Molly White

Things Molly Says on Podcasts

Independent journalist and researcher covering cryptocurrency, AI, and the money moving through tech industry politics. Writes Citation Needed, a newsletter and podcast, and is best known for Web3 is Going Just Great, a running catalogue of the crypto industry's failures and scandals. Bylines in the New York Times, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, and Bloomberg Businessweek. Tracks crypto and AI industry political spending through Tech Influence Watch (formerly Follow the Crypto). Shows up most often as a guest on Tech Won't Save Us, talking crypto and AI money in politics, and has also appeared on This Week in Tech, Big Technology, Better Offline, and Pivot to AI. An interactive map of the Trump family's crypto ventures was featured on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

Where to Find Them

Molly White writes Molly White , hosts and writes Citation Needed , writes Tech Won't Save Us and writes The Logan Bartlett Show . They have also been a guest on Crypto Critics' Corner (5 times) , This Week in Tech (3 times) , Bloomberg Crypto (2 times) , Better Offline (2 times) , Pivot to AI (2 times) , This Week in Tech (Video) (2 times) , Big Technology (2 times) , All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio) , The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway , Boston Computation Club , FT News Briefing , The Ken Harbaugh Show , Blood in the Machine , On the Media , All TWiT.tv Shows (Video) , Late Night Linux , Recode Media and FT Tech Tonic .

Recently: “Trump's Crypto Story just got Much Bigger” on The Ken Harbaugh Show (October 2026); “Issue 111 – Back the winners” on Citation Needed (October 2026); “Issue 111 – Back the winners” on Molly White (October 2026); “Issue 110 – The Clarity Act collapses” on Molly White (October 2026); “Issue 110 – The Clarity Act collapses” on Citation Needed (October 2026); “The Senate must reject the Clarity Act’s ethics charade” on Citation Needed (September 2026).

What They Said

“I ultimately think that if your take on AI today is exactly the same as it was two years ago, you're not paying attention.” — Molly White, This Week in Tech

On a TWiT panel about the fallout from Meta's settlement, Leo Laporte had just joked about people who still call chatbots glorified autocorrect. White's answer was that the honest position on AI is one that has moved. She went on to say there is plenty about these systems that was not understood two years ago and is only now coming into view.

This Week in Tech · 2026-08-31 Permalink → Listen →
This Week in Tech Around 42:50 into the episode
Speaker 2

you see the picture going around on social media of the plumber's van that had a sticker on it that was like, we'll come and fix all the problems that are like, we'll come and fix the things that Chat GPT told you how to fix or something like that? No,

Leo Laporte

that's awesome. Well, that's exactly right. I mean, do it yourself or is you going, I can fix that.

Molly White

I ultimately think that if your take on AI today is exactly the same as it was two years ago, you're not paying attention.

Leo Laporte

There are a lot of people like that. I hear all the time from people who say, I don't know why you guys talk about AI so much. It's just autocorrect things.

Molly White

Right. It's not just parroting back stuff. And the more we learn about it, the more we should change our feelings about it because there's stuff we didn't understand two years ago that is now coming into view, as well as a lot of stuff we still don't understand.

Leo Laporte

The smart thing to do is what you did, Harry, which is use it. You had a game you wrote in high school that you had AI.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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