If You Thought AI Was Wreaking Havoc Before… Buckle Up

Trump’s signature executive order is a telltale sign of Gilded Age-styled corruption — and it will not end well

Photo credit: Dr. Ernest Gunasekara-Rockwell; Air University (fair use)

On his first day in office of his second term, United States President Donald Trump issued what may be viewed as the worst executive order in the history of the American presidency. The order will foment confusion and inconsistency among a wide array of federal agencies.

But it has a more nefarious purpose.

It will allow Big Tech to bolster its efforts at exploiting the people because whatever paltry brakes have been applied by the US government are now effectively eliminated. Moreover, the evidence suggests that this is not simply Trump’s foolish blundering toward some illusory futurist utopia. Rather, it is the payback for a corrupt effort to assist him in re-obtaining power.

Ordered chaos

The order (not yet numbered by the Federal Register) rescinds more than 65 previous executive orders in one fell swoop. It is effectively a political statement rather than an executive action because it offers no tangible instruction for how to comply with the order, and it does not even address the agencies that would have to make operational changes. It is unquestionably a recipe for chaos.

Section 3(b) simply states:

The Director of the Domestic Policy Council (DPC) and the Director of the National Economic Council (NEC) shall review all Federal Government actions taken pursuant to the orders, memoranda, and proclamations listed in section 2 of this order and take necessary steps to rescind, replace, or amend such actions as appropriate.

Notably, the directive to “take necessary steps to rescind, replace, or amend such actions as appropriate,” is aimed at the DPC and NEC. The latter’s mission is obvious — to promote the economic welfare. What is less clear is exactly whose economic welfare that body chooses to promote.

Trump’s choice to head the NEC moving forward, Kevin Hassett, has advocated increasing tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. This has been a failed policy for the American people for nearly the last half century, an argument I support in extensive detail here.

Less often appearing in the news, theDPCis a political body “used by the president of the United States for the consideration of domestic policy matters and senior policymaking.” Controversy about the DPC usually occurs when someone is appointed whose pecuniary interests clearly conflict with public policy.

During Trump’s first term, for example, Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit when the Office of Management & Budget and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services:

refus[ed] to release documents that could shed light on whether senior White House official Joseph Grogan violated ethics laws by working on a drug pricing project of significant financial interest to his former employer.

Trump has appointed Vince Haley to lead this body in 2025. Haley is considered a “protégé” of Stephen Miller and Newt Gingrich. The latter is known for his attacks on child labor laws, once calling them “truly stupid.” He also supports supply-side economics, the policy begun under Ronald Reagan that initiated the decline of the middle class. Stephen Miller opposes the American Civil Liberties Union, which fights to protect Americans’ rights under the Constitution.

As is evident, the priority of the new administration is to cater to wealthy elites and corporations, while eviscerating the rights of workers and the public at large. Entire books can — and will — be written about the disasters that this executive order will inevitably cause.

This favoritism toward the wealthy corporate class is especially problematic when it comes to AI. This tech is quickly infiltrating every aspect of society. Congress has made virtually no effort to thwart the more pernicious tendencies of the industry, so former President Joseph Biden issued an executive order to provide at least some protections. President Trump has removed those protections.

Screenshot from “First robotic cop joins Dubai police.” (Credit: Mint)

This administration is not interested in Safe and Trustworthy AI

Biden’s Executive Order 14110, signed on October 30, 2023, was titled the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. It’s opening section explained the theme of the remainder of the text:

AI must be safe and secure by requiring robust, reliable, repeatable and standardized evaluations of AI systems, as well as policies, institutions, and, as appropriate, mechanisms to test, understand, and mitigate risks from these systems before they are put to use.

The order adopted the definition of AI set under 15 U.S.C. 9401(3):

a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. Artificial intelligence systems use machine and human-based inputs.

It is pretty broad, encapsulating not just generative AI, but all AI used in systems that can have an effect on people’s lives.

EO 14110 contemplated both economics and competitiveness, but it sought to balance those with civil and other legal rights. In sections 2 and 3, it read:

§ 2 — The US should promote responsible innovation, competition and collaboration via investments in education, training, R&D and capacity while addressing intellectual property rights questions and stopping unlawful collusion and monopoly over key assets and technologies.

§ 3 — The responsible development and use of AI require a commitment to supporting American workers though education and job training and understanding the impact of AI on the labor force and workers’ rights.

It is hard to imagine an innocent reason for rescinding these provisions. When one considers a corrupt explanation, however, the motive is patently obvious. By rescinding the order, the Trump administration is giving a green light for a variety of abuses AI companies have already been committing, and opening the door for new ones. Some of these include:

• intellectual property theft;

• unlawful collusion;

• leaving workers in the dark about their rights;

• increasing the potential for them to lose their jobs to AI without offering an alternative; and

• making their jobs worse because of AI’s various inferiorities.

Welcome to the AI-led future of the elites. (Credit: Patrick Perkins on Unsplash)

Federalizing corruption

Despite their broad opposition to Trump in early 2021, big names in tech turned to supporting Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2024 (roughly). The reasons why are becoming glaringly clear, as illustrated by this first-day executive action.

In addition to removing any brakes on the distribution of products harmful to the public, many key figures in the tech industry are being inserted directly into the government itself. Indeed, three of them — Elon Musk, David Sacks, and Peter Thiel — seem to be working as human resource managers for the administration.

Musk has a long history of corruption and possible criminal activity. He has previously invested in cryptocurrency, though his participation had the hallmarks of a pump-and-dump scheme. He also seems intent on promoting his own AI, named Grok, which so far is largely viewed as a sub-par product.

Following a $1 million donation to Trump’s 2016 campaign, Thiel was rewarded “with an office at Trump Tower and two high-level appointments in the Trump administration, including a senior staff position on the National Security Council.” He also once told Maureen Dowd, “[T]here’s a point where no corruption can be a bad thing. It can mean that things are too boring.”

Sacks, who is heavily invested in both AI and cryptocurrency, was appointed by Trump as the AI and Crypto czar, and is slated with “work[ing] on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S.” The legal framework both industries have sought can be summed up simply as no legal restrictions.

For those who are worried about their continued exploitation by tech companies and the infiltration of poorly implemented AI into virtually everything, this should be incredibly troubling. The tech industry already thrives on lawlessness. Adding the federal government and the presidency to its corruption cannot be waved away in any manner that benefits the populace.

This is not going to go well for anyone.

The first to feel the effects will, of course, be workers and other people exposed to the abuses from the nefarious use of AI. It is already happening, so we do not exactly need to flex our imaginations for how it will worsen.

But the wealthy are fools to think they will be immune. The first proverbial shot across the bows has been loosed. Someone murdered the CEO of a healthcare company apparently for summarily rejecting coverage of critical care. That company was using AI to reject 90% of its customers’ claims.

In a country whose populace is armed better than all the standing armies across the globe, does one need a seer to predict what will happen if the theft of people’s livelihoods, meager comparative wealth, and well-being continues?

No, one does not.

Is this really the future people want? Did voters in 2024 hope to see Big Tech and government fuse into the malevolent leviathan that writers have warned them about for at least the last century?

Trump’s first tenure was renowned for its deference to economic interests over protecting labor and other rights, and its complete absence of understanding of technology or science. When it comes to AI, those priorities and deficiencies may prove to be the most destructive forces in all of politics, possibly in history. There are dark times ahead.

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