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Comment by jfasi | Hacker News Reader

My prediction: nothing will come of this, and these investigations will either be concluded favorably or dropped no less than six months after the midterms.

There's only one voice that matters in this administration, and he has already made it quite clear that he both does not consider AI to be an issue, and he is more than happy to trample over his agencies to enforce his opinion.

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You're right. Nothing will come out of this. It is very important for these companies that they are sued now by the super-friendly administration and be gently punished (Punishment: Don't do it again, Ok? Defendents: We promise we won't do it again) or settled for a measly sum of a few million (no admission of guilt).

Then you can be never tried again for the same crimes. There is some law against being tried for the same crimes multiple times.

That's not how that works. If you kill someone and are tried for it, guilty or not, that does not give you license to go kill more people. You can be tried for the same crime if you do the crime again.

You cannot be tried multiple times for the same instance of a crime.

Since OAI et al don't appear interested in stopping crime, they can (and likely will) be tried again the next time they do it.

Technically from a legal perspective sure, but there is also the common cultural understanding of these things, and an overton window of how we talk about them. The whole doomer narrative, and pseudo-anthromorphization (xenomorphization?) where we ascribe agency and volition to the algorithm, plays right to the interests of the AI leaders by simultaneously making their products so incredibly powerful and civilization altering that of course the valuations are justified, while also providing a convenient narrative that if anything goes wrong the AI did it and there was no way for them to control this new life form. Privatize the benefit, socialize the risk; this is not a new playbook.

> You can be tried for the same crime if you do the crime again.

> Since OAI et al don't appear interested in stopping crime, they can (and likely will) be tried again the next time they do it.

There is no second entire internet for them to steal though

Their bot crawling numbers seem to disagree.

Ffs one of the CEOs of one of the companies is about to be in charge of a us military task force lol. The ftc investigating military leadership over safety concerns... Bet... Definitely going to yield results that benefit the public. Lol. Doesn't get more textbook oligarchy than that.

And that one is already a clear security concern for years, getting direct calls from Putin:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/12/elon-musk-trump-putin-s...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/opinion/elon-musk-china-c...

> he has already made it quite clear that he both does not consider AI to be an issue

which is putting it very mildly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49824686

He very much considers AI to be an issue. Because he wants you to call it SI.

Senile intelligence?

This is an ignorant take. Everybody involved in the administration has pretty much been on the same page that the new regulations openai/anthropic want aren't necessary because they are already liable for what their ai does.

https://fortune.com/2026/09/22/bessent-ai-labs-responsibilit...

Scott Bessent has had several foot-in-mouth gaffes through his tenure, I would not put much weight on his words in this case, especially if they contradict his handler.

You mean SI, don't you?

Under that framework I could see Anthropic being blocked from IPO-ing. Amodei was just slightly more confrontational than the other players by wanting to stick to their ethics (which is a really low bar). Given Trump is the pettiest person ever and does everything by vibes, I wouldn’t exclude something dramatic, like pushing Amodei out and replacing him with someone he can control better.

Just speculating here, there is no way to predict how that will play out

Too conspiratorial to think that they (the AI companies) want to be blocked or at least temporarily delayed from IPO? Finances are too bad to do it but delaying for ambiguous reasons will sink their valuations. Trump can’t let the stock market collapse before the midterms. Hence this whole big safety dog and pony show. Keep the market up until the midterms, then hand off the bag.

Hmm, my instinct is to say that’s too far fetched, but given how corrupt that whole thing is I really don’t know. I would add that to the list of possibilities and reevaluate how plausible that is once we see Anthropic’s 2026 numbers.

Though it’s pretty depressing that we can’t just dismiss it directly…

Also, if the govt steps in, the AI companies can declare force majeure so they can kick the can down the road a bit longer.

Oracle is the canary.

Not nothing grift and probably An endorsement for the largest grift.

The problem is that there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Democrats would be doing the exact same thing if they were in power.

They will also put up only PR-oriented #resistance, aiming all attacks at Trump (as you have) and ignoring the AI companies themselves.

They'll save their criticism for loudmouth AI CEOs that agree to jump out and catch a few bullets (that will bounce off harmlessly, it doesn't matter what the public thinks about them) aimed at Democratic politicians who just voted for something they said that they were against because the Republicans didn't have enough for a majority.

Loudmouth CEO: "Actually people should be grateful that they're losing their jobs - if they actually loved their jobs, and loved the world, they'd be happy that it was being done better than they ever could, because AI is perfect and guided by us wise, wonderful people."

Democratic Congressman who just voted to take away a state's ability to stop a data center being built in the middle of a reservoir: "Do you have no shame sir! You give a bad name to the majority of CEOs who are beautiful people who defend us from the inscrutable Chinese hordes. It's thoughtless talk like this that is leading to the rise in subversion among the paranoid terrorists that are emboldening the bullies who show up to city council meetings and anti-data center protests! I'm going to demand that we not award you the 634th no-bid contract that you asked for, and when we are forced to admit that we can't actually cancel that award, I'll ask that you be officially censured by Congress!"

Even worse than whataboutism is hypothetical whataboutism....

AI is shaping up to be a major concern amongst the non-tech segment of the population. Some of the arguments are good, some are dumb, but people largely are forming up against AI and datacenters. Yes, you should expect politicians to act on that; it's how the system is meant to work.

Source on the "largely".

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/09/22/americans...

California assembly passed a bill on ai safety and Gavin Newsom vetoed it. Thats not hypothetical

Silicon Valley was freaking out last democrat admin because anti trust laws were actually being enforced finally by Lina Khan, I actually completely disagree and I think this admin has been very obviously worse.

So why did the tech CEOs and VCs get behind Trump's reelection if there's no meaningful difference? We can see it already, Trump is saying they should regulate themselves.

You aren't thinking like a fascist. This will be used as leverage in exchange for midterm or 2028 election help.

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