This is one of the few interpretations that make sense of this timeline at this time. I'd be cautious since it's still speculation. But discovery is going to be interesting.
This is only a surprise to HN, because all the other threads about the corrupt US regime have been flagged before. I guess now is a good time as any to start paying attention. Who would've thought that attention is all you need?
25M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.
Quite tangential, but this reminded me of a line from Human Target:<p><a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqvzt?start=872&mute=false" rel="nofollow">https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tqvzt?start=872&mute=fal...</a><p>"I'm sorry, you... You think I'm a prostitute?"<p><i>looks at offered cash</i><p>"A $40 prostitute?"
Cheap or not doesn’t matter.<p>Sir Winston Churchill supposedly asked Lady Astor whether she would sleep with him for five million pounds. She said she supposed she would. Then he asked whether she would sleep with him for only five pounds. She answered,"What do you think I am?" His response was, "We've already established that; we're merely haggling over price."- Marcus Felson, Crime and Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998
It’s a lot of money for a “what have you done for me lately?” scenario<p>Like, this is opex
That's something that has bothered me about this entire administration, particularly the bizarre and disturbing involvement of the Diablo-cheating billionaire.<p>Everyone knew that a lot of politicians have been for sale, but I didn't realize how <i>cheaply</i> they were for sale. Musk able to buy his way into being in charge of an idiotic department with basically no regulation while still being allowed to CEO like five companies, and he did it for like $100 million. That's a lot of money, more than I'll ever be worth, but it's way less than I would think it would cost to buy the presidency, in charge of billions (and maybe trillions?) of dollars of sales and contracting.
A whore doesn't have to charge any given john very much when they can service a large number of them.
In this context they're not the whores, they're the johns. Trump / the PAC would be the whores, but what else is new?
It's a loss-leader. Once the patronage system has solidly taken hold, then they raise the prices. Our only consolation is that the fascist-supporting techbros are going to be victims of their own enshittification dynamic - they think they're paying customers, but they're actually the product. The autocracy will continue to increase its meddling to maintain its own political legitimacy. Moldbug's enlightened benevolent monarch who needn't care about politics is a pipe dream.
Don't know if it's true, but I've seen this pattern of intrigue at smaller scale. When someone takes a moral stand on some issue and annoys the boss, that creates an "opening". Someone else steps into that opening and makes the right Machiavellian move. As a result, the first person gets kicked to the curb and the second person rises higher.
Such high levels of corruption are not usually called "scam"
<i>In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.</i><p>This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge.<p>And it’s happening everywhere these last years.<p>Who could possibly know we have so many wife beaters?
Not a week goes by without me thinking "what would HST have made of THIS fresh bullshit, if he were alive today"
I've said it a million times, but I'll repeat it.<p>There are a lot of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and the amusing thing to me is that there <i>is</i> a conspiracy of elites who are exerting large amounts of unelected control of the government, and who are actively working to keep you down to enrich themselves, and it's not even a secret.<p>We call these people "billionaires", and at this point they don't even bother hiding it. Trump had a streamlined bribery system with his stupid cryptocurrency and being in charge of a publicly traded company while in office, Musk bought his way in so he could be in charge of a new department and start defunding any organization that has ever tried to investigate him, and there are hundreds of examples.<p>Instead morons like Alex Jones will go on the radio and blame lizards or something, and then his listeners will take that and then start blaming Jews or Mexicans, while cheering on the <i>actual</i> conspiracy that's making their lives terrible.
PS: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.
It's bizarre seeing the outright bribery.<p>A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. You couldn't give money directly to the candidate for personal use. Donations went to the campaign of the guy who already agreed with you. The FEC used to take a dim view of outright pay-for-service, even dressed up.<p>This is new. And now people need to decide how they feel about that. They get one chance to say "no, that's not how we do things." Even if the administration suffers a blow this November, if they hear that this is mostly acceptable to their base, it will be what every politician does from here on.
><i>A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office.</i><p>Having a preferred candidate you give money to is already bribery - whatever the law says. You fund your favorite pony to get the power. They then scratch your back or lend a sympathetic ear.
Simply spending money to get someone you like elected isn’t bribery.<p>To the degree great inequality leads to this being decisive in elections, it is a corrupting influence, but the term for it is still not “bribery”.<p>But when a presidential candidate tells oil companies they should donate because he is going to help them, that’s solid bribery.<p>When companies pay to “settle” ridiculous accusations, or “donate” to a president’s causes, while their mergers or other business legal issues depend on an openly pay-for-play president’s goodwill, that’s solid bribery.<p>The country’s policies, discipline, reputation and competence (economic, diplomatic and political) are being sold off for a tiny fraction of what their future adjusted value is worth.
IANAL, IIRC: SCOTUS has very narrowly defined bribery as explicit quid pro quo. And sometimes not even then.
In what sense is this new, other than a different side cares about the optics?
> When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.<p>No, it's not inevitable. What you've described is the way a lot of countries work, such as China. China attracts plenty of capital and external talent, including people from other countries such as Taiwan and the United States. You have be all-in on the CCP's rules, though.<p>Vietnam works in a similar way. Untold billions of FDI in the past 20 years from Japan, the U.S. and China. Talk with top executives there, and you'll frequently find close connections or family ties with leaders in Hanoi.
> If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US<p>It very clearly is, the present AI instance is far from the only recent case.<p>> I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.<p>They evaluate the propensity and ability to profitably engage in open corruption the same as they evaluate other capacities of the company. “Secure” isn't a binary category, and the risk here is much like any other risk.<p>> When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.<p>That is the expected result of increasing perceived risk. yes, probably one of those “slowly and then all at once” things.
><i>I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.</i><p>Investors just care for the returns. As long as they can identify and bet on the side doing the bribing, they're fine...
Bit melodramatic. The US still has the most talent, most capital, and best property protections of anywhere in the world. Name a country that (1) doesn't have any quid-pro-quo system with the govt, and (2) has pro-growth pro-capitalist policies.
>I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.<p>2025 was also <i>the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery)</i>.<p>----<p>Hope ya'll bought your gold <i>before Monday</i>.<p>#RemindMe2days [gold@5290USD, this post]
Trades in dark pools still get published to the consolidated tape; they're still part of price discovery. What's "dark" about them is that you don't see the order book, but people break up large orders into smaller orders to disguise their order size in lit markets too.
>2025 was also the first year that the majority of stocks were traded off-market (i.e. hedgie darkpools, no public price discovery).<p>Do you have any sources for that?
<i>the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent</i><p>To where?
Anywhere offering opportunity.<p>I'm in Europe, I'd like to see it come here. The news I see suggests China's ahead of us in this race, but I don't know if that's for all talent, or if it was just an artefact of a lot of Chinese people in the US on work visas returning home.<p>Or indeed whether the news about China doing well here was real or hallucinated by an LLM.
Europe is nice this time of year
> I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment.<p>It’s the best investment - just bribe your way to contracts
To summarize all nepotism indicators posted here by various people:<p>- The Kushner family has invested in OpenAI.<p>- OpenAI uses Oracle cloud. Ellison is close to Trump.<p>- Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan (the “spy sheikh") has invested $500 million in World Liberty and is also invested in OpenAI.<p>- Altman is a protege of Thiel, whose Palantir integrates the external AI at the Pentagon.<p>- The scam occurs right before the Iran war starts. The Groq sale scam (where Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital bought shares just months before the sale) occurred right before Christmas. So both were timed to be overshadowed by larger events or holidays.
Don't overlook the media consolidation under Bari Weiss.
Sweet, excellent idea for the government to tie itself to a bubble.<p>If it doesn't pop while Trump's in office, his successor will inherit this mess, bubble will pop, and that person will have to deal with managing the fallout.<p>The time to lock-in gainful employment is now (if you can).
ਚੋਰ ਮਚਾਏ ਸ਼ੋਰ
"On the very same day that Altman offered public support to Amodei [CEO of Anthropic], he signed a deal to take away Amodei’s business, with a deal that wasn’t all that different. You can’t get more Altman than that."
A lot of rightfully righteous anger here. I'm amused that this wasn't the response when semiconductors from Taiwan were exempted from tarrifs. There, the bribe was much smaller...
The corruption is never-ending, but I think with this case people were especially struck by some of the details like OpenAI claiming their "red lines" were exactly the same as Anthropic's.<p>Not even trying to justify the switchover would have raised less eyebrows than giving it a clearly nonsense justification.
I'll try not to be too flippant but... he thought the US ever _wasn't_ an oligarchy?
Flippant be hanged! IMO, it all started with W Bush, who put the icing on that cake by invading Iraq based on a televised lie. He was "sneaky" but the current administration doesn't even try to sneak. The mid-terms may be our final chance to save our nation.
I wouldn't be surprised if after some time we found out that Amodei signed the same deal as well, and then he will go on a press tour about how he was forced to do it.
I was scratching my head trying to work out the difference between the deal with anthropic, and the deal with openai.<p>I asked gemini.<p>The one detail was that the contract enforced the law with anthropic, but with openai it was legal uses.<p>Sounds like hair splitting, but this article explains the real story.
sounds likely and plausible but also like an "unproven conspiracy theory"
> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide. It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter<p>Transitioning? That happened post WW2. How many more wars in the Middle East do we need to convince people?<p>Though, I think it’s hard for Marcus’ generation to see this. Odd given Vance’s connections to Thiel et al.
> Transitioning?<p>To be fair, there has been a notable recent shift in the sense that nobody even tries to hide what is going on anymore.<p>We've moved beyond manufacturing consent to ass out corruption on full display, "try to stop me."
> In capitalism, the market decides.<p>> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.<p>> It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter.<p>I thought this was already pretty clear - since Elmo bunny hopped on Trump’s rally stage
> In capitalism, the market decides.<p>> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.<p>> It sure look like the US is transitioning from the former to the latter.<p>One has to wonder on what planet Gary Marcus has lived so far.
In his defence, previously money won, rather than bribing someone to get a competitor nuked from orbit.<p>Sure you could smear an opposition company, but just straight bribing the government is new, at this scale
There was a long stretch where money would be more of a deciding factor than who you know, and I think we're crossing the threshold where who you know is becoming all that matters.
> but after Brockman had donated 25M to Trump’s PAC<p>> In capitalism, the market decides.<p>> In oligarchy, connections and donations decide.<p>Author is confused about what Capitalism is. It worked exactly as expected, Capital used itself to advance it's own needs - maximizing (own) growth.<p>Capitalism is not about markets, it's about Capital.<p>There is a reason why lobbying is an accepted practice in one of the most Capitalistic countries in the world, and generally forbidden in Socialist EU.
Which prominent economist has argued that bribes are an essential part of Capitalism?
> generally forbidden in Socialist EU<p>This is one of those cases where you wish your critics were right. One in 40 people in Brussels is a lobbyist, but apparently it's forbidden.
"Is transitioning to oligarchy"? Really? I don't see how present continuous is justified here.<p>It has always been an old boys club where connections and hand greasing decided it all. President Trump is the product of this system, not its creator or builder.
What does this have to do with AI capabilities specifically?<p>This is literally the politics of running massive business interests, which I understand is relevant for technology and everything…<p>… but isn’t Gary Marcus’s whole game that AI is not capable and people are wrong/lying about AI tech capabilities?<p>I feel like this is a handy moment for Gary where he can say he could basically ignore all of his previous claims (because they’re all technically wrong) and shift into “AI is bad for society because it’s more crony capitalism” or something kind of muddy argument.
It's only a matter of time before an OpenAI killer drone <i>accidentally</i> targets Gary Marcus and Scam Altman says "oopsie".
"In capitalism, the market decides.<p>In oligarchy, connections and donations decide."<p>Who's gonna tell him there never was a difference?
Let that sink in!
I think he is right here, but it is interesting to see that Gary Marcus is transitioning to AI too (writing style...)
Is this a blog post or someone's notes for a blog post?
It's a short and quick blog post. Bloggers used to do that once in a while (before twitter made it the only allowed mode of expression to please the advertisers.)<p>Other posts from G.Marcus are much longer. Go read them, but be prepared for some "adversarial thinking" if you strongly believe in the scaling hypothesis. Might border on "bubble popping ". You're all for free speech and the free market of idea, so it won't be a problem.<p>However, he has a low threshold for bullshit. And SamA is probably not getting any higher in his esteem this week.
"But I believe in fair play. This wasn’t that."<p>Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads weren't fair play either.
This <a href="https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230</a> is the simplest and most logical explanation as to what happened. The disagreement was over who would be the arbiter of "lawful usage" of the technology, the US government or Amodei.
No, that’s not accurate at all, and in case you are genuinely confused:<p>1. Anthropic should be free to sell its services under whatever legal terms and conditions it wants.<p>2. The Pentagon should be free to buy those services, negotiate for different terms, refuse to buy those services, and terminate contracts subject to any termination clauses.<p>You may or may not agree with what the Pentagon wants to do, but if things had stayed there, there would be no real issue.<p>The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic <i>as a company</i>, calling it a <i>danger to the United States</i> because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1).<p>Any “explanation” that doesn’t address that is confused itself or trying to confuse the issue.<p>I leave it to you as to which category the linked source falls under.
1. Agree<p>2. Agree<p>> The problem is that the Pentagon is trying to bury Anthropic as a company, calling it a danger to the United States because it exerted its non-controversial right in (1).<p>My take is that the DoD very much wanted to continue using Claude. However, Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage. The DoD took this as a personal offense (how dare this guy, does he know who we are, etc) and lashed out in retaliation. The whole sequence of events makes sense when viewed under this lense.
> Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage.<p>So did Altman. The terms of each company’s agreement with the DoW are roughly the same when they come out of the wash.<p>“Mr. Altman negotiated with the Department of Defense in a different way from Anthropic, agreeing to the use of OpenAI’s technology for all lawful purposes. Along the way, he also negotiated the right to put safeguards into OpenAI’s technologies that would prevent its systems from being used in ways that it did not want them to be.”<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreement-pentagon-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PlA.QxlS.soAAwh3zAe08&smid=nytcore-ios-share" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-agreeme...</a>
> However, Amodei refused to budge on relinquishing final say over Claude usage.<p>And that's 100% acceptable and legal. They have the right to do that. And DoW can then turn around and say "no deal". And that's 100% acceptable and legal.<p>So Hegseth going above and beyond and lashing out on the People's behalf like a butthurt child is unwarranted at best, and should definitely be illegal if it's not already.
Do you actually believe things this administration says? Is there some kind of drug that makes this possible?
Seems pretty unimportant and inconsequential though because LLMs don't work anyway because they aren't logic-based symbolic AI, right?