A classified facility. A kill switch on a frontier model. A corporate test city. Three case studies in how AI infrastructure is being built without democratic input, and what the alternative looks like.
The White House blocked Anthropic from sharing its most capable AI with more organizations. The question is not whether that was the right call. The question is who gets to make it.
George Washington's most important act was declining the crown. The first generation of civic AI sets a precedent every later one inherits, and disposition matters more than rules.