Derek Thompson

being the tail that wags the dog of the Trump administration, right?

That is, I think, a valid interpretation.

And there's another interpretation that says, how ironic is it that the Trump administration's centerpiece of economic policy is tariffs, tariffs, tariffs?

But how do they treat artificial intelligence?

One, they exempt tens of billions of dollars of computer parts from tariffs.

AI is exempt from tariffs.

Number two, they sell the parts illegally.

promiscuously around the world.

We have a protectionist policy for everything that isn't AI and a neoliberal globalization policy for everything that is AI.

That's interesting.

And I think it's true.

And it makes deeply ironic the fact that this hyper-capitalist approach to AI policy now sits alongside this frankly Maoist approach to punishing companies that don't sign the right contracts with the Pentagon.

That is an incredibly weird juxtaposition of policies.

We're saying for folks who don't know, Dean Ball is one of the co-authors of the AI Action Plan from the Trump administration.

I don't want to steal thunder from my own podcast.

I think this show is going to come out on Tuesday.

Let me steel man Dean's case because I don't see everything from his point of view, but I think I see what he's getting at here.

Imagine two trains coming down two tracks barreling into this entity that is a stable American democracy.

One train is the extraordinary concentration of power in the executive branch that we've seen surely under the Trump administration, no elaboration necessary, but that we've also seen in the last few administrations, the growth of executive orders.

The book, The Imperial Presidency, was written by Arthur Schlesinger.