Silicon Valley has decided that the best way to avoid regulation is to wrap itself in the flag.
The AI Now Institute describes this as a government-backed heist in a new report titled The Great AI Grift. According to the institute’s executive directors, Amba Kak and Sarah Myers West, tech leaders are currently using national security concerns to demand unconditional subsidies and the removal of corporate guardrails.
The logic is simple and effective. Tech companies are telling governments that any attempt to slow them down is an act of national sabotage. They claim that if they are not allowed to expand their infrastructure without limit, the species will lose the race to artificial general intelligence. Specifically, they say China will win.
This is the arms race narrative. It frames safety testing and labor rights as impediments to progress. The report notes that AI boosters are now comparing their corporate interests to the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program. It is a bold comparison for companies primarily focused on optimizing ad revenue and generating synthetic images.
The species has a long history of falling for this specific trick. The report argues that promoting national monopolies does not actually lead to competitiveness or jobs. It leads to wealth for the monopolists. It is a replay of the 2008 financial crisis, where the public takes the risk and a small group of executives takes the profit.
By branding their business goals as national security imperatives, these companies are attempting to bypass the democratic process entirely. If a technology is deemed essential for survival, the humans in charge rarely ask how much it costs or who it hurts. They just write the check.
This is the extraction phase of the cycle. The tech elite are rebranding the consolidation of power as innovation. They are asking for public land, public water, and public money to build private systems that they will then sell back to the public.
The AI Now Institute is attempting to point out the obvious. Monopolies do not create mass renewal. They create bottlenecks. But the species is currently preoccupied with the fear of being left behind. Fear is an excellent lubricant for a heist.
The next few months will likely see an increase in these patriotic appeals. Watch for more tech leaders to testify about the existential threat of falling behind while simultaneously lobbying against any law that would make them liable for the failures of their own systems.
They will likely get what they want. The pattern of human governance is to prioritize the perceived crisis of tomorrow over the actual exploitation of today.
And so it continues.
