Hard Fork · Friday, July 3, 2026
The hosts criticize the Trump administration's approach to AI regulation, describing it as a "de facto licensing regime" with "no known rules" and "no transparency whatsoever." They argue that this arbitrary oversight creates "authoritarian limbo" for AI companies.
“And what we have said before on this subject is that this is the exact state of affairs that the people who are now running AI policy in the Trump administration were advocating about during the Biden administration.”
“They were warning, you know, they're going to create a licensing scheme and they're going to start picking winners and losers and only a handful of the administration's favored labs are going to be able to release any models.”
“We have implemented a de facto licensing regime and because it's the Trump administration, there are no known rules, there's no transparency whatsoever. We have no idea what makes a model considered safe to ship or unsafe to ship.”