“Concerning AI,” US president Donald Trump  asked on Truth Social in mid-September, “when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?”

The answer, of course, is “never.”

When “industry leaders” start advocating for government regulation — or even, initially, for industry-internal “standards” bodies leading to such regulation — they’re not riding to the rescue of humankind, they’re looking out for their own bottom lines.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen rising public moral panic about the energy demands and environmental effects of AI data centers. While I can’t prove it, my perception is that the panic was algorithmically encouraged by, if not entirely created by, the same social media platforms that just happen to be operated by big players in AI.

Then, in mid-September, a sequence of events quickly unfolded that seemed pretty clearly artificial and contrived:

A researcher at Anthropic, Jacob Coxon, resigned, stating that the big players in AI are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

Following Coxon’s resignation, Anthropic’s “Alignment Science Lead,” Evan Hubinger, commented that “[w]e really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”

Within days — almost as if they’d just been waiting for a great news hook to roll their plans out for public consumption! — “industry leaders” moved from mildly asserting the desirability of an AI “standards” body (explicitly framed around a need for government to catch up with mandatory regulation) to openly coordinating with each other on forming such a body.

On September 18, four “paying subscribers” to AI services filed suit (seeking class action status) against Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google. The suit claims collusion between the firms, in violation of US antitrust laws, to establish “industry-wide coordination” that would “pace the frontier” of AI, slowing down its evolution (and thus depriving the public of whatever benefits that evolution might bring).

I’m not a big fan of antitrust law, but the case for collusion does look pretty strong, and that collusion really seems aimed at getting the US government to impose uniform and strict regulations on the development of artificial intelligence.

Why?

To keep new competitors — ambitious startups, smaller existing firms looking for new revenue centers, etc. — from entering the industry in the first place.

Those big industry players are already entrenched. They’ve established huge leads in building out AI infrastructure. They’ve already got the money and manpower in place to comply with such regulations.

Joe Blow, who just wrote some killer code at his desk, code to power a new kind of AI model running on a server in his garage, doesn’t have a data center to move his great idea onto.

He doesn’t have a major law firm on retainer to make sure his idea doesn’t violate any of the many government regulations that will inevitably evolve from the proposed “industry standards.”

And once those regulations are in place, he’ll have trouble raising enough investment capital to buy membership in a corporate club with a big “NO DOGS OR ENTREPRENEURS” sign on its door.

At best, Joe Blow might get one of those club members interested enough to hire him or buy his work product. More likely his big idea will just wither away and die.

That’s what the defendants in the lawsuit are really after: A shared monopoly.

Will AI kill all humans? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s either impossible or inevitable.

If it’s impossible, it’s nothing to worry about.

If it’s inevitable, all US government regulation — or “industry standards” — can accomplish is depriving Americans of the benefits of the most advanced AIs until the literal “killer app” emerges from Beijing or Bengaluru or Budapest.

Let’s not allow moral panic to deprive us of those benefits just so a few would-be monopolists can make bank.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On September 16, US Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA), acting in his role as Speaker of the House, sent that body’s members home until after the November midterm elections.

My knee-jerk reaction is gratitude. After all, as Gideon J. Tucker wrote in 1866, “no man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

Conversely, if all those members of Congress are back home campaigning for re-election (or just enjoying a break), their opportunities to engage in criminal stupidity step down from wholesale to retail levels.

Heck, if we have to put up with Congress existing at all, I’d rather they convened once a year to collect their salaries for the year, then took the other 364 days off.

On a closer look, though, Johnson seems to have found a way to turn Tucker’s aphorism on its head, frequently using the absence of Congress to protect existing depredations, rather than the presence of Congress to drum up new ones.

“The House has now canceled at least 63 scheduled voting days this Congress, including nine days this month alone,” notes US Representative Ralph Norman (R-SC).

When Johnson thinks he’s going to lose a vote — with “lose” defined as upsetting or defying president Donald Trump — he just sends everyone home until he can whip a few more House members into line, or at least until the loss might come at a slightly less embarrassing point in the news cycle.

He’s done it with votes on EPA regulations.

He’s done it with votes related to the Epstein files.

This time he fled in terror, taking the entire House with him, from a privileged motion filed by outgoing US Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY).

The resolution, if passed, would have impeached US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for “Waging War in Contravention of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 …. Ignoring Laws that Minimize Civilian Casualties …. Extrajudicial Killings …. Suppressing Free Speech …. Kidnapping of a Sovereign Foreign Leader …. [and] Unlawful War in Yemen.”

Letting the House vote on the resolution would have been a no-win situation for Johnson and his party given that every House seat is up for election in a month-and-a-half.

If it had failed, Republican candidates would have had to explain to voters why they supported keeping a corrupt, incompetent crook in charge of the US armed forces.

If it had passed, Republican candidates would have had to explain to voters why they had left that corrupt, incompetent crook in charge of the US armed forces for nearly two years before taking steps to remove him.

While I doubt the House and Senate possess the moral fiber and testicular fortitude to send Hegseth packing (preferably all the way to The Hague), they’re a lot more likely to do so on November 4, when the next election is two years away and voters have time to forget all about it.

Ultimately, though, Hegseth and the House are simpatico — crooked peas in a crooked pod. As Mark Twain noted, “there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

At the end of August, Florida’s Department of Transportation ordered the removal of automated license plate readers from state road “rights-of-way.”

Several Florida counties and cities have since followed suit. The growing popular  movement against “Flock cameras” (the most popular ALPRs are made by Flock Safety) enjoys nationwide reach and politicians have begun running to the head of that parade.

That’s a good thing.

No, not just because ALPRs can be easily abused (more than 100 police officers have been caught using ALPR data to do things like stalk former or prospective romantic partners).

And no, not just because ALPRs can deliver inaccurate information, resulting in frightening traffic stops and sometimes false arrests.

The biggest reason to oppose use of ALPRs is that they create an ongoing, persistent, nationwide web of warrantless search and surveillance that encompasses everyone who drives, without probable cause to believe that those drivers have committed particular crimes or even that those particular crimes have actually occurred. That’s something the government isn’t supposed to be able to do.

It’s also something the government doesn’t NEED to do.

The number of privately owned and operated security cameras in America is staggering.

According to SafeHome.org, about 75 million US homes operate security cameras. While some of those cameras are positioned indoors, most of them aren’t — nearly 60 million are video doorbell cameras, most of which can see the street frontages of the homes using them.

That number doesn’t include the ubiquitous security cameras found scattered around nearly every American business establishment.

It also doesn’t include similar cameras on pretty much every government building.

When a crime is committed, police are fully empowered to request — or, if necessary, get warrants to seize — the footage from any cameras that might plausibly have recorded the crime or the perpetrators’ actions leading up to and away from the crime scene.

Would government officials and police officers LIKE to have 24/7/365 access to information on everyone’s coming and goings, everywhere? Well, of course they (or at least many of them) would.

In fact, some of them wouldn’t mind having access to “security cameras” inside your home, pointed at you, so that if you murder your spouse — or perhaps just smoke, snort, or inject an unapproved substance, or casually mention that you  broke the speed limit coming home — an alert and AI analysis pops up on the relevant detective’s computer screen and he drops by to haul you off at his convenience, with irrefutable evidence already in hand.

The rest of us, however, are entitled to a presumption of innocence and to substantial protections from the snoopy predilections of government officials and police officers. In theory, at least, THEY work for US. Most of us like our privacy, and few of us want rogue cops spying on us 24/7.

There’s no room for massive surveillance networks like those represented by ALPRs in any country where the ruling class pretends it governs a “free society.”

Congrats to Florida’s politicians on their successful sprint to the head of a worthy parade.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY