You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

The choice is play ball with the USG, or be dead in the water. Once you’re large enough, simply abiding by the laws is insufficient to remain unmolested - you must actively play ball or you’ll find that suddenly a TON of regulations now apply to you that didn’t before.

Do you think Apple or SpaceX like dealing with the NSA/CSS/CIA? Or the CCP for that matter? (Apple has backdoored all of iCloud in China for the CCP to be allowed to operate there.) Coinbase and the IRS is one. All the telcos turn over all call metadata and IP backbone taps to the feds without a warrant. Google Joseph Nacchio to see what happens if they don’t.

They’re the only game in town, and you gotta play by their rules if you want to operate at scale at all. No amount of billions of private money will get Trump and his administration un-pissed-off at you.

It’s not a free market, all large industries entirely serve exclusively at the pleasure of the court. This is why we overpay for broadband in every major market, why we overpay for mobile data nationwide, why retail banking sucks, etc.