While You’re Watching the Riots
The Great AI Power Grab: Trump, MBS, Thiel, Altman, Musk, and the Energy Kings Building the Next Regime
While you’re watching the riots—buildings ablaze, flags torn down, slogans echoing in the streets—the next regime is being assembled off-camera.
This isn’t about culture wars. It’s about control. And not just political control—infrastructure-level control. AI is the vehicle. Energy is the fuel. The players are building systems that will outlive the outrage.
Let’s be clear about who’s doing this. Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (H.R.1, 2025) hands him and his backers sweeping power over infrastructure, including AI. Section 70302 quietly guts judicial enforcement. If a federal agency breaks the law, a judge can’t do anything unless the plaintiff posts a financial bond. Billionaires get legal immunity. You get red tape and silence.
But that’s just the legal groundwork. The real power grab is digital.
A separate clause in the bill blocks state and local AI regulation for ten years, tying compliance to federal broadband funding. It was pushed by Rep. Jodey Arrington, blessed by Speaker Mike Johnson, and backed by OpenAI’s lobbyists.
The goal? Lock out local accountability and let the next layer of empire go unregulated.
Who benefits? Let’s name names. Sam Altman, who runs OpenAI and sits on the board of Oklo, a nuclear microreactor startup that went public via SPAC—with backing from OpenAI, Microsoft, and Thiel’s Founders Fund.
Microsoft, which is buying custom nuclear power and water rights to fuel its next generation of data centers. AI isn’t floating in the cloud—it’s sucking down gigawatts from real grids in real towns.
Peter Thiel, whose Palantir now runs both defense and energy analytics for the feds. He’s not just in the surveillance game. He’s in the future-of-power game.
Elon Musk, who’s vertically integrating Twitter (X), xAI, Tesla’s Dojo supercomputers, and now courting offshore energy deals to bypass U.S. regulators.
Marc Andreessen, still mocking ethics and cheering techno-authoritarianism, while seeding every layer of AI infrastructure with his investment capital.
Mohammed bin Salman, whose Saudi PIF is investing in U.S. data centers, chips, and AI companies, while building sovereign infrastructure in Riyadh with Nvidia, AWS, and AMD. Financial Times
And China, whose Ministry of State Security has been caught using AI prompt manipulation for propaganda and cyber ops—confirmed by OpenAI itself. Wall Street Journal
So what are they actually building? Not just language models. Not just chips. Not just cloud contracts.
They're building an extractive AI regime powered by privatized energy, legally shielded from oversight, and socially normalized through platforms they control. The old empires ran on oil. The next one runs on electricity, compute, and consent-by-ignorance.
AI doesn’t reflect these people’s values. It multiplies them. It scales their instincts. It embeds them everywhere.
You won’t get to opt out. Not when your kid’s school uses OpenAI-trained curriculum. Not when your town’s 911 system runs on Microsoft’s neural net. Not when your home loan is scored by an Andreessen-backed model. Not when your grid is run by Oklo, your cloud by Amazon, and your government by algorithm.
This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a public-private merger of infrastructure and ideology. A billionaire-built future where the court can’t stop them, the states can’t regulate them, and the rest of us are just data streams to be optimized.
What I’m Doing
I’m writing to my senators. Old school. Pen and paper.
I’ll name Section 70302. I’ll call out the AI moratorium. I’ll also ask asked them point blank: “Who do you want shaping our future—your constituents, or a cartel of billionaires and foreign strongmen?” That’s my move. It’s small. But it’s real.
If you’re working on something—policy, education, organizing—I want to hear from you. If you’ve got sharper tools, better plans, louder megaphones—let’s connect.
If you’re just waking up to this, welcome.
Because while the riots make headlines, the infrastructure is being laid. And if we don’t build alternatives now, we’ll be living in someone else’s OS.
- Ray