alt Hacker NewsThey just need to hire the right lobbyists, get a meeting at the White House, agree on the terms and call it a settlement.
And if the FTC chair is not agreeable, they will be threatened by said lobbyists and eventually be fired.
If this sounds far-fetched, it is exactly what happened to Gail Slater, then-head of the DOJ's antitrust division and her deputies in 2025 over HPE’s bid to acquire Juniper.
Wall Street Journal archive link: https://archive.ph/IMer9
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Perhaps once they all agree to calling it "superintelligence", these troubles will go away.
Trump's America’s AI Action Plan[1] already says
>“Review all Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigations commenced under the previous administration to ensure that they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.”
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americ...
This is just how business is done with the government nothing new here or even hidden really.
Should this be the way it happens? No
Is it? Yes
The main thing I’ve seen recently is people learning how the world works then being shocked when it’s nothing like what is sold publicly
Things are more corrupt in the US now. That would have worked in Trump 1.0.
I predict they’ll be forced to install an “ombudsman” in the data cleaning / training team, so Trump can inject propaganda and filter out science. (As has been done to many US news outlets already).
Also, they will somehow each put >> $1B into his personal checking account, and hope presidential pardons cover bribing the president after the next few elections.
Conversely, you could say that congress has delegated "judicial and legislative" powers to the executive, whose will is embodied in a democratically elected president.
"Gail Slater" is not a democratically elected person of any kind, and exists as a function of the executive, and hence of the president's policies. Insofar as the DOJ's anti-trust's leaders depart from the will of the elected president, it is that leader to be fired and replaced. Or else: what ever was the point of electing a president?
There's nothing in principle wrong in a president disagreeing with the execution of his executive powers, delegated to Gail, and hence firing him. Indeed, if that were not the case, the election of a president could never change the operation of the executive, making the election pointless.
If you disagree with the anti-trust decision, the issue isn't with the political mechanism by which it was over-ruled, but with the election of that president.
there's also regulatory capture where regulators get hired by these companies for six-to-seven figure jobs once they're out
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/us-government-regulat...