Yes Anthropic will kiss the ring.

Haven't you been watching the Skydance purchase of Warner Brothers? They way it works is, you kiss Voldemort's ring or no bueno.

The Defense Dept either gets to use the AI engine for clandestine activity or no payday. Capisce?

The Market’s AI Fanfare Is Running Into a Harsh Political Reality

Anthropic’s hopes for a blockbuster IPO could depend on the ballot box as much as on investors

By Tim Higgins, WSJ

June 20, 2026 5:30 am ET

Artificial-intelligence leader Anthropic is on a weird collision course this fall between IPO hopes and ballot-box fears.

After closing a private fundraising round that values the five-year-old company at almost $1 trillion, excitement for it to go public is only growing bigger. After all, SpaceX’s hugely successful IPO this month, the largest public debut ever, was fueled largely by expectations for its AI business.

Yet even as Elon Musk’s rocket maker/AI lab raced to the stock-market moon, Anthropic finds itself wrapped up in another bruising dispute with the Trump administration over its technology.

The new skirmish is over concerns Anthropic’s AI could wreak havoc on global cybersecurity. The company has pushed back on those claims with statements that seem to suggest it sees political motives behind moves to restrict access to its models.

It is just the latest reminder that as rapidly as the technology is advancing, so are the politics around it. And it isn’t yet clear what’s more powerful: the voting machine of the stock market or the political backlash tied to fears around possible AI disruptions.

AI is one of the few issues that unite opposite ends of the political spectrum, a worrying sign for tech leaders as we head into November’s midterm elections. That environment is quickly turning toxic for Anthropic and rival OpenAI just as they are trying for public-market debuts that will likely put both companies among the most valuable in the world.

Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei is a perfect foil for Republicans, who are already suspicious of his Democratic Party connections and Effective Altruism ties. Earlier this year, Anthropic’s relationship with the Pentagon exploded over the disagreements about the company’s efforts to apply guardrails to how its AI could be used.

Amodei’s standing hasn’t been helped by his almost Dickensian predictions of how AI could result in Great Depression-like job losses and create nuclear weapon-like dangers. The company recently called for top AI labs to slow or pause development because of the threat the technology poses by soon being able to improve itself without human involvement.

Some see his concerns coming from a sincere sense of what’s at stake from technology that could rank up there with the development of electricity or the steam engine in terms of social upheaval. Others see his comments as grandstanding meant to stoke investor excitement for what’s being sold as a godlike technology.

On the same day as the latest warnings from Anthropic, for example, longtime critic David Sacks, who had served as the White House AI czar, seemed to respond in a post on X without naming Amodei’s company. “Signs you might be trying to get your frontier AI lab nationalized: You compare it to nukes…threaten half of white-collar jobs…warn recursive self-improvement could end humanity…then race ahead anyway,” he wrote. “In other words, you want the government to save us from…you.”

White House crypto czar David Sacks speaks at a podium with President Donald Trump standing next to him, with presidential flags in the background.

President Trump and onetime White House AI czar, David Sacks, in July 2025. Francis Chung/Press Pool

On Wednesday, Amodei joined other AI leaders at the Group of Seven summit in France to press global leaders on their AI positions. In particular, he pushed for the U.S. to lead the countries in shaping AI safety standards.

Trump, whose administration had been advocating for a largely hands-off approach, can now be seen trying to navigate both wanting to support AI—which is fueling enthusiasm in the stock market and massive infrastructure investments—and growing concerns. “We have to be very careful with it,” Trump told reporters at the G-7. “It’s both great and could be bad.”

All of this is playing out as the contours of the November elections in the U.S. take hold.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, introduced legislation on Thursday that would take 50% ownership of the largest AI companies. It aims to also create a sovereign-wealth fund that would generate dividends for Americans and eventually fund social programs, such as healthcare.

Talking to reporters Thursday, the senator acknowledged the challenge of going against AI companies. “They have the ability to spend huge amounts of money in campaigns to defeat any candidate who is talking about sensible regulation or actions that will benefit the public,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, penned a blistering op-ed in the Free Press days earlier with a headline that warned: “AI Will Control Us If We Do Not Control It.” In short, he pledged to side with humans worried about job losses, increased energy costs and safety.

“We are not raw material in the hands of Silicon Valley,” Hawley wrote.

Even some tech leaders are advising precautions. In a lengthy essay last weekend, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, a major backer of OpenAI, detailed how he thinks companies can fight against AI labs capturing the economic returns of entire industries.

“There is no societal permission for an AI future that hollows out entire industries,” he wrote.

Others in tech appear to sense AI leaders are losing control of the narrative altogether.

“The more I listen to AI company CEOs, the stranger they sound,” Dev Ittycheria, who retired last fall as the CEO of software giant MongoDB, posted on X this past week. “They’re full of ideas that no normal person can relate to, talking past the people they’re supposed to reach. The more they talk only to each other and to investors eager to throw money at them, the less they seem to know how detached they sound.”

The threat to Anthropic extends beyond being prohibited from exporting its AI models or facing a massive tax bill.

The technology depends upon the rapid and massive expansion of data centers to train and power the AI. The growth projected by Anthropic, OpenAI and others is built in large part on the assumption that the giant pots of money the IPOs will unlock will go to fund more and more data centers.

Those kinds of data centers are now facing dramatic pushback in local cities and counties across the nation from locals worried about increased electricity and water costs.

Everything is moving so fast—and not in favor of the AI giants.

Surveys of Americans on AI aren’t hopeful. The latest example came Wednesday from the Pew Research Center, finding more Americans predict the technology will be bad rather than good for society. Young people, in particular, were especially worried. Those under the age of 30 were more likely to say AI will have a negative effect on society and themselves. And few in the survey had confidence that the government could effectively regulate AI.

All politics is local, as Tip O’Neill would say. And while the benefits of AI are still unknown to many, the politics are very real.