The Perils of Pausing AI

The biggest supporters and critics of artificial intelligence seem to have reached a consensus: AI companies need to stop pushing the technology's frontier until they understand how it will develop.

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Make antitrust fast again



It was 1903, and Theodore Roosevelt had a problem. The Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890, was effectively dead. It had been used rarely, and when it had been, cases moved sluggishly through the courts. Roosevelt wished to move forward on a multitude of what he believed to be monopolies, including in railroads and energy.

Roosevelt was not wrong to be concerned with monopoly. Coming out of the Civil War, America’s Gilded Age had moved the country lurchingly from a regional power to a global power, one that would soon dominate the world.

America’s antitrust laws simply are not built for these technologies and economic sectors.

But with that explosion of commerce came its domination by a few select companies. And while Roosevelt’s predecessor, William McKinley, had repeatedly urged Congress to crack down on them, it was mostly to no avail. By the time Roosevelt took the reins of power in 1901, several companies effectively ran entire industries.

His problem was solved by Congress, which quickly passed what became known as the Expediting Act. The bill, passed unanimously, allowed for the attorney general to declare a given antitrust case to be of national importance. This in turn mandated the creation of a special three-judge panel on what would today be the level of district courts. After that hearing, which was to be “given precedence over others and in every way expedited,” an appeal could only be levied at the Supreme Court.

Roosevelt and his successor, William Howard Taft, launched a bevy of antitrust cases, breaking apart railroad, cigarette, and energy companies. Americans alive in the 21st century may find it difficult to imagine just how powerful these Gilded Age companies were.

Standard Oil controlled roughly 90% of all oil production in America. American Tobacco produced and sold 86% of all cigarettes in the entire country. And the Northern Securities Company governed effectively all freight railroads from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest. By the end of Taft’s term, none of those companies would exist.

RELATED: America needs heroes who do not apologize for being heroes

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Eventually, the Expediting Act became a victim of its own success: The large trusts were broken apart, with few — such as the Bell telephone system — existing into the latter half of the 20th century. Eventually, the lack of large antitrust cases gave way to smaller cases filled with minutiae. This, plus complaints from the Supreme Court about its supposedly immense workload, led to the bill's repeal in the 1980s, with antitrust cases ultimately being treated like other civil suits.

Today, the oil industry remains broken up, and no one is concerned about a single cigarette company dominating that industry. But like the turn of the 20th century, there are entirely new industries and economic sectors that have sprung up — and along with them have come entirely new monopolies.

Thirty years ago, the notion that a single company could dominate an online search index would be unfathomable. That the same company could dominate browsers and other aspects of the internet would likewise be difficult to imagine. Amazon, meanwhile, controls America’s book market and facilitates the sale of a majority of all books sold in the United States.

And there are other even more dangerous monopolies that could develop, like in artificial intelligence. OpenAI was founded just over 10 years ago. Its main rival, Anthropic, was only founded in 2021, meaning that it has existed for less time than the United States government has been suing Google. Google, for what it’s worth, owns 14% of Anthropic.

With the speed at which AI is developing, it is not outside the realm of possibility that an AI company controlling an AGI-level large-language model, or beyond, would be able to monopolize the artificial intelligence sector — an extremely concerning prospect, made all the more concerning by the fact that America’s antitrust laws simply are not built for these technologies and economic sectors.

RELATED: The path to America-first AI

Yunping Iiang/Getty Images

While antitrust laws clearly need to be revamped — the foundational law, upon which many antitrust cases are still brought, was passed in 1890 — a quick and relatively easy solution would be a return to the Expediting Act, with small updates to match our current judicial structures.

Forcing judges to put antitrust cases first and move quickly on them — as opposed to taking months to mull over decisions — along with speedy hearings by the Supreme Court would help preemptively prepare America for the possibility of 21st-century monopolization.

The Supreme Court’s original concern over its workload should be discarded. When the American republic was new, government was not year-round. Congress was out of session for months on end. The president, far from barnstorming the country as they do today, stayed in Washington or simply went home when Congress was out of session. The Supreme Court had a similarly light schedule. This was all in keeping with the times, when things simply moved slowly.

But as speeds have increased, so too have government workloads. Today, Congress — though lawmakers take Fridays off — is in Washington far more often, and the presidency is now a 24/7 job.

But the Supreme Court’s calendar still sits empty for multiple months of the year, with bursts of work coming throughout. If the court will have to hear a handful of cases the attorney general deems to be of critical importance, the justices may have to suffer the indignity of having only two months of uninterrupted vacation as opposed to three.

There is something for everyone in bringing back the Expediting Act. Investors and employees will no longer be left in limbo for years as merger trials drag on and on. Antitrust advocates will not need to wait endlessly for results. And America will be better equipped to deal with sudden monopolies that, in our increasingly fast-paced world, can come about in a flash.

No one benefits from slow antitrust hearings. Congress should pass a new version of the Expediting Act and make antitrust fast again.

Is Google's next Android feature always-on eavesdropping?



Google already has a reputation for spying on users through the microphones embedded in smart devices. Some of these accusations have even landed Google in legal trouble. Now the company looks to make its eavesdropping software public with a new AI-powered listening feature for Pixel phones called “Audio Memory.”

Before we dive too deep, keep in mind that Google hasn’t officially announced this feature yet. Instead, the words “Audio Memory” were spotted in a software teardown by 9to5Google for Android System Intelligence, an app integrated into the Android’s core system that controls various smart features, such as Live Captions, Live Translate, and more.

A privacy concern for users and a legal nightmare for Google?

While the feature isn’t live yet, it’s clearly in development and may launch sometime in the future. Still, there are some hints around what Audio Memory will actually do, and none of it is particularly good if you like privacy.

What is Audio Memory?

Google left a few clues in the Android System Intelligence teardown about what its new feature could entail. “Audio Memory” is listed under the codenamed “blueflax,” and it will supposedly “keep track of what you hear throughout your day, from the music around you to your important conversations.”

Folks who follow Google’s always-listening track record already know that Android comes equipped with a couple of services that hear the world around you.

For starters, compatible Android phones listen for the “Hey, Google” or “OK, Google” hot words that summon either Google Gemini or Google Assistant on demand (depending on the age and capability of your device).

Second, Google Pixel phones all come with a “Now Playing” feature that listens for songs playing within reach of your phone and automatically displays the name of the song on your home screen. It’s a neat little feature for those times you like a song and want to know more about it, but it’s also kind of creepy when you consider that your phone has to constantly analyze the music you hear in public to display the correct information.

Audio Memory sounds like an expansion of Now Playing, except instead of just music, it’s now listening for everything. Based on Google’s wording in the teardown, the feature will likely function in a similar manner as AI pins, which record conversations to be saved, analyzed, and archived into readable transcripts and memorable audio files.

Questions abound

The part that’s unclear is whether or not Audio Memory is constantly active or if it must be triggered before it starts listening. AI pins are designed to do the latter — they have to be powered on and told when to record a conversation by pressing a button, ensuring they can’t eavesdrop on something you don’t want them to hear.

RELATED: Private companies are tracking your location without notice or a warrant — and it's all perfectly legal

Moor Studio/Getty Images

Google, however, takes a different approach, at least with hot words and Now Playing. These are always active, waiting to be needed. If Audio Memory works the same way — always listening to and recording your conversations — this feature is both a privacy concern for users and a legal nightmare for Google.

Imagine having every conversation saved and analyzed directly on Google’s servers for the sake of what? Preservation? Memories? Or something more sinister? Aside from the endless lawsuits Google would face over such a feature, most phones also don’t have the battery capacity to listen to and record audio all day long. This, at least to me, is the one shred of hope that says Audio Memory isn’t as intrusive as it sounds on the surface. There’s clearly more about this feature we don’t know yet.

One final question remains: Which phones will receive Audio Memory?

The feature was first spotted in a version of Android System Intelligence for Google Pixel 10. This is to be expected, since Pixel 10 is currently Google’s latest released smartphone, and the company likes to test new features on its hardware first. There’s also a chance that Audio Memory is a Pixel-exclusive, just like Call Screening, Magic Eraser, and Gemini integration before it, though many of these features usually trickle down into the rest of the Android ecosystem over time. Lastly, depending on how much on-device processing is involved, there’s a chance that Audio Memory isn’t even compatible with older Android devices that don’t support local AI.

A simple choice?

Given Google’s recent legal troubles over always-listening privacy concerns, the company is likely to tread lightly with Audio Memory to avoid further litigation. However, most of the legal complaints Google received came from its always-listening software secretly recording conversations without users’ knowledge. The game changes if Google convinces users to allow Audio Memory to record their lives willingly. After that, the company theoretically has an open invitation to listen to everything its users do and say.

I guess we’ll have to wait for Audio Memory to launch to get the rest of the story.

Tired of password insanity? Make this safer, stronger choice.



Most of your online accounts are protected by a username and a password. Unfortunately, login credentials are under fire recently with security flaws in popular password managers that leave users exposed with their personal information strewn across the dark web.

What if there was a better way?

There is. You just probably haven't heard about it yet.

Big Tech actually invented a much more secure solution with passkeys, but many websites and apps still refuse to use them.

What are passkeys?

Depending on how closely you keep your ear to the internet, you may or may not have heard of passkeys. These are digital credentials attached directly to your user accounts. Passkeys are a replacement for passwords, and they don’t include any letters, numbers, or symbols for users to jot down or remember. They exist simply as encrypted lines of code in your devices that permit access to your accounts on request.

The benefits far outweigh the hassle.

From a user perspective, passkeys are convenient because they don't require the user to remember their password or even reset it in the event the password is forgotten. Instead, they use the biometric sensor embedded on your device — whether that's facial recognition or fingerprint authentication — or the lock screen pin to verify your identity and complete the login process for any supported app or service.

From a platform holder perspective, passkeys are more secure than typical login credentials, and they're much harder to hack. Simply put, passkeys can't be stolen or leaked like typical passwords. They live on the host device — not in a password database — and require user authentication, meaning that a hacker would need to physically possess the user's device and know their lock screen pin to access the passkey-protected website.

On the downside, passkeys are a little tricky if you use multiple device platforms. For instance, passkeys saved to Apple Passwords are stuck in Apple's ecosystem, while keys created for Google Password Manager are saved to Google, and keys for Microsoft Password Manager are saved to Microsoft. Big Tech is supposedly working on an interoperable solution to share keys between platforms, but for now, you'll need to create multiple passkeys for supported websites on every platform you use.

Getting to know (and use) passkeys

Passkeys soft-launched across Apple's, Google's, and Microsoft's platforms back in 2022 and 2023.

For our purposes, as you're very likely to use one or more of those platforms, you should focus your passkey energy there. Each of the big three companies offers a simple walk-through to set up passkeys for your Apple account, Google account, and/or Microsoft account.

However, here in the year 2026, passkeys are not nearly as prevalent across the web as the three companies expected them to be. Web developers, app makers, and service providers have to choose to support them; otherwise user accounts will default back to the usernames and passwords we know all too well. So far, this hasn't happened.

RELATED: The latest iPhone security threat has a nasty fix

Moor Studio/Getty Images

There's even a website that explicitly monitors and calls out the top 50 sites online that do and don't support passkeys. Top names like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon all offer passkey protection, as expected. However, Instagram, Netflix, and Spotify are dubiously missing the feature. As it stands, 36% of the top websites online still don't have passkey support, and there are countless others outside of this purview that have dragged their feet. The question is why.

There are plenty of theories around why some websites still don't support passkeys. For starters, it takes development time and money to switch away from legacy login credentials to the passkey system. Second, the lack of interoperability between device platforms is a potential headache for users that website owners may not wish to navigate. Finally, some sites may also believe that switching to passkeys simply isn't worth the trouble when passwords are effective enough; in other words, if it's not broken, don't fix it.

Should you use passkeys?

In a word, absolutely! You should definitely use passkeys on every account that supports it. The benefits far outweigh the hassle of limited multi-platform support. Plus, when you consider that password manager hacks, breaches, and leaks are on the rise – like the one Dashlane suffered earlier this year – passkeys are a simple, yet effective way to keep your accounts safer in the age of AI scams and other cybersecurity threats.

Apple and Google told to take down these illegal — and exploitative — apps



Apple and Google were on the receiving end of multiple letters telling them to stop allowing abusive apps to be available on their platforms.

The City of San Francisco said it had been contacting the tech giants for almost a year to get them to stop, but they have continued to provide access to the apps while raking in profits.

'Apple and Google have a responsibility to be proactive and vigilant to prevent sexual abuse.'

San Francisco accused both companies of "processing payments for illegal purchases" that allow users to digitally alter pictures using AI to unclothe whomever is in the photograph.

Commonly referred to as "nudify" apps, the city reportedly ordered dozens of the programs to be removed, as Apple and Google have continued to make money off them.

"Apple and Google are profiting off apps that exploit women and girls by generating nonconsensual intimate deepfakes," San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu told TechCrunch. "While the companies cut ties with some problematic apps, Apple and Google have a responsibility to be proactive and vigilant to prevent sexual abuse."

Dozens of states have codified protections after Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sponsored the TAKE IT DOWN Act in early 2025, which passed with a vote of 409-2 in the House and unanimously in the Senate.

RELATED: The latest iPhone security threat has a nasty fix

Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The law made it a federal crime to knowingly publish, or threaten to publish, nonconsensual intimate imagery using a computer service, no matter if it is real or fake. Penalties include up to two years in prison for adult victims and three years if the victim is a minor.

According to Stack Cybersecurity, 30 states have enacted these protections, while 46 states have their own laws targeting AI-generated media.

An Apple spokesman told TechCrunch that such apps were forbidden from the App Store and that the company has immediately removed three of those suggested by San Francisco.

"[We] are in the process of terminating their developer accounts from our program. We are in contact with four others that need to address policy violations or risk being removed as well," the spokesman said.

RELATED: Smartphone and laptop prices are rising. Here's why they won't stop.

At the same time, Google said that all five apps referenced by the California city were suspended from Google Play.

"When violations are reported to us, we investigate and take swift action, which in the case of these apps has included suspending hundreds of violating apps and restricting related search terms like 'nudify' on our store."

Meta began cracking down on such imagery in 2025, when deepfake "nudify" ads started popping up on its social media platform.

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Apple and Google BURIED damaging Graham Platner stories, media report claims



Outrage over damaging scandals eventually forced Graham Platner out of the pivotal Senate race in Maine, but at least two media companies allegedly helped Democrats bury those stories.

A media survey indicated that Google News and Apple suppressed stories detailing the allegations made against the failed candidate.

'Millions of smartphone users were denied the truth while Platner was politically useful and finally allowed to see it once he wasn't.'

Between Nov. 2025 and May 2026, neither news outlet published stories damaging to the Democrat's campaign, according to the Media Research Center study. These included the Nazi-like tattoo he obtained as well as offensive posts on the Reddit online platform.

The final straw came when Platner was accused of sexual assault by a former girlfriend. He denied the allegations but suspended his campaign regardless.

The MRC report found that the tech platforms ignored at least 112 stories from conservative-leaning news outlets documenting Platner's transgressions.

"For months, while Platner looked like the one Democrat who could beat Susan Collins, the two most powerful news apps in America buried scandal after scandal," MRC President David Bozell said. "Then the polls turned, Platner became a liability, and suddenly the blackout ended. News judgment had nothing to do with it."

"Millions of smartphone users were denied the truth while Platner was politically useful and finally allowed to see it once he wasn't," he added.

Google has denied the allegations.

"These claims are totally false and based on a completely flawed methodology," a spokesperson said to Fox News Digital. "The study checked Google News once a day from a single account, ignoring the fact that Google News automatically updates throughout the day, and shows news personalized to your interests and location. You can also easily select sources you want to see more often in News and Search."

Bozell shot back and defended the MRC findings: "Google wants us to believe that checking their platform once a day missed the magic window where they actually allowed negative news about Graham Platner to exist. That is an insult to the intelligence of every consumer and investor."

Apple has not responded to requests for comment about the report.

RELATED: Donna Brazile gets CRUSHED online over bizarre reply to allegations against Graham Platner

Democrats now have to choose Platner's replacement in hopes of unseating incumbent Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) and gaining another seat in their quest to retake the Senate.

Recent polling shows that Collins is tied with three possible candidates to replace Platner in the race. The same survey found that two-thirds of respondents wanted Platner to drop out of the race.

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Supreme Court Data Privacy Ruling Threatens EdTech That Tracks Students’ Parents 24/7

The tension between these K-12 education programs and Chatrie is bound to create a stir as parents — and their students — begin questioning these surveillance practices and asserting their Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.

Hollywood screams as Google invests $75M in A24 — but swears its AI tools won't scare creatives



Google believes there is a place for artificial intelligence in filmmaking, and it is willing to put its money where its mouth is.

Google's DeepMind AI unit will partner with an emerging movie studio that will be risking its reputation by inviting such a tech monster into its halls.

'We think there are better uses.'

A24, the studio behind "Backrooms" — a 2026 horror film that fueled grassroots excitement — has accepted a gigantic $75 million injection from Google's AI sector.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the partnership is not to make AI films or generate likeness of actors (as of right now); rather it will make use of AI in a way that is less intrusive on the viewer.

"We think there are better uses that preserve creative control and support risk-taking," said Scott Belsky, a partner in A24.

Belsky revealed that the studio will lean into AI tools instead, because filmmakers have not been fond of the attempts by developers to push AI use to make movies faster and cheaper.

The new tools "won't look anything like the prompted generation type of AI that people feel uncomfortable with," Belsky added.

However, a certain element of artists will likely be on the chopping block as A24 Labs is developing an application for AI-generated storyboards.

RELATED: It only took weeks for AI usage to break the corporate piggy bank

Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

A24 Labs, a team of about 20, is tasked with replacing the roughly-drawn movie scenes that directors use to map out sets and different shoots.

Moreover, Reuters reported that the studio and Google will collaborate on research and development projects that will make new workflows. However, filmmakers are to retain full creative control, and the deal does not include intellectual property or data training.

The terms make sense given the growing disdain for AI animation and film that has been seen when big companies put out projects using the technology.

Coca-Cola and McDonald's both saw huge blowback from AI-generated Christmas commercials in 2025, and unique artistic perspectives are what have made A24 an emerging favorite for so many.

RELATED: Microsoft says business must pay to use its AI — and eyes cheap Chinese model for lowly consumers

"Backrooms" opened to an astounding $81 million opening in late May, which led to a total of $175 million domestically at the time of this writing.

This came off of just a $10 million budget. Movie lovers created a lot of buzz before the film's release for its unique take stemming from a simple concept first developed on the anonymous message board 4chan.

Non-recycled, anti-industry films are what people like most about A24, and integrating big AI into its studio is an obvious big risk.

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How to make DuckDuckGo your phone's default search engine



For decades, Google dominated the search engine race, beating out competitors like Bing, Yahoo, and many others as the de facto arbiter of information on the internet. However, for reasons only Google execs can understand, the Big Tech giant has since decided to let its search engine fade into obscurity beneath the shadow of AI. Naturally, users aren’t happy, and many of them are flocking to an alternative for a better experience.

The search engine everyone’s squawking about

Whether you’ve heard of it or not, DuckDuckGo has been around since 2008. It bills itself as a privacy-focused search engine that does exactly the opposite of Google — it won’t monetize your queries, spy on your browsing history, or inject political bias into its algorithm. It simply delivers search results, and that’s it.

The sudden surge is a clear rejection of Google’s new AI-first strategy.

Shortly after Google’s announcement to push AI interactions over classic Search, users looked to DuckDuckGo as their saving grace. According to DuckDuckGo on X, installs of its app jumped up 30% in the United States.

Why? After all, DuckDuckGo offers an AI search mode, just like Google. How is it any better? The difference is that DuckDuckGo lets users actively remove AI from their queries, while Google puts AI front and center.

DuckDuckGo with AI (L); DuckDuckGo without AI (R). Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw

The sudden surge is a clear rejection of Google’s new AI-first strategy, though it hasn’t stopped the company from moving forward. In the grand scheme of things, a 30% jump for a competitor that only boasts 2% of the search engine market is quite small compared to Google’s dominating 90%. Still, after Microsoft spent hundreds of billions of dollars to lure Google customers over to Bing, it’s interesting to see DuckDuckGo have its moment simply because Google neglected its search engine roots.

How to make DuckDuckGo the default search engine on iPhone and Android

If you want to change the default search engine on your phone, it’s pretty easy, though the steps are a little different depending on your operating system and default browser. If you do try it out and decide you don’t like it, you can always switch back using this guide in reverse.

RELATED: Sick of Microsoft's preinstalled propaganda on your PC? Block it now.

DigitalVision/Getty Images

Safari on iPhone: Open the Settings app, scroll to the bottom, tap “Apps,” then select “Safari” from the list. Beneath the “Search” section, choose “Search Engine,” and change the default from Google to DuckDuckGo.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Safari on iPhone

Chrome on Android: Open the Chrome app, tap the three-dot menu in the top right corner, and choose “Settings.” Beneath the “Basics” section, tap “Search Engine” and change the default option from Google to DuckDuckGo.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Chrome on Android

Chrome on iPhone: Open the Chrome app, tap the three-dot menu in the bottom right corner, and open “Settings.” Then tap “Search Engine,” change it from Google to DuckDuckGo, and you’re done!

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Chrome on iPhone

Edge on Android: Open the Microsoft Edge app, tap the hamburger menu in the bottom right corner, and go into “Settings.” Then tap “Search” and change the search engine from Bing to DuckDuckGo.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Edge on Android

Edge on iPhone: Open the Microsoft Edge app, tap the hamburger menu in the bottom right corner, and choose “Settings.” Then select “Search” and change the “Select Search Engine” option from Bing to DuckDuckGo.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Edge on iPhone

Brave on Android: Open the Brave app, tap the three-dot menu in the bottom right corner, and open “Settings.” Under the “General” section, select “Search Engines” and change the Standard Tab and Private Tab to DuckDuckGo.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Brave on Android

Brave on iPhone: Open the Brave app, tap the three-dot menu in the bottom right corner, and choose “All Settings.” Under the “General” section, tap “Search Engines” and change the Standard Tab and Private Tab to DuckDuckGo.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Brave on iPhone

Firefox on Android: Open the Firefox app, select the three-dot menu in the top right corner, followed by “Settings.” Under “General,” tap “Search,” then “Default search engine,” and switch it to DuckDuckGo for normal and private browsing.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Firefox on Android

And finally, Firefox on iPhone: Open the Firefox app, select the three-dot menu at the bottom, and tap “Settings.” Under “General,” choose “Search,” then “Default Search Engine,” and change it to DuckDuckGo.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw/Firefox on iPhone

Happy Duck hunting!

OpenAI wants to make its losses public property



The only things certain in life are death, taxes, and the permanence of a government program. But what happens when a private company turns its agenda into a government program?

You cannot build a more financially secure business model than permanence. That helps explain why OpenAI is now reportedly in discussions with the Trump administration about a possible public equity stake in the company.

Unlike the dot-com bubble, whose infrastructure later supported real economic growth, rotting data centers will not leave behind comparable public value.

After all, what else is a company with $1.4 trillion in obligations and only $14 billion in revenue supposed to do?

Why was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Capitol Hill last week? According to the Financial Times, he was effectively selling Americans the rope to hang themselves. The plan proposed by OpenAI and other companies would reportedly create a sovereign-wealth-style fund into which AI companies would contribute equity so that the public could share in the sector’s soaring valuations.

That sounds generous until one remembers that this is still a loss-making sector built on staggering capital demands.

What is the rationale? Asked about equity stakes on Air Force One, President Trump suggested that “pieces” of AI companies could be “given to the American public” to quell growing alarm over the rapid rollout of the technology.

In other words, Americans are being asked to surrender farmland, neighborhood continuity, and the reliability of the electric grid to cloud-based, surveillance-enabling chatslop. In return, they may receive the honor of owning the losses from an insolvent business model.

The president confirmed the idea at a press conference on Wednesday, saying he would soon meet with “the top 12 or 15 executives” about “giving back something to the public.” He promised that “the public will become very rich.”

That promise should terrify everyone.

Once generative AI becomes a public project, the industry will move beyond “too big to fail.” Whatever happens to the companies or the broader sector, their success will become artificially and inextricably tied to the economy. Every government favor, subsidy, guarantee, and bailout will then be justified as necessary to protect the public’s stake.

RELATED: The AI boom is turning public meetings into crime scenes

Natalie Behring/Getty Images

Last November, OpenAI’s chief financial officer let the cat out of the bag when she said the company would need the government as a “backstop” for its business model. Sarah Friar later denied seeking a bailout. But a leaked 11-page letter from OpenAI to the Office of Science and Technology Policy urged the government to provide “grants, cost-sharing agreements, loans, or loan guarantees” to build America’s AI industrial base — all, naturally, to “compete with China.”

Fast-forward six months, and “backstop” now appears to mean a public “stake” in the company.

Everyone knows OpenAI’s generative AI model is unsustainable. It is built on unfathomably expensive capital expenditures for every token of AI usage.

Companies such as JPMorgan are reportedly finding that employees, after being pushed to use generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude, are spending more on tokens than their individual salaries. Uber’s chief technology officer said last month that the company burned through its entire 2026 budget for Claude Code and Cursor in just four months. In the irony of ironies, Microsoft itself reportedly told engineers in a major division to stop using an AI coding tool because the cost-to-utility ratio was not there.

The reality is that AI would work better through localized edge computing with low latency than through cloud-based hyperscale data centers that require unsustainable amounts of land, capital, resources, and power while causing other harms. China is producing cheap open-source AI. America is pouring concrete.

But the scale of that concrete — and all the materials, inputs, and power needed to support it — is unsustainable. Everyone knows it. Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle issued 47% more debt in the first five months of this year than they did from 2020 through 2024 combined. Total spending per capita now exceeds spending on the railroads in 1859, which at least served a clear public need that could be monetized over time.

RELATED: After fierce debate, Trump opts for federal controls in AI development

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images

There is no amount of monthly household or business subscription fees that will make this investment break even. The costs will only increase because the model depends on a resource-stripping industrial footprint and GPUs that have few other useful functions and depreciate within a few years.

Unlike the dot-com bubble, whose infrastructure later supported real economic growth, rotting data centers will not leave behind comparable public value.

The tech companies, land developers, and venture capital firms understand that this is a Ponzi scheme. They are racing to take these companies public so that they can be folded into indexes, ensuring that trillions in pension funds are funneled into an unsustainable business model. Once that happens, even if a more efficient approach to AI becomes obvious, the economy and government will already be too dependent on the data center model to let it fail.

That is why these companies are also seeking federal land for their projects, a favor not extended to ordinary industries. SoftBank, the Japanese investment company trying to underwrite much of OpenAI’s speculative build-out, is reportedly pushing for a federal land project in Ohio to reduce costs. But banks are already balking at these ventures after SoftBank failed to secure a $6 billion loan for OpenAI.

Green energy taught us a simple lesson: When the only path to profitability runs through government favors, we should not start down that path.

OpenAI does not need a public stake. It needs public skepticism.

Americans should not be asked to subsidize a speculative industry, sacrifice land and power, and then call the bailout wealth creation. If AI companies cannot survive without government backstops, loan guarantees, public land, and pension-fund capture, then they are not building the future.

They are building the next permanent government program.