Trump's former senior policy advisor on AI thinks Hegseth's "psychotic power grab" could lead to a crash

[highplainsdem]

That advisor is Dean W. Ball - https://www.deanball.com/ .

I checked his posts on X after seeing Swede's OP - https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221054288 - with just part of what he said.

Text of his posts on X, commenting on Hegseth's tweet labeling Anthropic a supply-chain risk. Double spaces between tweets, single spaces where there were multiple paragraphs in a tweet.

Nevermind. I had been optimistic that the President’s tweet signaled an off-ramp, but it doesn’t. Shame on the Department of War, shame on Pete Hegseth. A dark day in our country’s history.


The United States federal government is now, by an extremely wide margin, the most aggressive regulator of artificial intelligence in the world. Congratulations everyone.


Nvidia, Amazon, Google will have to divest from Anthropic if Hegseth gets his way. This is simply attempted corporate murder. I could not possibly recommend investing in American AI to any investor; I could not possibly recommend starting an AI company in the United States.


Think about the power Hegseth is asserting here. He is claiming that the DoD can force all contractors to stop doing business of any kind with arbitrary other companies.

In other words, every operating system vendor, every manufacturer of hardware, every hyperscaler, every type of firm the DoD contracts with—all their services and products can be denied to any economic actor at will by the Secretary of War.

This is obviously a psychotic power grab. It is almost surely illegal, but the message it sends is that the United States Government is a completely unreliable partner for any kind of business. The damage done to our business environment is profound. No amount of deregulatory vibes sent by this administration matters compared to this arson.


The U.S. government just essentially announced its intention to impose Iran-level sanctions, or China-level entity listing, on an American company. This is by a profoundly wide margin the most damaging policy move I have ever seen USG try to take (it probably will not succeed).

Among the replies to the tweet saying he "could not possibly recommend starting an AI company in the United States" was this exchange:

"So this is what initiates the AI market driven crash."
Ball: "100%."
Another person: "Too hyperbolic."
Ball: "Nope."

[2naSalit]

1. Do we see...

A bubble about to burst here?

[highplainsdem]

2. I hope so. And we could see the alliances Trump formed splinter.

[2naSalit]

3. Yup...

That's the pathway I was envisioning.

They're trying to sustain their grand illusion and failing. People aren't thrilled with it enough to register if you remove all the bots talking it up. I think it's about to burst by mid summer, I hope.

[RockRaven]

4. The liars and con artists at these tech companies will welcome a scapegoat

for the coming crash which is inevitable just based on the existing fundamentals, even without Kegsbreath and The Dotard fucking things up.

[RandySF]

5. I seem to recall a movie about artificial intelligence in the military.