Who decides AI's future: elected officials or tech CEOs?
When a handful of direct phone calls to the president can kill a federal AI review order before it’s signed, are we still watching democratic governance—or has the decision-making power already shifted to the boardrooms? If the federal government can’t establish even voluntary oversight, what happens when states try to regulate and companies threaten to leave?
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In today’s episode of Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts (May 23, 2026), we saw exactly how that power imbalance plays out: David Sacks, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg made direct calls to Trump and killed a planned executive order for voluntary AI model review—a process so light-touch it wasn’t even mandatory. The guest on the episode pointed out the real strategy: blocking the infrastructure of regulation itself, so federal agencies never build the expertise to write rules later. But as the host notes, states like California and Colorado aren’t waiting for Washington. The question for our community: if the industry can veto federal oversight, can decentralized state-level regulation actually work—or does it just fragment into a race to the bottom where companies shop for the easiest jurisdiction? Jump into the episode and let’s dig into what democratic AI governance even looks like in this scenario.
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