Regulatory agencies limit uses of other products without acts of congress-- cigarettes, vapes, drugs, pesticides, chemicals, explosives. Even firearms, despite a constitutional amendment! Why not models? (Note I am not arguing it's a good idea; I'm making a narrow argument that there is precedent.)
EDIT: I agree that it should require an act of Congress to explicitly delegate this power.
All of the agencies responsible for those regulations were created by and get their funding from Congress. Currently, they're asleep at the wheel. Or a better idiom might be "cowering in the corner".
Fairly certain all those have "acts of congress" attached to them. I mean, it used to take a constitutional amendment to make something illegal but now we have tons of agencies responsible for regulating all the things.
Plus, they're relying on the "math is a weapon" law to ban "export" of the models.
Congress passed the Arms Export Control Act (22 USC 2778) in the Ford administration and it has been applied to software since at least the Clinton administration.
Cruise missiles are not general purpose tools, it's obviously not even remotely similar. Virtually everybody reading this could use Mythos immediately to do real work, collectively in virtually every part of the economy.
It's pretty problematic to not make it more widely available at least to US businesses, and there is not even a vetting process to get approved quickly and easily. If this is the new norm, the intended or unintended consequences of this type of gatekeeping will be an unprecedented consolidation of power amongst the largest corporations. Even more than we have seen over the last 20 years.
I would say this is a fairly equivalent dynamic in action, but it was concentrated to the defense industry. This suggests a future in which every company in the tech industry has "clearance required" or "citizens only" roles for the people who need to be able to use the find-security-problems-bot...
> I agree that it should require an act of Congress to explicitly delegate this power.
Should ever new "weapon" invented require a new act of Congress? We've considered software subject this act since the 90s.
If everyone making AI is screaming up and down that we are in an AI arms race creating dangerous entities that will determine the fate of the world is the government just supposed to ignore them?
No. But it could be done in accordance with the rule of law and commitment to equal access rather than an ad hoc approach that creates the impression of corruption and picking winners.
None of those things are knowledge. I think theres something specific around limiting access to knowledge and capabilities that makes this feel insidious.
Information is covered by ITAR, so that's not new. You can illegally export information about an ITAR covered item by just allowing a foreign national the potential to see an item. They don't even have to prove the foreign national actually did see it.
"Malboro cigarettes may once again be sold, but Newport remains banned for everyone except large purchasers that have paid the appropriate bri... fees."
Overturning the Chevron doctrine is good because it stops lawful people from doing things we don't like. We aren't bound by laws, so we can do whatever we want.
That repealing the chevron doctrine was a calculated play in the unitary executive theory. We all know congress is basically useless these days. But we also know that regulation isn’t, like, optional. It’s going to happen no matter what.
So what’s left? Where does that decision making go? Turns out the executive, so that’s what we’ve been seeing and it’s largely uncontested. This should have been obvious to most people going into this, particularly if they understood Trumps platform or Project 2025.
Repeal of the Chevron doctrine took the power of deference away from executive agencies and replaced it with first-principles judicial interpretation of statutes.
Chevron and the unitary executive theory have essentially nothing to do with each other.
I’m still not sure what point is attempting to be made here.
In effect, it did not. All it said is that the powers enumerated to those executive agencies must be more explicitly laid out by congress. But, that’s just not something that’s going to happen.
So, the gap has been filled largely by executive orders.
No, that is not what it said. It said that the power to interpret Congressional statues from first principles rested with the judiciary and not with the executive.
It eliminated the idea of a “gap” that executive agencies (whatever do you mean by “executive orders” in this context?) could be deferred to to fill.
My goodness, this is basic stuff in this Constitutional domain.
What I’m telling you is that the executive is not using the agencies in order to push regulatory powers in practice. So, instead, excessive and obviously overreaching executive orders are being used. Which is a completely separate mechanism. Which is being used because we can no longer use the agencies in that way.
This has, in effect, diverted more power to president Trump. Not less.
Well, I believe the opposite. The removal of Chevron was dressed up as more democracy, but in practice, deployed at this moment in time, when Congress defers everything to the Emperor, it looks more like when the Tsar had to decide every little stupid detail. This used up the precious time of the Tsar, in stupid little details (similarities today, reflecting pool, anyone?) to the detriment of the country, and also in the end, the ruling class.
There is simply no way to look at Constitutional doctrine pre- and post-Chevron and conclude that the decision put more power in the hands of the President and his administration. It did exactly the opposite.
There is simply no way to look at the agencies pre- and post-Chevron and conclude that the decision did not put more power in the hands of the President and his administration.
Loper Bright overruled Chevron and removed its special deference for statutory interpretation by executive regulatory agencies. More deference to the executive existed under Chevron than now exists under Loper Bright.
Less judicial deference = more executive power? How does that story go?
