Washington just tried to hand the keys to AI oversight to its shadowy security apparatus, and the outcome looks like more secrecy, less accountability, and a lot of confused Americans. This piece walks through the new executive order, the gridlock in Congress, the moral alarm coming from religious leaders, and a practical case for Bitcoin as a decentralizing force that can protect ordinary people from overreaching tech and government power.
President Trump signed an order that pushes AI safety decisions into the hands of the intelligence community, with the NSA asked to help set classified standards and to vet new models on a compressed timeline. That concentration of authority makes plenty of conservatives uneasy because when opaque agencies get final say, freedom of innovation and private-sector transparency get squeezed. The policy might have been intended to be tough on risky systems, but it risks putting critical decisions behind locked doors where neither the public nor the companies building these systems can see what’s happening.
Inside the conservative movement there is no neat consensus about this approach. A public push by a former White House AI and crypto adviser tried to change course and expose what the order leaves out, and that debate played out loudly online. The fight shows that even people on the same side of the political aisle recognize the danger of outsourcing too much power to secretive bureaucracies.
Is there anything we can tell these machines to do that doesn’t tend to demote us as human beings?
https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2061882659266261274
Congress is also a mess on this topic, with competing bills and partisan rifts making any firm, sensible outcome unlikely before the next election. One leading bill aims to lean on standard-setting bodies that bridge government and industry, but that route still puts a lot of authority in institutions some voters mistrust. Midterm politics and internal disagreements mean Americans shouldn’t expect a clear, durable congressional fix any time soon.
Religious authorities have chimed in, warning that laws alone will not solve the ethical threat of AI, and some spiritual leaders argue for limits grounded in human dignity. Those warnings matter because they remind us that the debate is as much moral as it is technical. Yet powerful religious bodies are not about to form a global tech police force, and they lack the means to enforce policies at scale even if they agreed on a unified stance.
That reality leaves a gap: neither our politicians nor top spiritual figures are likely to offer the straightforward, enforceable guidance people want. And when centralized solutions falter, the danger is that a tiny elite—tech oligarchs or technocratic regulators—consolidate power and remake society to fit their narrow visions. The risk is not only theoretical; centralizing control over money and computation makes it easy to impose uniform behavior on millions.
Given that double risk—overcentralized oversight on one hand and regulatory chaos on the other—it’s worth asking whether practical, distributed alternatives exist that protect freedom and preserve human dignity. Bitcoin presents a clear, accessible option for people who want to build parallel markets and institutions without relying on government-controlled finance or inscrutable AI gatekeepers. It’s not a panacea, but it’s a tool that helps keep power dispersed.
Bitcoin lets communities transact, coordinate, and store value outside systems that can be repurposed to enforce compliance or erase dissent. If superintelligent systems and state financial controls drift toward a merged, uniform regime, having resilient, decentralized money and networks will be one of the few ways to preserve local autonomy. That’s why some conservative thinkers promote practical steps: learning the basics, using crypto with trusted circles, and building institutions that protect family, church, and free association.
I’ve chosen to publish my book “Human Forever” only in Bitcoin because it’s a small, concrete example of putting principles into practice rather than just theorizing. Stockpiling crypto as a speculative bet is one thing, but using it to undergird real-world ties and mutual aid is another. None of this magically solves every problem with AI or politics, but decentralizing parts of our economic lives gives ordinary people leverage they otherwise lack.
We won’t get clear answers from every corner of power, and that mess can be frustrating. But the choice facing Americans is clear: accept increasing control by unseen authorities, or start building decentralized alternatives that preserve human agency and community. It’s a practical fight, and conservatives should be leading it.
