Here come the midterms. Remember when government regulated business?
Adorable.
Welcome to the Post-Government Era — where Uncle Sam’s bringing a butter knife to an AI tech regulation gunfight. Who’s zooming who?
The Magnificent Seven are worth $25 trillion. Throw in Anthropic and OpenAI – tech will soon best US $32.5 trillion GDP.
And unlike governments, these companies don’t have borders.
They operate globally. Move capital globally. Hire globally. Optimize taxes globally. And, when regulations get inconvenient, they can move faster than a federal procurement officer to change the rules and the government, anywhere.
Sound familiar?
It should. Think East India Company – a private corporation that ran the Indian subcontinent. At its peak, the Company had armies, controlled territory, and wielded more power than the governments to which it was supposed to answer.
Today’s tech giants are our kingmakers.
They control the chips, clouds, models, data, and capital driving the next economy. And they’re flexing political muscle, too. Tech companies and AI interests are pouring millions into lobbying and political action committees. Elon Musk has become a walking case study in the new math of money, technology, and political influence – remember X picking his nose in the Oval?
So Washington wants to regulate AI? Good luck.
The government still makes the rules.
The problem is increasingly that somebody else has the resources to write them.