When the White House requested public comments earlier this year on how the federal government should approach artificial intelligence, thousands of Americans—ranging from scientists to artists, labor leaders to civil liberties advocates—responded with detailed recommendations. Yet when America’s AI Action Plan was released today, it became immediately clear that those voices were largely ignored. The plan reads less like a response to public input and more like a pre-written blueprint drafted in collaboration with the very corporations it benefits. The priorities, language, and deregulatory thrust suggest that the real consultations happened behind closed doors—with Big Tech executives, not the American people.

In other words, business as usual.

By any historical measure—Standard Oil, AT&T, or even the Cold War military-industrial complex—the Trump Administration’s “America’s AI Action Plan” represents a radical leap toward a command economy built for and by Big Tech. Only this time, there are no rate regulations, no antitrust checks, and no public obligations—just streamlined subsidies, deregulation, and federally orchestrated dominance by a handful of private AI firms.

“Frontier Labs” as National Champions

The plan doesn’t pretend to be neutral. It picks winners—loudly. Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, and Google are effectively crowned as “national champions,” entrusted with developing the frontier of artificial intelligence on behalf of the American state.

– The National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) and National Science Foundation partnerships funnel taxpayer-funded compute and talent into these firms.
– Federal procurement standards now require models that align with “American values,” but only as interpreted by government-aligned vendors.
– These companies will receive priority access to compute in a national emergency, hard-wiring them into the national security apparatus.
– Meanwhile, so-called “open” models will be encouraged in name only—no requirement for training data transparency, licensing, or reproducibility.

This is not a free market. This is national champion industrial policy—without the regulation or public equity ownership that historically came with it.

Infrastructure for Them, Not Us

The Action Plan reads like a wishlist from Silicon Valley’s executive suites:

– Federal lands are being opened up for AI data centers and energy infrastructure.
– Environmental and permitting laws are gutted to accelerate construction of facilities for private use.
– A national electrical grid expansion is proposed—not to serve homes and public transportation, but to power hyperscaler GPUs for model training.
– There’s no mention of public access, community benefit, or rural deployment. This is infrastructure built with public expense for private use.

Even during the era of Ma Bell, the public got universal service and price caps. Here? The public is asked to subsidize the buildout and then stand aside.

Deregulation for the Few, Discipline for the Rest

The Plan explicitly orders:
– Rescission of Biden-era safety and equity requirements.
– Reviews of FTC investigations to shield AI firms from liability.
– Withholding of federal AI funding from states that attempt to regulate the technology for safety, labor, or civil rights purposes.

Meanwhile, these same companies are expected to supply the military, detect cyberattacks, run cloud services for federal agencies, and set speech norms in government systems.

The result? An unregulated cartel tasked with executing state functions.

More Extreme Than Standard Oil or AT&T

Let’s be clear: Standard Oil was broken up. AT&T had to offer regulated universal service. Lockheed, Raytheon, and the Cold War defense contractors were overseen by procurement auditors and GAO enforcement.

This new AI economy is more privatized than any prior American industrial model—yet more dependent on the federal government than ever before. It’s an inversion of free market principles wrapped in American flags and GPU clusters.

Welcome to the Command Economy—For Tech Oligarchs

There’s a word for this: command economy. But instead of bureaucrats in Soviet ministries, we now have a handful of unelected CEOs directing infrastructure, energy, science, education, national security, and labor policy—all through cozy relationships with federal agencies.

If we’re going to nationalize AI, let’s do it honestly—with public governance, democratic accountability, and shared benefit. But this halfway privatized, fully subsidized, and wholly unaccountable structure isn’t capitalism. It’s capture.