American businesses have long practiced what political scientists call regulatory capture. A company that cannot repeal a law takes control of the people the government put in charge of enforcing it. The airlines did it to the Civil Aeronautics Board, which in 40 years never approved a new trunk carrier. The health insurance industry helped shape the Affordable Care Act and came away with a federal mandate requiring Americans to buy its product. What is new is watching it happen in real time in artificial intelligence.

Anthropic's Dario Amodei published an essay last week called "We Must Pace the Frontier." He proposes that the major AI companies slow down together and prove it by giving outside evaluators "desks in our offices, access badges, and company laptops." He names METR as the kind of group that should get them. Sam Altman committed OpenAI to the same arrangement within a day.

David Sacks, President Donald Trump's former AI czar, answered on Friday. "Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel," he wrote. "Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic's investors and staff." If they........

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