The big banks told Congress they were too important to fail.
Now the biggest names in AI are running the exact same play – and Ron DeSantis just said it out loud.
What Ron DeSantis called it this weekend is the one word that should terrify every taxpayer who remembers 2008.
The Regulatory Trap That Made Big Banks Bigger
After 2008, Washington, DC promised to rein in the banks that nearly destroyed the economy.
They passed Dodd-Frank – 22,000 pages of new regulation.
The result?
The big banks got bigger.
Smaller competitors drowned in compliance costs they couldn't afford.
The giants absorbed them.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2094489472951869593?s=20
Regulation didn't punish the reckless. It cemented their dominance – paid for by the taxpayers who bailed them out in the first place.
Ron DeSantis posted this weekend with a warning that the AI industry is running the identical script.
"These companies want a regulatory apparatus that will freeze out smaller companies from competing," DeSantis wrote on X. "Same as it ever was."
He's not wrong.
OpenAI and Anthropic Have Been Playing This Game for Months
Trump's own AI adviser, David Sacks, already called it before DeSantis did.
Sacks publicly accused Anthropic of running "a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering" – calling the company "principally responsible for the state regulatory frenzy that is damaging the startup ecosystem."
Anthropic spent years telling Congress, state legislatures, and anyone who would listen that AI was so dangerous it needed immediate, sweeping government oversight.
They testified.
They lobbied.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2099304510946496576?s=20
They backed California's SB 53 – the only major AI company to publicly support legislation requiring transparency disclosures from AI developers.
Here's what they didn't say out loud: every compliance requirement they helped write was a barrier they could afford and a smaller competitor couldn't.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei didn't show up when Trump hosted the tech CEOs for dinner earlier this month – while OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google showed up.
That's not a coincidence.
That's a company that made the wrong bet on which political winds were blowing.
The Bailout Play DeSantis Is Warning About
DeSantis didn't just call out the regulatory capture.
He warned about what comes next.
If major AI companies run into financial trouble over the next six to 12 months – and with the burn rates these companies are carrying, that's not a fantasy – they'll argue their collapse would damage the entire economy.
Sound familiar?
That's the same argument Lehman Brothers never got to finish making.
It's the argument AIG made successfully.
It's the argument that cost every American taxpayer thousands of dollars in 2008 and 2009.
"This is a play to be Too Big to Fail," DeSantis wrote. "Would lead to bailout 2.0. No thanks."
https://twitter.com/WellsJorda89710/status/2099210001717850308?s=20
Big short investor Michael Burry – the man who predicted the 2008 housing collapse – is already questioning the AI companies' motives.
Burry called the push to slow AI development "self-serving," arguing that "we are so awesome it could become dangerous" is exactly the kind of hype that benefits companies positioning for an IPO.
The AI safety narrative isn't just lobbying for regulation.
It's a marketing tool designed to make these companies seem too important to challenge.
Trump Sees It Too
President Trump has been clear: the United States will not slow its AI development to satisfy the doomsday predictions of companies that benefit from fear.
Trump called the U.S. the world's most sophisticated AI country and said warnings about AI risks are overblown – especially when China is racing to close the gap.
https://twitter.com/RonDeSantis/status/2099311511915172344?s=20
The AI companies crying about safety aren't doing it for you.
They're doing it for themselves – to lock in their market position before the next competitor eats their lunch.
The conservatives who watched Washington, DC bail out Wall Street in 2008 and make them more powerful in the process know exactly how this story ends.
Don't let them run it again.
Sources:
- Ron DeSantis, Posts on X, September 13–14, 2026.
- Namrata Sen, "Ron DeSantis Accuses OpenAI and Anthropic of Trying to Become 'Too Big to Fail,'" Benzinga, September 14, 2026.
- "Trump's AI Advisor Accuses Anthropic of 'Regulatory Capture,'" The Decoder, 2026.
- "Tensions Are Brewing Between Anthropic and the White House Over AI Regulation," Quartz, 2026.
- "Regulatory Capture in American Banking," Raheem Williams, NDSU Peace and Conflict Policy Exchange.
