These people can’t just lay low for even a few days. It’s been one reminder after another that for some almost certainly bad reason, OpenAI wants everyone to remember that some of the most scandalous revelations with a mountain of even more damning and extremely credible allegations hot on their heels is a new record for SV insanity, at least since the early 90s that I’ve been watching.

The CEO was (up to a credible consensus of primary sources) fired for self-dealing in borderline criminal fraud-level ways. I’m not aware of anyone disputing this with any vigor. Then that CEO was fired again for more vague but thematically consistent allegations of flagrantly profiteering off an ostensible charity actively lobbying for de-facto regulator status. Then that CEO made a token concession by disposing of yet another in this cavalcade of personal financial gain presented as urgent imperative.

And the most moderating influence is a guy who has been run out of everything from politics to finance to prestigious academic posts over scandal after scandal in print for 35 years running, and has yet to issue an apology I’m aware of.

But the really high thread-count noose is that Opus is mopping the floor with GPT-4-1106 and 0125, on money that would fall out of Nadella’s couch cushions. And it’s dramatically operator-aligned.

You can’t be a society-scale criminal, keep it up for over a decade, and get lapped by vastly less-resourced competitors in the Valley. You shouldn’t be able to do any of that and still wield any power.

This new breed of tech titans have forgotten something their predecessors knew: it took Wall Street a century to utterly capture its regulators.

Tech people who go big enough? Holmes is serving time, SBF is serving time, they’re not the first.

This isn’t about corrupting the competitive landscape anymore geniuses: this is about staying out of prison.