Elon Broke the Social Media Cartel, Now AI Bosses Want Government to Build a New One

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a statement on September 12, 2026, calling for the artificial intelligence industry to slow its pace of advancement.

In a post on X, Amodei announced a new essay outlining reasons for the slowdown along with a three-part plan.

He stated that Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first step of that plan.

“We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so,” Amodei wrote.

“Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training. You can read the full post here.”

The statement drew a detailed response two days later from Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist.

On September 14, 2026, Davis posted on X about Amodei’s comments and the broader context of artificial intelligence development.

Davis argued that recent developments in AI relate more to the accumulation of political power than to increases in computing capacity.

Davis described shifts in American communication methods over the past century and connected those shifts to the types of political leaders who rose to prominence.

He noted that the early 1900s remained dominated by print media. That period was followed by radio, then broadcast television, then 24-hour cable news, and finally the internet and social media.

“FDR was the quintessential radio president via his fireside chats. It is no accident that JFK was elected at the dawn of the broadcast television age. Desert Storm introduced us to the age of 24/7 cable news, which brought us Clinton and then Bush. Obama and Trump capitalized on the new world of the Internet and social media, which was also the only media vector which could have spread the COVID panic which elected Joe Biden,” Davis wrote.

Davis said the combination of widespread censorship during the COVID period and the growth of AI has produced a new media environment.

He called this the Algorithm era. According to Davis, each prior media period produced leaders with specific qualities suited to that medium.

Print favored those who wrote well. Radio favored those who sounded strong. Television favored those who looked good. Internet and social media favored those who could spread content widely.

“The Algorithm era will give us something quite different: politicians who cater to the whims of the oligarchs who own the computing power and control the algorithm. This is why they freaked out when Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X,” Davis stated.

He said Musk’s acquisition of the platform disrupted previous arrangements among major social media companies.

Davis noted that Google’s handling of search results and Facebook’s handling of political content lost influence once users could post freely and receive payment on X.

Davis further stated that control of the algorithm will determine political outcomes because it shapes what people see.

With AI advancing, that control will depend on ownership of computing resources.

He said Amodei and others in the industry seek exclusive control and oppose open-source approaches because those approaches challenge concentrated authority.

“Dario and his AI buddies want to be the only ones in control. They hate open source, because that is a threat to their control. The solution? Cook up doomsday AI scenarios, demand regulation, and watch as the government enforces an AI cartel run entirely by Dario and his friends. That is exactly what we are witnessing right now. Except it’s not just about control of AI. It’s about using AI to control the world. That is what’s at stake right now,” Davis wrote.

Davis also observed that successive media eras have grown shorter in duration. Oral communication lasted thousands of years.

The printing press and written media lasted more than 400 years. Radio held dominance for about 40 years.

Broadcast television and cable news lasted roughly 30 years. Internet and social media lasted perhaps 20 years. The current period marks the beginning of the AI Algorithm age.

“How long will it last? And what will come next?” Davis asked at the end of his post.

Amodei’s September 12 statement and Davis’s September 14 response occurred against a background of ongoing industry discussions about the speed of AI model releases, safety evaluations, and potential government involvement in oversight.

Anthropic’s commitment to permanent third-party access for evaluators represents a specific company policy announced in connection with Amodei’s broader call for industry restraint.

Davis’s post referenced the historical sequence of media technologies and their political effects without providing additional data sources beyond the described timeline.

The exchange between Amodei’s announcement and Davis’s analysis circulated on X in the days following the initial statement.

No further public details on the full three-part plan or the complete essay text were included in the X posts themselves.

The discussion highlights continuing questions about the structure of the AI sector, the role of large computing resources, the status of open-source models, and the relationship between technology companies and government regulation.

Both the Anthropic commitment and the subsequent commentary remain part of the public record on the platform as of mid-September 2026.