Today, I’m talking with Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California. He’s been in Congress for eight years now, representing California’s 17th District, which is arguably the highest-tech district in the entire country. You’ll hear him say a couple of times that there’s $10 trillion of tech market value in his district, and that’s not an exaggeration: Apple, Intel, and Nvidia are all headquartered in his district, along with important new AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. 

I wanted to know how Khanna thinks about representing those companies but also the regular people in his district; the last time I spoke to him, in 2018, he reminded me that he’s got plenty of teachers and firefighters to represent as well. But the politics of tech have changed a lot in these past few years — and things are only going to get both more complicated and more tense as Trump and Biden head into what will obviously be a contentious and bitter presidential election.

Links: 

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23810838

Credits: 

Decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

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