We're clearly in an era where the US Govt simply doesn't have enough money to throw at everything it wants to encourage, and needs to develop alternate means of incentivizing (or de-disincentivizing) those things. Sensible minimal regulation is one, there may be others. Time to get creative and resourceful.

The budget is the policy, stripped of rhetoric. What any government spends money on IS a full and complete expression of its priorities. The rest is circus.

What increased and decreased in the most recent budget bill? That is the full and complete story.

If no $$ for open source or open weight model development, then that is not a policy priority, despite any nice words to the contrary.

The US has been continuously running a budget deficit for decades (brief blip at the end of Clinton/beginning of W Bush). This is more of an "epoch" than "era". I love the idea of incentives that aren't tax breaks!

It’s genuinely bizarre to read a comment like this which seems to imply there is some kind of grand strategy behind this when the reality is and always has been “own the libs”.

They very clearly have no idea what the fuck they are doing they just know what other people say they should do and their toddler reaction is to do the opposite.

AI, which they are hoping takes over EVERYTHING, is probably one of the worthwhile ones for government to be involved in. If it has the chance to be this revolutionary, which would be better:

The government owning the machine that does everything.

Tech bros, with their recent love of guruship, with their willingness to do any dark pattern if it means bigger boats for them, owning the entire labor supply in order to improve the lives of 8 bay area families.