Pentagon CTO says Trump admin shouldn't take stakes in ...
Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, has surveyed the AI industry and arrived at the boldest available policy position for a man with a security clearance and a LinkedIn: the government should own none of it and regulate none of it. Taking equity stakes in AI companies "doesn't really go well in terms of nationalization," he told CNBC — a sentence that treats nationalisation as weather, something that happens to you rather than something a government decides to do. Somewhere, a sovereign wealth fund felt quietly judged. This is the man whose job involves worrying about Pentagon dependency on a handful of vendors, and his answer is: don't interfere.
He also "repeatedly signaled opposition" to ramping up government regulatory oversight of AI companies — signaling being Washington's favourite verb, meaning he definitely said it but would rather the transcript stayed vague. Then the flourish: it would be "dangerous to place all trust in the hands of a few AI chiefs." Correct! Genuinely correct! And yet the arrangement left standing is: no equity, no oversight, and a handful of AI chiefs holding the keys while we all agree to trust them. Rep. Brett Guthrie has already suggested the FRONTIER Act can wait — Washington's regulatory posture now has the structural integrity of a nice idea floated at a conference.
Worth noting what Emil Michael did not say, because the excerpt is a museum of absences: no company, no stake, no deal, no bill, no figure. Just a Pentagon CTO explaining that the state should keep its hands off both the cap table and the rulebook, because look what happened the last time anyone mentioned nationalization. That leaves the trust question exactly where Washington prefers it — with the AI chiefs, who have never once needed a rule they didn't write. The oversight will arrive eventually, presumably in the form of a strongly worded hearing about the strongly worded hearing that never happened. Regulate nothing, own nothing, and hope the handful of chiefs are feeling civic. What could go wrong that hasn't already been priced in?