The Three Powers Colliding In The AI Era

I think there’s a bigger story about the hierarchy of power that no one seems to be talking about.

Usually the biggest shifts in military technology happen quietly… behind closed doors… inside classified programs.
But with artificial intelligence developing at its current pace, the arguments are spilling into the open.
Tech companies… governments… militaries.
Look no further than the ongoing soap opera between the U.S. Government, Anthropic and OpenAI.

It’s a real debate… in real time… about who actually gets to control this technology.

And, as citizens, we should not only be paying attention but making our voices heard (we are not doing that last part… and that silence should probably worry us).
And that’s what makes the current conflict between Anthropic, the U.S. defense establishment and OpenAI so fascinating… so unsettling.

My bigger thought is that this debate isn’t about AI… it’s about power.

For decades, the military has been one of the largest drivers of technological development.
The early internet, satellite systems, advanced computing… many of these breakthroughs were deeply intertwined with defense research.
Organizations like DARPA helped push those technologies forward long before the public ever saw them.
So the idea that artificial intelligence is a military tool isn’t surprising.
What is surprising is that the companies building the technology are now trying to set limits on how governments can use it… and that governments are pushing back publicly.
Some of the major AI labs have drawn lines around two specific areas: fully autonomous weapons and mass population surveillance.
In other words… no machines making lethal decisions without humans in the loop… and no AI systems monitoring entire populations at scale (two guardrails that would have sounded like science fiction only a few years ago).

But the Pentagon’s response has been fairly blunt.

Governments (not private companies) determine how national defense technologies are used… and what is legal.
And that’s where the real story begins.

Because what we’re witnessing is the collision of three different forms of power (as I’ve defined them… and there is a hierarchy here that most people rarely think about).

1. Power = Energy. Whoever controls access to energy, electricity and compute holds the highest form of power. Now, as tech companies build out data centers and more, some of them are accruing this type of power… something we haven’t really seen since corporations controlled railways, shipping routes and critical infrastructure.
2. Power = Elections. Political power… governments deciding how technology should be deployed for national security. Beyond corporations spending massive amounts to lobby government, we have also seen through donations, partnerships and investment how much influence they are gathering at the governmental level. If Nvidia has a greater GDP than Germany and, at the same time, can move public markets, what can a government realistically do to maintain control over companies that grow to this size within their border?
3. Power = Economics. The companies building and controlling the most advanced AI models also have other lines of business that directly impact humanity’s ability to work and live… from the tools we use to work, to where we spend our money, to the social platforms that shape how information spreads.

For the first time in a long time, those three forces of power are colliding in full public view… and the balance appears to be shifting toward corporations capturing more of that power pie than governments.

What leverage can a government realistically have over a corporation that now controls its own energy infrastructure, is larger and more economically stable than many governments (just look at how quarterly earnings held up through wars and even a global pandemic), and has more cash on hand than nations already drowning in debt?

And it raises a deeper cultural question…

If artificial intelligence becomes the most important technology of the century… who ultimately decides how it’s used?

The governments elected to represent us… or the companies who now possess more economic, technological and infrastructural power than many governments themselves?

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM.

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