Marc Andreessen is making the same audacious bet the Founding Fathers did: that Americas best days are ahead

On America’s 250th birthday, venture capitalist and Silicon Valley kingmaker Marc Andreessen is shamelessly optimistic about our country — and making the same audacious bet the Founding Fathers did: that our nation’s best days are ahead.But the present American revolution is technology, and the danger isn’t primarily from foreign rivals but the country handicapping its own builders.“We’re the best country in the world,” Andreessen told The Post.

“The idea that America has both the level of size and scope and solidity and resources that we have, but that we still have that level of risk-taking spirit in the country … is a really, really special combination.” And he’s evangelizing optimism to one place that seems strangely short on it: Silicon Valley.Much of the tech world has become mired in doomerism, with the engineers who are creating the future convinced the very thing they are building — artificial intelligence — is apocalyptic and destructive.Andreessen rejects that cynicism as, at least partly, performative and thinks expelling it is key to bettering on our future.“Negativity always sounds more sophisticated than positivity,” he said.“If you’re optimistic, “you’re naive, you’re gullible.” But if you’re pessimistic? “You’re worldly, and you’re sophisticated, and you’re wise.”That view also lines up with the self-interest of the big AI companies that are encouraging more regulation.

A government-built moat, Andreessen explains, may be the best defense a company can have — and the surest way to block innovators desperately trying to catch up.“One-hundred percent, there’s a regulatory capture element to it,” Andreessen said.“And they’re driving hard for that.”That gloom and the push to regulate that inevitably follows is what he sees as one of the biggest threats to America’s next quarter-century.“The economy,” he said, “could be growing at three times this current rate with a differen...