The race to build artificial general intelligence has created a paradoxical alliance. CEOs from rival labs like Anthropic and Google DeepMind are publicly calling for slower development and, more controversially, antitrust exemptions to coordinate on safety. To the untrained eye, this looks like altruism. To Jonathan Kanter, former head of the DOJ Antitrust Division, it looks like a classic cartel formation. In a recent Decoder interview, Kanter dismantled the industry’s argument that they need legal immunity to share safety data without violating competition laws.
Kanter compared the current AI landscape to inventing cars without traffic lights or speed limits. We have powerful technology transforming every aspect of life, yet zero basic rules of the road. The industry’s solution? Let us collude. Kanter argues this is a trap. He sees these requests not as genuine safety measures but as regulatory capture designed to foreclose competition. By locking in standards among incumbents, these firms can effectively block cheaper, open-weight models from China and smaller startups from entering the market. It is a defensive moat disguised as public service.
The political alignment here is startlingly bipartisan. Even David Sacks, the libertarian-leaning former Trump AI czar, has echoed Lina Khan’s stance that no antitrust exemption is needed. This rare agreement suggests the legal community sees through the rhetoric. Kanter, who successfully led antitrust cases against Google and Ticketmaster, notes that the companies don’t trust each other. They are stuck in a prisoner’s dilemma, fearing that if one cuts corners on safety to move faster, the others will suffer the reputational fallout. They want the government to enforce the brakes so they can all claim moral high ground while protecting their margins.
This dynamic reveals the core tension in AI policy. Is regulation about preventing existential risk, or is it about managing market share? Kanter’s view is clear: we need rules, but those rules must promote competition, not stifle it. Granting exemptions would allow the biggest players to write the rules in their favor. As the Trump administration appears ready to decline active federal participation in AI oversight, the pressure falls on existing antitrust frameworks. If the DOJ doesn’t step in now, we may find ourselves with a handful of companies controlling the most powerful technology in history, protected by the very laws meant to keep markets open.
