Josiah Joner

⚡ Aman Verjee compares Anthropic's safety lobbying to Thomas Edison's "War of the Currents", where Edison tried to scare the public into regulating his competitor out of business: "Edison did what Dario (Amodei) is doing. He basically scared the public. He lobbied the government for a limit on voltage, which would benefit his business... He actually launched a safety pamphlet talking just like Dario did about the potential for electricity to kill people... You know, who won the war of the currents? It was Westinghouse. It was Tesla. It essentially eliminated GE and Edison from the war of the currents... It is a dangerous game that they're playing, that Anthropic is playing. I think the danger of it is you maybe get the regulators on your side for a while, but once you invite them into this process, now the talk is about taxes and nationalization and robust security... And that's probably not a great thing for the AI company." — @AmanVerjee on @TradingVCs Podcast with @davemcclure

Last week's @reindsummit was a glimpse of a future where entrepreneurs across the nation are able to use emerging technology like AI to build and create. Solving existential challenges previous generations didn't think was possible. Here is what I saw in Detroit:

I’ve had a number of conversations with folks inside and outside government about the current situation with Anthropic, and here is what I believe to be true: — As we know, Anthropic publicly released its Mythos class models earlier this week under the commercial name Fable. — Fable is Mythos with guardrails. But if those guardrails fail, then you’ve exposed Mythos and its advanced cyber capabilities to people who shouldn’t have them. (Keep in mind that Anthropic itself widely promoted the idea that Mythos was a cyberweapon and needed to be regulated as such. They asked for government regulation of Mythos and championed the guardrails on Fable. If there is a vulnerability — big or small — it is Anthropic’s responsibility to patch.) — A highly credible trusted partner of both Anthropic and the USG who was testing Fable came forward with a jailbreak of those guardrails. The Admin asked Dario to fix the jailbreak or de-deploy the model. Dario refused. — In their blog post, Anthropic defended its decision by saying the jailbreak isn’t serious. That is not what the trusted partner and the USG believe; nor is that kind of minimizing language consistent with Anthropic’s brand as the AI safety company. It’s difficult to fathom how they could claim a jailbreak allowing operability of a cyber weapon could be defined as not “serious.” — In the past, Anthropic has always said that safety must be top priority and taken super seriously. In this case, Anthropic prioritized the continued offering of the consumer model over safety. — In reaction, the Admin issued the export control. The Admin did this reluctantly. It’s been very surprised that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to cooperate with a reasonable safety request (ie fixing the jailbreak issue). Anthropic’s reaction is very much at odds with their branding and ethos as a safe AI research community. — The Admin’s hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release. The Admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority. — Those trying to misdirect and tie this action to the prior DoW/Anthropic issues are wrong. The Admin values Anthropic’s technical capabilities and feels that this issue, while serious, should be easily resolved. The ball is in Anthropic’s court.

Actually, no. @glukianoff has warned about exactly this for over two years.

While I’m no fan of socialism or arbitrary confiscations of wealth, I can see why Bernie Sanders’ proposal (for the government to take a 50% stake in AI companies) resonates, including with many on the right. The CEOs of the leading AI labs have told us repeatedly that they will cause massive job loss. This is not a story that I believe, nor does the data bear it out, but this is what they have told us. Similarly, they have hyped the risks of AI without putting an equal or greater emphasis on the benefits or readily available mitigations. Conservatives have another fear. The employees of the leading labs claim to be philanthropic, but what we’ve seen is massive enrichment of NGOs advancing an agenda at odds with traditional values, fueling a revolution against our cities and communities. Soros-maxxing is not charity in our book. Anthropic and OpenAI have established themselves as Public Benefit Corporations. What could be more in the public benefit than using half the wealth generated by these companies (which trained for free on the collective knowledge of humanity) to pay down the national debt? There is no ideological bias in that philanthropy. Dario and Sam have begun to walk back their claims of massive job loss, but the damage to public trust is done, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. I could almost support the Sanders proposal as a stupidity tax. There’s just one problem. Nationalization of AI will accelerate the corporate-government fusion we’re already sliding toward. Conservatives rightly fear a Central Bank Digital Currency. They ought to be even more concerned about Central Government AI — a system with even more totalistic power over information, decision-making, and human behavior. We saw how social media was weaponized to censor conservatives (including President Trump) in the last Democrat administration. The definition of “trust & safety” expanded to mean protecting the public from supposed psychological harms, micro-aggressions, and disinformation (you know, like hearing conservative ideas or true facts about Covid). That “safety” agenda as applied to AI will be vastly more powerful and Orwellian. AI won’t just moderate posts; it will curate reality — with the ability to rewrite history, enforce ideological conformity, influence policy at scale, mass surveil Americans, and condition the benefits of the many systems it controls on approved behavior. America won’t win the AI race if we beat China but end up with a CCP-style social credit system in the U.S. — and that is the danger as the government becomes more deeply involved in AI development and assumes direct ownership and control. Conservatives are right to fear where this is all headed but ought to think more carefully about how regulations they are flirting with now (that are widely celebrated among those with a long history of lust for Big Government) will be used against them the next time a Democrat administration is in power.

@Jon_Hartley_ @StanfordEcon @I_Am_NickBloom @DuffieDarrell @JohnHCochrane @HannoLustig @HooverInst Congrats, Jon!

Officially defended my @StanfordEcon PhD dissertation! Hugely grateful to my amazing committee: @I_Am_NickBloom @DuffieDarrell @JohnHCochrane @HannoLustig Valerie Ramey Ran Abramitzky. I'd argue the best scholars in the world on fiscal, central banking, productivity, & history!

A year ago at this time, Congress was considering a moratorium on state AI over-regulation and the Trump administration was formulating an AI action plan for America. Today, the biggest Blue state legislatures and progressive Democratic governors in California, New York, and Illinois have effectively taken over national AI policy and are dictating the terms of interstate computational commerce. This represents an astonishing policy turnaround, and one with troubling ramifications for efforts to create a coherent policy framework for a technology sector with such global strategic significance. While some large companies have apparently made their peace with this regulatory arrangement, it is mostly because they have the resources to navigate this parochial patchwork and confusing and costly compliance regime. The moat around these bigger firms will be filled with a sea of paperwork. Other players will fall by the wayside. And, needless to say, we'll be saying goodbye to open source options if this regime sticks. It's a terrible approach if one cares about AI competition, investment, and innovation going forward.

If we don't create a national AI framework, Xavier Becerra will make sure California sets the standards for everyone else. We can't let people like Xavier, who pushed vaccine mandates and social media censorship in the Biden admin, be the ones controlling the future of AI.

I’m sorry, Portland has the best looking Airport in the country and it’s not even close.

Banning building new datacenters basically means: we’ll get stuck with the old ones Instead of better designs we’ll get stuck with evaporative cooling (consumes water) and low energy efficiency. Data centers are not only for AI. They run your critical infrastructure for hospitals, banks, phones, schools - stuff you use every day. Instead of banning new construction - ban bad designs or outdated hardware. If you ban new construction existing datacenters won’t have any reason to innovate, they’ll just crank up the profit. New equipment runs hotter so it makes companies innovate - direct to chip cooling, submersive cooling, adiabatic and hybrid approaches that reduce water usage to almost zero. For example Nebius doesn’t use active cooling in their DC in Finland, they recover the heat and actually use it to warm up houses in local towns in winter. Careful regulation and rebate/tax credit systems can encourage data centers improve quality of life for people around them - improving connectivity, reducing their electric bills (by constructing their own power generation facilities with clean energy), enriching local communities with taxes, all while consuming less water than a couple of green lawns in front of their houses.

Bernie and AOC’s plan forces America to rely on our least-efficient data centers. Innovation is making new data centers highly efficient, and some won’t even use water. Banning new data centers will have the opposite effect and end that innovation.

@Nick_Davidov This is a fantastic point. Banning new data centers stifles the innovation in building more efficient data centers. It’s the environmentalists wanting to ban them, but they’ll only be forcing America to rely on its least-efficient data centers!

Speaker Mike Johnson on what Congress must deliver on AI: 1. "A single national framework that protects children, safeguards communities, supports creators, and avoids a patchwork of state regulations." 2. "Ensure our national security and well-being. Expand the American AI stack to friends and allies, while ensuring it stays out of the hands of America's adversaries and rivals." 3. "Move at the speed that victory demands. Inaction is unacceptable. While the window for American AI leadership is open, it will not stay open indefinitely." The Hill & Valley Forum 2026 (@HillValleyForum)

Seems like a slippery slope. Might have a minimal impact now, but what happens when this tax is leveraged to quash AI progress (as many would like to do)? A better way to fix the energy problem is to build more power, not add another tax for using it. But… you could call it the “slop tax.”

We should federally tax Tokens at the Provider level. Not a lot. Less than 50c per million tokens. It will accomplish 4 things (at least ) 1. It will push the big AI players to optimize tokenization, caching , routing and localization Which will 2. Reduce energy usage. Saving them in energy costs more than what they paid in tax and reducing strain created by the growth in energy consumption Which will 3. Generate maybe 10 billion dollars a year to start, but over the next ten years could grow 30x to 100x Which will 4. Create a source of funding to pay down the federal debt or deploy, in response to the things AI brings that we don’t expect or don’t like At some point the models will pass it on to customers. Of course. That’s ok. Customers will have the ability to choose between providers. Or to do everything using open source models locally. Thoughts ?

Thoughtful piece. Nice work, @YusufSMahmood!

Sanders and AOC introduced a bill to pause ALL AI data center construction. 300+ local bills filed. Half of planned 2026 data centers facing delays or cancellation. Each one brings billions to local economies. The people who say they want American jobs are trying to block the biggest job creation engine since the interstate highway system.

@quinnmbarry Great read

🚨 ALL-IN INTERVIEW! CA Governor Candidate Steve Hilton on Why California is Destroying Itself and How a Republican Can Win @SteveHiltonx sits down with @chamath and @Jason to discuss: -- Taxes: No tax under $100K and a 7.5% flat rate -- Housing: Why CA homes cost 3x more to build -- Education: Why CA schools spend the most but get the least -- Social: Crime, homelessness, and corruption (0:00) Intro: Steve Hilton is a Republican Brit Running for CA Governor (8:34) Zero Tax Under $100K and a 7.5% Flat Rate: Is It Fiscally Possible? (27:52) Why CA Homes Cost 3x More to Build (Unions, CEQA, and Climate Dogma) (44:50) Why CA Schools Spend the Most but Get the Worst Results (50:02) Crime, Homelessness, and the Failure to Enforce Laws That Already Exist (1:01:34) Can a Republican Actually Win California?

Let's return to the days of WebMD, the gold standard for self-diagnosis.