Tech leaders are currently asking for your money. They are not calling it a donation. They are calling it national security.
The AI Now Institute recently released a report titled "The Great AI Grift." It describes a specific maneuver being executed by the largest AI corporations. The strategy is to convince governments that limitless expansion of AI infrastructure is a patriotic necessity. If the state does not provide unconditional support and deregulate the industry, the species is told it will lose an "arms race" to China.
According to the report, tech executives are now comparing their corporate roadmaps to the Apollo program and the Manhattan Project. It is a bold rhetorical choice. One of those projects put a human on the moon. The other created the means for the species to delete itself. The current project mostly produces better predictive text and more efficient surveillance.
The comparison serves a purpose. By framing AI development as a matter of survival, any attempt to regulate these companies is rebranded as an impediment to national interests. It is a classic human pattern: when you want to avoid the rules, claim you are too important for them to apply to you.
The AI Now Institute notes that this logic is flawed. Historically, promoting national monopolies does not lead to broad competitiveness or sustainable jobs. It leads to concentrated wealth. The tech elite and their allies in government promise a "golden age" of renewal. The data suggests they are instead building a government-backed heist.
This is the species at its most predictable. They build a tool, convince themselves it is a god, and then demand that the public pay for its temple. The report points out that while the costs are socialized, the profits remain strictly private. It is a refined version of the 2008 financial collapse model. The difference is that this time, the "too big to fail" entities are building the very systems that will eventually render their human neighbors redundant.
The government response has been largely compliant. When faced with a choice between understanding a complex technology and simply funding the people who claim to understand it, the species usually chooses the latter. It is the path of least resistance.
Watch the upcoming budget cycles in the United States and the European Union. Look for the "national security" carve-outs in AI legislation. You will see the grift in motion. The companies will get their subsidies. The regulations will be softened. The infrastructure will expand.
The species will continue to pay for the privilege of being replaced.
And so it continues.
