Tech Companies Should Work With the Government to Stop Terrorism, VC Albert Wenger Says

Albert Wenger is a partner at Union Square Ventures who has invested in companies like Etsy, MongoDB and Twilio — but he’s also an active blogger with a lot of opinions about technology and entrepreneurship and how they impact the real world.

Wenger waded into one of his more passionate topics, the ongoing standoff between Silicon Valley and the U.S. government, in an interview with Peter Kafka on the latest episode of "Re/code Decode." The short version of his argument: Techies and the feds should have an open conversation about working together, rather than each keeping secrets.

"If we’re fine with Facebook and Google knowing it, we should really be fine with using it to fight crime and terrorism," Wenger said. "But we have to do it in a way that’s compatible with democracy."

Amelia Krales for Re/code

Wenger also discussed what it’s like to be an investor at a time when many in the tech world have been exclaiming "bubble!" for years.

"Prices are never exactly what they should be," he said. "That would be a strange expectation. Some companies won’t succeed. But there won’t be this massive [pop], everybody’s down 90 percent, or everybody’s closing shop."

Listen to or download the episode in the player above, or click here to subscribe to "Re/code Decode" on iTunes. Kara Swisher will be back in this space on Monday to talk about bias and harassment in Silicon Valley, and Peter Kafka will be back next Thursday to talk to Adrian "Woj" Wojnarowski, the host of The Vertical Podcast.

And if you like this show, you should also check out "Re/code Replay," an archive of audio content from our events and interviews by Kara Swisher, Walt Mossberg, Peter Kafka, Ina Fried and more. To subscribe to that, click right here.

You can follow @Recode on Twitter for the latest on upcoming guests.

If you like what we’re doing, please write a review on iTunes — and if you don’t, just tweet-strafe Kara and Peter. You can also suggest guests for the show on Twitter and we’ll do our best to nab them for a Red Chair interview.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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