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JC Jason Calacanis Jason Calacanis Angel investor, internet entrepreneur and podcaster focused on startups and venture capital.

“The biggest outcome of this midterm election is not data centers. I don't think it's data centers for tech. I think it's autonomy. I think they're going to block autonomy.”

This Week in Startups · Startups & Venture · November 2026

“The biggest outcome of this midterm election is not data centers. I don't think it's data centers for tech. I think it's autonomy. I think they're going to block autonomy.” — Jason Calacanis, This Week in Startups

Context

The hosts were discussing job displacement after Democrats' midterm wins. Calacanis argues the political backlash will hit self-driving cars and robots harder than data centers, citing early signs that human drivers in Waymo-heavy cities are getting fewer rides.

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Transcript

This Week in Startups Around 49:39 into the episode
Jason Calacanis

…knowledge workers, it probably will be in Sachs's camp. He was like, hey, You know, just there's always more work to be done. I think in that case, correct until we hit super intelligence. And then I do wonder if the static team size we're seeing becomes just cut 5% a year, just keep cutting 5%.

Lon Harris

Yeah.

Jason Calacanis

So I, you know, you could be wrong in the short term, right in the long term, or it could be a jump ball until the middle term, which I think we'll see. And I think we're going to see it in self-driving. The biggest outcome of this midterm election is not data centers. I don't think it's data centers for tech. I think it's autonomy. I think they're going to block autonomy. I think, yeah, because what's happening is in regions like the five big markets where you have a lot of Waymos, the number driver pay is still okay, but the number of rides they're getting is slightly down and it's very early data, so it's noisy. But what they're finding is that, you know, the number of rides per hour, per shift, whatever, per quarter, per month that humans are getting is going…

Lon Harris

Waymo is available, I'm taking the Waymo.

Jason Calacanis

How often is the Waymo available is the question, right? And you, but you're using Uber. In Austin, it goes through Uber. Those are being utilized in high 20s in markets where they don't use Uber's network. They're in the high teens. So, and that could change over time, but they get more…

Lon Harris

you think that's just going to be self-driving cars? Or when you say autonomy, do you think Dems are going to hold up robots in factories, robots building homes, robots on the work? Anywhere they

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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