Hello and welcome Regulator, newsletter for Rod subscribers for the most ambitious crossover event ever: the endless war between technology and politics. Not logged in yet? Come on, do it!
Washington may seem slower than Silicon Valley. But that’s because it’s more turbulent. To get anything done, we have to navigate the vast amount of chaos that results when millions of federal elected officials, employees, political appointees, lobbyists, corporations, lawyers, journalists, and influencers try to advance their interests, often at the same time.
For the last 20-odd issues RegulatorI’ve written every week about big stories about the growing influence of technology in Washington, both as a tool used by politicians to gain power and as an industry bent on bending the law to its advantage. But over the last year it has become increasingly difficult to declare that it only exists one big story every week. So many new technologies are the subject of heated political debates—semiconductors, artificial intelligence, crypto, social media, surveillance, to name a few — that picking one each week seems like it barely scratches the surface of the action happening all over town.
So this week, I’m pouring out the notes and tidbits I’ve gleaned while reporting, as well as some of the coolest stories I’ve come across. Shockingly, even though the district is practically frozen, and even outside of the partial shutdown, there has been a lot of action…
But obviously yes, let’s talk about shutdown first.
Protracted Negotiation Warning: The House narrowly voted Tuesday afternoon to avert a partial government shutdown, but publicly voiced its demands for ICE reforms: judge-issued arrest warrants, enforcement of camera-wielding agents (and Rod popular) and get ICE agents to take off their masks. Republicans are countering by asking to defund “sanctuary cities.” But of course, anything can change in an instant…
Epstein Warning: After a spat between their lawyers and the House Oversight Committee, Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed to testify before Congress later this month about their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, narrowly avoiding a vote to hold them in contempt. They also agreed to have their testimony filmed and transcribed, so get your ctrl+F keys ready to search the DOJ’s Epstein Files database for dropped names.
Celebrity Alert: Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt joins Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the passage of Section 230 at a news conference on Capitol Hill.
The future of cryptocurrencies is getting a little clearer
On Monday, the White House met with the policy directors of several major crypto companies, trade associations and representatives of traditional financial institutions to reach an agreement on the Clarity Act. The Crypto Market Structure Bill has been in limbo after Coinbase abruptly withdrew its support, citing its current language on stablecoin revenues. According to Cody Carbone of The Digital Chamber, a trade association representing the digital asset industry, “the political rhetoric was toned down” and the invited parties eventually agreed to aim for a compromise by the end of February.
Negotiations took place mainly between the political directors of these institutions and No CEOs of these companies – which makes sense given the news from Davos. The Wall Street Journal announced on Friday that Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong got into several confrontations with Wall Street CEOs during the World Economic Forum, who were offended that he publicly accused traditional banks of sabotaging the law against the crypto industry. The most Sequence-y kerfuffle: JPMorganChase’s Jamie Dimon interrupts Armstrong’s coffee date with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to accuse him of being ‘full of shit’. (Personally, I suspect billionaires prefer fighting in Davos to negotiating in Washington, but that’s just me.)
Who pushed out the DOGE?
Traffic lights announced Friday that Michael Grimes, Elon Musk’s longtime associate and banker, is leaving the Trump administration. Since entering the administration in early 2025, Grimes has led the Commerce Department’s venture capital division, which gutted funding for the CHIPS Act, bought a stake in Intel, and will eventually hold $1. trillion from East Asian trade deals to invest in other technology companies. (The business, by the way, operates without congressional approval.) The division will now be run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, as well as a group of Wall Street investors, and is currently seeking new potential investment projects.
This week in “Interesting Timelines”
The Wall Street Journal reports that just days before Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the extremely powerful king of Abu Dhabi known as the “spy sheikh,” signed a deal to buy a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial — a crypto company owned by the Trump family — for about half a billion dollars, paying Trump $187 million up front. Shortly after, the UAE managed to win approval to buy 500,000 advanced AI chips, despite fears that Tahnoon AI was too close to China’s Huawei for the State Department’s comfort.
Disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who has been convicted of financial crimes and sentenced to prison at multiple points, is once again trying to convince people that he is in fact a Republican victim of the “woke mob”, this time on