“And Silicon Valley believe that we are going to take away all the office workers’ jobs and that we are going to annoy the army, if you don’t believe that that is going to lead to nationalization of our technology“You’re retarded.”
When last March Alex Karpexecutive director of Palantiropenly charged against companies that, like Anthropicthey do not want to bow to the dictates of Donald Trumpput on the table an increasingly repeated question within the technology industry. In a scenario where the artificial intelligence is seen as a strategic factor tied to national security, could the White House nationalize the heavyweights of the sector? Can the State become the guiding principle of the economy, as in China?
Alliance and deregulation
Although USA has championed for decades the capitalism free market, the future of technology is not determined exclusively by that model. In his second term, Trump has turned the IA in a political project whose main objective is to “win” at all costs. To achieve this, the president has strengthened his alliance with the valley, a symbiotic relationship in which the millionairesses donations of technological executives and investors have translated into important positions that have allowed them to set the Government’s agenda. Without going any further, last week the Trump administration signed Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Jensen Huang (Nvidia) y Larry Ellison (Oracle) as his new advisors.
Influenced by those and other companies such as OpenAI o GoogleTrump first tried to impose a 10-year moratorium on the country’s states to prohibit them from regulating AI. When that failed, he imposed an executive order to coerce them under the threat of opening a judicial process and withdrawing their access to public funds. Now, he has ordered Congress to pass a federal law that overrides state laws and gives the industry a free hand to build new ones. data centersreducing environmental permits along the way. The White House and Silicon Valley agree in seeing standards as an obstacle in their global race against Beijing.
More power for the State
However, the Trump agenda has been read as a commitment to deregulation. However, several experts warn that Trump’s involvement in AI should not be understood through the libertarian postulates – free market without government interference – that he preaches, but rather as “a large government project aimed at concentrating the power of the State.”
“Federal prevalence represents an aggressive assertion of its authority that prevents democratic experimentation at the state level (…) and is a form of regulation that concentrates power while isolating it from accountability,” notes a recent study signed by Alondra Nelsonformer director of scientific and technological policy of the Government of Joe Biden who has also advised the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani.
Federal preemption represents an aggressive assertion of its authority that concentrates power while insulating it from accountability
Nationalization of companies
However, the most visible interference is articulated through property and investment. With Trump at the helm, the White House has acquired a 10% stake in Intel —allocating almost 9,000 million dollars from the public treasury— to boost the company and reduce its foreign dependence. It has also become a shareholder in up to eight other private companies. mineralssteel and nuclear powerfundamental for the supply chain of the technology industry, according to a study by The New York Times. The opacity of this unusual maneuver arouses fear for “corruptionfavoritism and market distortion”.
The Trump government is also mediating in favor of the interests of Silicon Valley and demanding the payment of a “plus commission” for its services. In recent weeks, it has agreed to collect $10 billion from the group of investors that has taken control of the operations of TikTok in the US and allow Nvidia to sell its high-tech chips to China in exchange for up to 25% of the revenue it generates.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salmán, accompanied by Elon Musk (X, Tesla, SpaceX) and Jensen Huang (Nvidia). / Win McNamee / AFP
Indirect interference
Another study notes that Trump and his administration are “proactively working to open and secure new markets” for AI giants. That public diplomacy for the private sector, according to researcher Brian J. Chen, has resulted in the signing of an executive order to promote data center projects such as Stargate UAE in Abu Dhabi, in which both OpenAI and Oracle participate.
Nelson also argues that the State intervenes in the technological market indirectly through mechanisms that are not usually classified as regulation. For example, with the restriction of immigration visas (affecting scientists and programmers) and with cuts in research on negative effects of AI (from its biases from race or gender to its climate or labor impact).
This interrelation between the US Government and the technology industry explains that, almost in passing, firms such as the creator of ChatGPT have hinted that they want to have federal “backing” for their investments. “What would happen if investors stopped funding OpenAI’s huge spending and it couldn’t go public on time?” asks technology analyst Brian Merchant. “Taking into account current interests and state configuration, a semi-public OpenAI is a totally plausible possibility.”
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