Hello and welcome regulator, a newspaper for the verge Clients about the love-hate (but mostly hate) relationship between Silicon Valley and Washington. I hope everyone gets a chance to celebrate George Washington’s Birthday in their favorite way: skiing, staycation, subscribe to The Verge If you haven’t alreadyetc.
Prediction: It’s gonna be messy
Political alliances rarely last, so it’s somewhat predictable that the MAGA-tech bro alliance has fallen apart in the span of a single year. However, which side the administration would actually choose was more difficult to predict.
Last winter, it appeared that the two groups were in a tenuous relationship, brought together by Elon Musk’s shameless implementation of the DOGE agenda and Big Tech signing massive checks to settle Donald Trump’s lawsuits against them. But last night, the Trump administration chose an alternative: money. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that they will sue any state that tries to regulate prediction markets like Kalshi – even Republican states.
CFTC on Tuesday filed a amicus brief For the Ninth Circuit Court of AppealsOfficially, Kalshi is facing an onslaught of lawsuits filed by states against betting markets like Polymarket, Coinbase and the like. crypto.com. (The latter two, known primarily as cryptocurrency exchanges, have partnered with Kalshi and created a standalone prediction market called OG, respectively.) But unusually, there was also a threat with a brief description — posted on an In a video posted Tuesday night, facing the camera directly, the sole CFTC chairman michael selig Asserted his commission’s authority to regulate prediction markets and said the federal government was prepared to sue: “For those who want to challenge our authority in this area, let me be clear: We will see you in court.”
Did Selig Just Write a Stad wall street journal Op-ed claiming CFTC authority (which they did too)This would hardly raise anyone’s eyebrows. But in 2026, a video threat, especially one posted on X, is basically grounds to stoke a political firestorm — one that spencer cox, Utah’s Republican governor happily opened fire. “Mike, I appreciate your effort with a straight face, but I don’t recall that the CFTC has authority over the ‘derivative market’ of LeBron James Rebounds,” He posted in reply (also on X). “These prediction markets that you are breathlessly defending are gambling – pure and simple. They are destroying families and the lives of countless Americans, especially the young. There is no place for them in Utah.” He promised that Utah would continue the litigation and defeat the federal government in court if necessary.
This would not be the first time that Utah and Cox have expressed their opposition to federal overreach in relation to emerging technology. Last year, he publicly opposed an executive order that would have given the Justice Department the power to sue states that pass and enforce AI regulatory laws. The forecast market issue hits a particular nerve in Utah: About half of the state is Mormon, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially opposes all government-sanctioned forms of gambling.Even state lotteries. But Cox’s announcement is known in political circles as a “weathervane”: If a deeply Republican state is pushing back against the Trump administration on a new front, who else on the right might follow — and what kinds of new brolgarch technologies will they fight against?
Is it a coincidence that Anthropic C.E.O. Dario AmodeiThe big trip to Washington comes just as the Pentagon is rethinking its relationship with the AI company? In the last two weeks, Amodei published a 38-page letter to Congress Warning of growing existential threats from artificial intelligence, Conducted an interview with Axios mike allen (and sponsored their newsletter), and Met the censor. elizabeth warren (D-MA) and jim banks (R-IN) on Capitol Hill To support his bill banning the sale of advanced AI chips to China.
But Amodei had barely completed his capital blitz when Axios reported over the weekend that the Pentagon was not only impatient with Anthropic’s reticence to use the cloud for unrestricted purposes, but that it will be actively to punish Anthropic for refusing to cooperate By designating them “supply-chain risks.” If that happens, any company that wants to work with the military will have to cut ties with Anthropic. As one Pentagon official described it, “This is going to be very difficult to resolve, and we’re going to make sure they pay a price for putting pressure on us like this.”
This move by Pentagon makes no sense to those who see the cloud as a better AI enterprise product than its competitors at Pentagon (Gemini, ChatGPIT and Grok). However, if viewed through the lens of every previous interaction Trump has had with companies that have expressed ideological opposition to his agenda, his behavior toward Anthropic is exactly the same. For example, years ago, Trump threatened to cut off Amazon’s access to their sweetheart deal with the U.S. Postal Service in retaliation for Jeff Bezos’ ownership of the U.S. Postal Service. Washington Post.
But for me, the question is: exactly What What caused the ideological divide, and how much of it was also about national security? Over the past few months, there has been a bizarre surge in online messaging from right-wing influencers trying to claim that Anthropic, of all AI companies, is hyper-aware — the kind of woke that can convince kids to become trans, or give them the DEI-pill, or whatever lib-coded nightmare a MAGA personality can dream up. If you haven’t been reading the entire tweet in its entirety, other than the opinion expressed by its staff, which could be lib-coded, there was no evidence they could point to:
Talk about influential people eating themselves:
- steve bannon MAGA is under siege for that 2018 texts with jeffrey epsteinThe Justice Department’s Epstein files were recently revealed, in which he suggested Trump should be removed from office using the 25th Amendment. Representatives are also among the influential people demanding his inquiry. marjorie taylor greenJoe fell out with Trump and the GOP for trying to bury the Epstein files, and retired general. mike flynn. Notably, the two rose to prominence in 2020 by supporting the online conspiracy theory QAnon, which claimed that an elite group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles was in control of the government. (This won’t help Bannon He called Epstein “God” in a treatise).
- Mike Davis, an anti-Big Tech lawyer who previously represented Trump in his lawsuits against Meta, took credit for ousting former friend and colleague Gail Slater from the Justice Department’s antitrust division, According to the texts received by The Free Press. Although the two were once allies due to their shared interest in holding Big Tech accountable, their relationship began to deteriorate due to disagreements over when to enforce antitrust laws and when to compromise.
- And we’re back to Bannon: Per bulwark, He and his fellow MAGA political operator Boris Epstein are being prosecuted for their own shady cryptocurrency operations.
The White House is calling a third meeting between the crypto industry and the banking industry this week to continue to explore which major financial entities receive interest from yield-bearing stablecoin accounts (or if they receive interest at all). They have until March 1 to submit draft language to the Senate. Best wishes to all of you!
And finally, Luxmaxing Recess.
Can we all agree that HHS Secretary robert f kennedy is framemogging kid Rock In this video?
Will meet you next week and send all suggestions In every way that we list here.
