AI & Tech Brief: Reflection AI arrives in Washington - The Washington Post

Oh, marvellous. Reflection AI, the open-source darling valued at a cool $25 billion, has decided that the best way to protect America's national security is to hire a bunch of lobbyists. CEO Misha Laskin is now in Washington, D.C., framing open-source models as a 'national security imperative' — because nothing says 'secure' like giving away the crown jewels to anyone with a GPU. One imagines the pitch meetings: 'We'll give China our best models, but we'll also give you a really compelling PowerPoint about why that's fine.'

Let's be clear about what's happening here. A company whose entire business model is 'release everything for free' is now spending serious cash to influence federal AI policy. The lobbying operation isn't cheap, and the national security framing is a masterstroke: wrap your commercial interests in the flag and dare anyone to oppose you. After all, who wants to be the congressman who voted against 'security'? It's the oldest trick in the book, but with a $25 billion valuation behind it, the book is now a leather-bound first edition.

So now we have an open-source AI company telling Congress how to regulate open-source AI. That's not a conflict of interest — that's a symphony of them. The same people who want models out in the wild are now advising on the guardrails. It's like asking the fox to design the henhouse's security system, except the fox has a PhD in reinforcement learning and a very expensive lobbying firm. What could possibly go wrong?