Venture capitalist and All In Podcast co-host Jason Calacanis joined Adam Curry on Episode 1905 of the No Agenda Show, titled 'Nerdballs,' to dismantle what he describes as a dangerous and self-serving AI panic gripping Silicon Valley and Washington. The conversation, published September 20, 2026, matters because it offers a rare, unfiltered critique of the narratives driving billions in investment and shaping imminent regulation—narratives that Calacanis argues are less about safety and more about entrenching the power of a few frontier labs.
Calacanis reserves his sharpest criticism for Anthropic, the AI safety company whose leadership he accuses of believing it is 'creating a god.' 'They actually think that they are creating a god. They're not. They're creating software,' he tells Curry, comparing the company's effective-altruism roots to the doomed engineers in the film Prometheus. Curry plays clips of University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos describing a reported Anthropic 'funeral' for a retired Claude model, underscoring the quasi-religious fervor that critics say has infected the AI safety debate. For Calacanis, the real story is regulatory capture: frontier labs lobbying Washington to gate open-source competitors like DeepSeek, GLM, and NeMoTron. If those efforts succeed, the implications for innovation and competition in AI are profound, potentially cementing a cartel of incumbents.
The episode also tackles the week's most-discussed stories, including Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's new code of conduct and his public criticism of Anthropic's 'model welfare' doctrine, the reported Hugging Face security incident, and calls for an AI 'kill switch.' Curry and Calacanis discuss 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. These issues matter because they show how AI, energy, and media are colliding in the 2026 midterms, with data centers becoming a flashpoint for local backlash and national politics.
Calacanis delivers rare backstage detail 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 recounts Jensen Huang fumbling the speakerphone button when Trump called mid-panel and describes pressing Meta's Dina about the company's record $17 billion settlement during a data-center segment. He also shares the origin story of All In as a pandemic-era poker group with David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg, and reveals that This Week in Startups sells out its ad inventory a year in advance at $3,000 per spot. Curry pivots to Bitcoin, predicting a $430,000 peak, while Calacanis discusses parenting in the smartphone era. The pair reflect on the late John C. Dvorak, whose memory drives the show's ongoing Order of the Ant tribute campaign.
By platforming Calacanis's contrarian take, No Agenda Show continues its media deconstruction mission, offering listeners a skeptical counterpoint to the AI doomerism that dominates headlines. The episode's implications extend beyond tech: it questions whether AI safety is a genuine concern or a Trojan horse for regulatory capture that could stifle open-source innovation and concentrate power among a few well-connected firms.
