U.S. government will decide who gets to use latest upgrade to ChatGPT

So now the U.S. government gets to decide who plays with OpenAI's latest toy. Just a week after the administration blessed Anthropic's Mythos 5 for over 100 institutions — a model it previously deemed too dangerous to share — they're back in the gatekeeper's chair. Apparently, consistency is a luxury, but arbitrary power over Silicon Valley is a necessity. One minute they're waving through powerful AI, the next they're vetting every company that wants a peek at the latest ChatGPT upgrade. Colour me shocked.

This 'major expansion of regulation' smells less like thoughtful governance and more like bureaucratic turf war dressed up as national security. The same administration that cried wolf about closed-source models is now deciding who among us is 'trusted' enough to access OpenAI's latest technology. Expect the criteria to be as opaque as a black box: maybe your company's past lobbying donations, maybe its CEO's Twitter history, maybe just a coin flip in a Pentagon basement. After all, we learned from prior coverage that the government's idea of 'trusted partners' is as predictable as a weather forecast from a chatbot.

And when the inevitable leak happens — because it will, because it always does — who'll get the blame? Not the government's vetting process, oh no. It'll be OpenAI's fault for not locking things down tighter, or the user's fault for not being sufficiently loyal. Meanwhile, the rest of us can watch from the sidelines as AI capability races ahead and the 'safety' narrative becomes a convenient cudgel for control. Pass the popcorn, and maybe don't apply for that vetting unless you've got a direct line to the White House.