Khanna on Capitol Hill in April.
Photographer: Caroline Gutman for Bloomberg Businessweek
Even Silicon Valley’s Congressman Wants to Rein in AI
Ro Khanna spent years cheering on the tech industry and building ties with wealthy donors. Now he’s pitching himself as a presidential contender with a wealth tax and tough talk about the “Epstein class.”
On the day Silicon Valley turned against him, Ro Khanna was supposed to be on vacation. It was late December, Congress was out of session, and the California Democrat had planned on spending the time with his family, but he couldn’t resist stirring the pot on social media. In between lighter posts (followers now know his favorite Christmas carol is “Joy to the World”), he riffed on the Epstein files, suggested that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. should be turned into a customer-owned co-op and called the right-wing livestreamer Nick Fuentes a racist. He also wished Fuentes a merry Christmas. “I was just kind of tweeting out things,” Khanna recalls.
Just tweeting out things has taken Khanna, whose congressional district includes much of Silicon Valley, impressively far. Although he possesses some valuable assets for political success—Yale law degree, wealth by marriage, chumminess with many of the Valley’s most powerful businessmen—he’s almost comically deficient in charisma. On the stump, he lacks the happy-warrior energy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the looks of Gavin Newsom, even the crotchety gravitas of Bernie Sanders. In conversation, too, Khanna often comes off as hopelessly bookish, more likely to reference a German Enlightenment philosopher than a pro athlete or a pop star. What comes most naturally to him seems to be scolding, a skill that makes him, if not a natural politician, a natural reply guy.