Background:

Trump signed an Executive Order (Dec 2025) preempting state AI safety laws, threatening to withhold $42.5B in broadband funding from states that refuse to comply (specifically targeting Colorado and California).

In response, New York signed the "RAISE Act" after the EO was issued. It has strict safety, transparency, and reporting protocols for frontier models.

California is enforcing its "Transparency in Frontier AI Act" (Sept 2025) regardless of the Federal threat. It requires developers of large AI models (over 10^26 FLOPS) to publicly disclose safety frameworks, report "catastrophic risk" incidents, protect whistleblowers.. etc

Big Tech (OpenAI, Google, Andreessen Horowitz) is siding with Trump on this one. They prefer one weak federal law to 50 strict state laws.

This post:

Red states are creating deregulation areas. If a big tech company has data centers in Montana, and CA tries to impose an audit on their model, the company can sue, claiming their "Civil Rights" in Montana are being infringed by California's overreach.

Red states are tying "Compute" to the First Amendment (free expression), basically anticipating the Supreme Court.

Future implications:

The US continues to split into two distinct operating environments. https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2022/09/03/am...