David Sacks said the United States cannot afford to slow artificial intelligence because, in his view, stopping progress in AI would amount to halting the U.S. economy itself. He made the case on Sunday in a post on X, arguing that AI was already 75% of GDP growth in the first quarter.
That is the kind of claim that lands differently when the numbers are already tilting in the same direction. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last week that consumer spending accounted for 68.1% of GDP, while business investment added 1.48 percentage points to growth last quarter and consumer spending added another 1.08 percentage points. Overall GDP growth was 2% last quarter.
Sacks, who stepped down in March as Trump’s top crypto and AI advisor, has spent much of his public case for the technology on economics rather than hype. He spearheaded the administration’s AI Action Plan, which called for fast-tracked AI development and rapid infrastructure build-out, and he told tech leaders and lawmakers near the end of his tenure that AI was a cornerstone of the U.S. economy. On Sunday, he said again that “polls may show that AI is not popular, but economic growth is,” and that “technology leadership has always been America’s great strength, and it’s driving the economy forward.”
The tension in Sacks’ argument is that the same boom he celebrates is also narrowing the story of growth. The biggest categories receiving business investment last quarter were technical equipment such as computers and intellectual property products including software, and spending on information processing, equipment, software and research and development accounted for 1.52 percentage points of overall GDP growth. In other words, almost all of the private investment story now runs through AI-related spending, even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent keeps promising a “blockbuster” year built on manufacturing investment and job growth.
That leaves Sacks defending not just a technology but the shape of the economy itself. His warning is blunt: “At this point, stopping progress in AI would be equivalent to halting the U.S. economy.” Whether Washington wants to hear it or not, he is making the case that the growth data already belongs to AI.
