Washington Told AI's Doom Prophets to Shut Up and Build
By Daniel Rao · 25 October 2026 Washington has finally said out loud what it has been muttering about artificial intelligence for months: the people selling the technology are now its worst salesmen. Axios reported on Saturday 24 October that lawmakers and White House officials, including some who back AI development, have run out of patience with chief executives who warn in one breath that their products could end humanity and promise in the next that they will deliver shared prosperity. The message, relayed by carriers in Seoul and Kyiv, was not a policy announcement. It was a telling-off, delivered in the bluntest language Washington allows itself in public. That distinction matters, and it is worth holding on to for the whole of this story. Nobody signed anything. Nobody issued an order. What happened, according to Axios, is that the political class decided the industry's chief messengers had become a liability to the industry itself, and said so to a reporter. Everything ...