alt Hacker NewsIs there any indication that such a bailout was even planned or is this just populist tilting at windmills?
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It is preemptive. Everyone can see the bubble and these companies are barrelling forwarding anyway. It is reckless and irresponsible.
It's not just populist tilting at windmills.
There's an existing concept of and precedent for, "Too big to fail." The wikipedia article gets the idea across [0].
This creates an implied "insurance" program, tilting the risk profile toward being aggressive. Taking a moon shot isn't so scary when you think the government will probably step in if it blows up bad enough.
This fluffy, political statement is a message: don't count on it.
Perhaps it will give investors/executives a few thoughts on preparing to deal with a potential blowup themselves?
It’s a resolution, so pure fluff. That said, a prohibition on bailing out this sector in particular might make it possible to claw back anything this regime illegally gives.
It's just convention at this point in the 21st century. No indication of a plan is needed when it's the only outcome to be expected.
Yes, it has been discussed a year ago in the Govt circles that AI will be bailed out.
For some reason* the rhetoric is focused on bank bailouts in 2008, but the more direct analogy is the auto bailouts in 2008, which weren't strictly necessary but did protect an industry many Americans felt attached to. I think it's reasonable to worry that the same thing could happen to AI companies.
* yes, I know what the reason is
The latter.
The investment to date has been ridiculous and undisciplined. It’s very hard to understand the valuations of these companies. If this wasn’t an election year I think there would be more oversight and critical review. But we have a very unserious party in charge right now.
It’s good that it’s being discussed. We’re tired of the wealth class privatizing the profits and leaving us to cover the costs.
Then the bill will never become relevant and it’ll just be a waste of time and you can laugh at it in hindsight. And I’m sure none of these companies will lobby against it, since it’s just tilting at windmills and won’t mean anything.
Nope. The balance sheet of big tech companies are healthy enough not to need to bailout anyways. AI startups can of course fail.
I have no idea who would they even bailout. Investors? Why? What for? What would that change?
Bailing out banks made some sense so that they couldn't operate. Without the bailout there would be no more banks and a hundred million of people left on the ice.
If you want to keep AI operating you can just (temporarily?) ban investors from tearing down the AI companies they invested in for parts. You could say they are important for national security or something. I'm sure they are already earning enough to keep the lights on. Just not enout to give investors payback for insate capital expediture to set up.
Such ban wolud the governement zero, especially if you write the law well enough, so that it can't be succesfully challenged in court.
There are almost certainly bank execs who are looking at Anthropic's IPO and thinking "if it crashes, we'll get bailed out". Saying "no you won't" now, before the IPO, when it has a chance to affect peoples' behavior, is a worthwhile thing to do.
David Sacks has been a bit sidelined by the regime, but he was the one lobbying for the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank (under the Democrats!).
So there will be a huge pressure. Trump Jr. and the Kushners are invested in all sorts of bubbly assets, too.
The Democrats should do this however, and if they win the midterms keep their promises for once and block everything. Then 2028 is easy.
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Sam Altman has been pushing for the US to own a chunk of OpenAI since February 2025. Literally the earliest he could get back into the Oval Office after the inauguration.
A bailout is part of their planning.