Topic

Antitrust

Concentration, monopoly power, and what a break-up of the AI stack looks like.

The same firm that designs the chip can lease the cluster, train the model, host the API, and sell the application. That is not a market. That is a vertically integrated company town in four trench coats. Antitrust is the leverage point where a democratic society can refuse the AI stack as currently configured. The arguments and the precedents are the same ones that broke up Standard Oil and AT&T. The only thing missing is the will.

Columns (2)

  1. Open Weights, Closed Gates

    Meta's Llama is open the way a company town is open. A column on commons-washing, strategic loss leaders, and the difference between a public good and a loss-making marketing expense.

  2. The Three-Company Town

    AI is not a market. It is a three-company town, with NVIDIA as the landlord and the hyperscalers as the company store. A column on the antitrust problem that nobody is treating as an antitrust problem.

Contradictions (3)

Claim
AI companies are losing money, so how can they be monopolies?
Reality
The losses are a moat. Only a firm with access to infinite venture capital can afford to run a compute bill that size until everyone else is dead.
Claim
Regulation will slow progress.
Reality
The loudest voices calling for deregulation are the ones who already have the biggest models. The ladder is pulled up behind them.
Claim
Open-source models democratise AI.
Reality
The weights are free. The 30,000 H100s needed to fine-tune them are not. Democracy with an entry fee is an auction.

Demands (2)

  1. 01

    Public ownership of frontier compute. The means of inference are too important to leave in seven buildings.

  2. 02

    Antitrust with teeth. Break up the stack. Chips, data centres, models, and applications cannot all belong to the same three companies.

Other topics