My 2 cents is that it’s more about market manipulation (by proxy) than anything. What happens if you convince consumers AI is bad and they shouldn’t approve small datacenters, is the next step regulations? Businesses (primary target) will still use it, people probably will too despite calling datacenters and AI bad. Then model regulations are the next logical target. And who will be regulated? The effect is exactly what OpenAI and Anthropic have been looking for.

How many of X/Amazon/Google/Anthropic/OpenAI data centers have been blocked? I’m going to bet that number is close to zero for any important projects they were planning, likely because they were approved before the real regulation pushes started.

Both sides are getting played with the same song that ends in AI regulations, which is bad for people and good for profits.

It’s all strategy and theater so people can find alternative cause to latch onto that can be steered so it doesn’t really hurt the big players but will ultimately lead to more regulations (and thus more profits).