A man allegedly firebombed Sam Altman's San Francisco home because he feared AI would destroy humanity. Now OpenAI — the company doing more than perhaps anyone to build that very AI — is calling for a sweeping federal regulatory framework it's branding a "New Deal for AI."

The timing here is... something.

Let's be clear: attacking someone's home is a crime, full stop. Nobody deserves to have their property firebombed over a policy disagreement, no matter how existential the stakes feel. But let's also be clear about what OpenAI is doing with the political moment that followed.

OpenAI isn't asking Washington to slow down AI development. It's asking Washington to regulate AI development — which, if you've been paying attention to how regulation works in this country, means constructing a compliance apparatus that a $150 billion company can easily navigate and a scrappy competitor in a garage cannot. This isn't safety. It's a moat.

The "New Deal" framing is particularly rich. The original New Deal massively expanded federal power and created bureaucracies we're still paying for nearly a century later. If that's the model, maybe we should be more worried about the regulatory framework than the robots.

San Franciscans, for their part, seem largely unmoved by the drama. As one local put it with magnificent indifference: "I know AI is hot right now, but this is ridiculous." Another Bay Area resident offered practical wisdom: "Given Altman's money, he should hire a few meat bags for protection of property, life, and limb. There are some things AI just can't do!"

The pattern is familiar in tech: build something disruptive, reap the rewards, then lobby for regulations that lock in your advantage while wrapping it in the language of public safety. Google did it. Facebook did it. Now OpenAI is speedrunning the playbook.

We should be skeptical of anyone who builds the thing they claim needs regulating — and then volunteers to help write the rules. True safety doesn't come from regulatory capture dressed up as a New Deal. It comes from competition, transparency, and holding powerful companies accountable without handing them the pen.