fine. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Paramount made a bunch of noise. They fulminated about leaving California if they weren\u2019t allowed to pursue this merger. They pretended to investigate Nashville and Texas and all the other places that you investigate, and then the merger was approved, or the litigation dropped, and I think David Ellison put out a statement like, \u201cCalifornia is our home. We\u2019re going to invest here,\u201d and it seemed very fake in the end. Do you think that threat to leave spooked Gavin Newsom, spooked Rob Bonta?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think the threat to leave California concerned a lot of people, and I\u2019m sure it concerned them. Was it a real threat? I don\u2019t know. We\u2019ve seen some of these corporate headquarters moves mean that they move basically their office, but they don\u2019t necessarily move the studios or the lots, which would be difficult and expensive for them to do for a whole lot of other reasons. But just the idea, frankly, I found offensive: \u201cIf we don\u2019t get approval of the merger we want, we\u2019re going to pick up, and we\u2019re going to leave the state.\u201d It doesn\u2019t say much about a commitment to the workforce if you\u2019re ready to do that at the drop of a hat. So those arguments, really, I found offensive: the claim, \u201cWe\u2019re going to leave if we don\u2019t get what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I will say this: the industry\u2019s been through a hell of a time. The workforce has been through a hell of a time. Between the pandemic, the strikes, the consolidation among the streaming companies, and now the mergers, there\u2019s never been a more difficult time to work in the industry. And I\u2019m not talking about the Tom Cruise-level celebrities. I\u2019m talking about the carpenters and the set designers, the wardrobe people, the dry cleaners, the caterers, the small restaurants and small businesses that thrive when you\u2019re making a film or TV show in LA or somewhere else, that just take a huge hit when they\u2019re not filming. Those are the people that I care about. And we do need stability, so this needs to be resolved. We need stability. We also need to match the incentives other countries are giving if we want this industry to thrive again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Let me bring this full circle to AI. We talked at the very beginning about the AI companies just ingesting all of this creative output without any payment, and that has enabled the models to be as good as they are. The models are now good at film production. I will admit to having watched several AI microdramas on TikTok, mostly by accident, but they were compelling enough that I stayed. And then, as editor-in-chief, I try to assign our reporters to write about AI microdramas<\/a>. They did not like this idea, but that\u2019s what happened. That is killing them at the input stage. We\u2019re not paying them for the training material. And now we\u2019re competing in a marketplace with a vastly cheaper product. You don\u2019t need carpenters and small businesses to make AI slop microdramas on TikTok.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n How would you connect these dots? Can you make AI compatible with the film industry in California as it exists today?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You know, a lot of these things all come back to the same thing, and that is: what is the commitment to the workforce? Does that matter to these companies? This is a broader problem. I remember having somebody in the industry, a worker in the industry, come to visit me to basically complain about the Affordable Care Act and how it had cost him his job. And I said, \u201cCome by, I want to talk to you about this.\u201d And he came in, and he explained that the studio that he worked for, every year, they would ask for pay increases, and they were told they couldn\u2019t give them more of a pay increase because healthcare costs were rising so fast and it was putting downward pressure on wages. And then the ACA passed, and then he got laid off. And he assumed it was because of the ACA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I remember telling him, \u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t think it was the ACA. You\u2019re right about healthcare costs going up,\u201d and they were going up very fast. Actually, after the ACA, they were still going up, but they were going up at a slower pace than they were before the ACA. \u201cHere\u2019s what I think happened to you.\u201d And what had happened around the time he was laid off was that there was a hostile takeover bid mounted against one of the studios. It was unsuccessful, but the studio that was the target of that takeover shed all the jobs it would have shed had it been taken over, so it would be a less attractive takeover target in the future. And then other studios shed jobs, even though they were very profitable; they shed jobs because they didn\u2019t want to be taken over. And so there were these cascading sets of layoffs in the industry, none of which were necessary because they were profitable companies, but it did increase the quarterly report, the value of the quarterly report, the next shareholder report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n How do we get out of the bind where the only consideration is the shareholder report and the employees simply don\u2019t matter? Unless the employees start to matter to these companies, then yeah, they will use every device they can to make films without having to use human beings. And this is, I think, a broader challenge in our economy. We see other countries like Germany doing a better job. They have employee representatives on their board of directors, so they take into consideration the impact on their own workforce. You mentioned the prior FTC chair. She was committed to looking at factors in terms of competitiveness and anti-competitiveness, including the impact on the workforce. And I think we should, but this is a continuing challenge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You\u2019re not up for reelection in this cycle. You\u2019re not up again until 2030, so you have a little bit of distance from the actual campaigning. We\u2019re seeing a bunch of progressive candidates on the left propose muscular reforms to capitalism, right? Abdul El-Sayed has said, \u201cI\u2019m a capitalist, but we need to regulate capitalism so it works for people.\u201d I live in New York. Mayor [Zohran] Mamdani is here. He wants to regulate Amazon delivery trucks.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n There\u2019s a lot of that energy on the left. Do you think if the Democrats retake Congress, we\u2019ll see that turned into results on any meaningful time frame, or do you need the presidency too?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think what we should do is try to get legislation passed on a bipartisan basis because that\u2019s the only way you can get bills through Congress, particularly if you don\u2019t control the White House. But I also think we need to take up big Democratic priorities that may get through the Senate or may not, depending on whether we flip the Senate and what our margin is; they may get vetoed by the president, but show the country that this is the kind of bold reform that we are prepared to pass if you give us the presidency two years later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And it is simply not going to be acceptable to anyone to say, \u201cHey, if you elect us, we\u2019ll take you back to the status quo before Trump came along.\u201d No, the reason Trump came along is people were deeply unsatisfied with the status quo. So we need big, bold ideas. I favor Medicare for All. I\u2019ll let anyone who wants to participate in Medicare participate in Medicare. I don\u2019t think we should force people into Medicare if they want to stay in a private plan, but I think we ought to broaden Medicare and make it accessible to people. It\u2019s a very efficient healthcare system. And that is different than simply saying, \u201cWe\u2019re going to restore premium tax credits under the ACA.\u201d Yeah, we should do that too, but that alone isn\u2019t going to cut it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So I hope we\u2019re going to think big. And I\u2019ll say this too. The reason why we keep going back and forth between a Trump and a Biden is that people are so unsatisfied with how hard they\u2019re working and how little they have to show for it. The economy\u2019s just not working for people. It\u2019s not that they\u2019re out of work. The problem is that they are working and they still can\u2019t make ends meet. And until we address that, our democracy is not going to be on solid ground. It\u2019s going to always be ripe for any demagogue who comes along promising they alone can fix it. We have to make sure that if you\u2019re working hard in this country, you can provide for yourself a good living and for your family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Last question, and it\u2019s directly related to that. I\u2019ve said several times now that I think we\u2019re in a generational political realignment. It\u2019s been the foundation of many of the questions I\u2019ve asked. Do you agree that we\u2019re in the middle of a foundational political realignment?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n We, I think, have been for some time. I\u2019m not sure where the alignment goes from here, but I\u2019ll tell you where I\u2019d like it to go from here. We, in the Democratic Party, we\u2019re unquestionably the party of working people and average families. We\u2019re the party of the underdog, and I think we\u2019ve lost some of that in the public perception. Our policies are still very much driven that way, but increasingly people just think, \u201cBoth parties are corrupt. Neither party\u2019s really looking out for me.\u201d I want the Democratic Party to once again be the party that the public looks to and says, \u201cOkay, they\u2019re fighting for me. They\u2019re not fighting for those who\u2019ve already done great. They\u2019re fighting for me.\u201d That\u2019s why I was drawn to the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And I also think, and this is related to the whole conversation we\u2019ve had, wealth is now concentrated so much in so few hands that it is totally warping our political system. Wealth is perpetuating itself and warping our system even further. Some people took it as a celebration: we have our first trillionaire<\/a>. Well, that first trillionaire, Elon Musk, became a trillionaire because of government largesse, because of government contracts that saved his bacon when his companies were in trouble. And there is no ethics, no sentiment about giving back there. No, he was only happy to DOGE the people who made his success possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But what made that possible too, that is the aggregation of all that wealth, is a tax system that\u2019s not the least bit progressive anymore and is becoming less and less progressive. And one of the missions I hope for our new Congress, and I hope for the Democratic Party, is: how do we have a truly progressive tax code again? How do we make sure that, yes, the AI companies pay their fair share and they pay for some of the disruption that technology is going to cause? But I think even more important, how do we make sure the tax code is truly progressive and people who are doing well are going to pay well into the system? That, I think, is fundamental.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Senator Schiff, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for being on Decoder.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Great to be with you. Thanks for having me on.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Questions or comments? Hit us up at decoder@theverge.com. We really do read every email!<\/sub><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n A podcast from The Verge<\/em> about big ideas and other problems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nDecoder with Nilay Patel<\/h2>\n