Ricardo (@Ric_RTP) “Sam Altman just found a legal way to bribe the entire US government into never r” — TopicDigg

Sam Altman just found a legal way to bribe the entire US government into never regulating OpenAI again. The bribe is $42.6 billion of OpenAI stock. So Trump will now LOSE money every time a regulator tries to slow OpenAI down. Here's what makes this so genius: Altman sat down with Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and proposed transferring 5% of OpenAI to a US government sovereign wealth fund modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund. He also wants Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI to hand over 5% each. The media is covering this as generosity. But that's not what's happening here... Two weeks ago the White House quietly forced OpenAI to delay the launch of GPT 5.6. The Commerce Department banned Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 for 18 days. Both companies are trying to IPO in the next 12 months. Both are getting throttled by federal regulators every time a new model rolls out. OpenAI is also being investigated by a coalition of 42 state attorneys general in parallel. Altman looked at what happened to Intel and drew the correct conclusion. Just to remind you: Last August, Trump forced Intel to hand over 9.9% of its shares in exchange for CHIPS Act money Intel had already been awarded. A shareholder lawsuit unsealed in March called the deal "extortionary" and is trying to unwind it. Trump said in May he "should have negotiated a larger stake." Then Nvidia and AMD were forced to hand the US government 15% of their entire China chip revenue in exchange for export licenses. Altman saw the pattern. He is negotiating from the front instead of the back. He is voluntarily offering 5% now before Trump takes 15% by force later. Then there's also the Sanders threat: Bernie Sanders introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act in mid-June. His bill would take 50% of every leading US AI company and use it to fund $1,000 annual dividends to every American. Sanders values the fund at $7 trillion. Altman is using the Sanders threat to sell Congress on 5%. 5% is the number that makes him look reasonable. Now this is where it gets really genius... Microsoft owns roughly 49% of OpenAI. Microsoft was not in the room with Trump. SoftBank just committed $40 billion to OpenAI. SoftBank was not in the room either. Neither were the venture funds that led the March round at $852 billion. Neither were the OpenAI employees who own equity in the company. Every one of them just watched Altman promise 5% of their upside to Trump without a single vote. Altman is spending shareholder money to buy something only HE benefits from. And the US government cannot regulate a company it owns 5% of. Every safety rule that reduces OpenAI's valuation directly reduces the Treasury's own investment. Every model delay reduces the government's future dividend. And every antitrust action against OpenAI now hurts the same agencies supposed to bring those actions. The government becomes structurally incapable of enforcing the exact safety rules those agencies exist to enforce. Altman is turning the White House into a shareholder. Shareholders do not regulate - shareholders protect their investment. Every major AI lab in America now has one option to survive Washington: Hand over 5% before Congress takes 50%. The White House already holds equity in Intel, MP Materials, and multiple quantum computing firms. Nvidia and AMD hand over 15% of their China chip revenue for export licenses. The US government is now the LARGEST venture capitalist in American tech. And the founders are voluntarily cutting the checks themselves using their investors' money. What do you think?