No, these companies know they don't have a moat, so have been laying the groundwork for a bailout (e.g. Altman pushing the idea of "Universal Basic Compute", essentially a forced subscription to ChatGPT through your taxes).
The politicians rising through the ranks now lived through 2008 as young adults, and they watched politicians cutting checks to companies who ruined the economy, only to emerge richer; while regular folk got foreclosed on and never recovered. They heard the rise of the phrase "too big to fail".
Well now we have a group of companies that clearly want to be too big, so now is exactly the time to make clear to them they aren't too big to fail. Maybe, just maybe if they know they can't count on a UBC bailout on the other side of a bubble pop, they will act a little more responsibly (which they have not demonstrated they're capable of that to date).
I think they're trying to build a moat through regulation, I think that's different from laying groundwork for a bailout. They clearly don't think they are going to fail.
What does "act responsibly" mean in this context?
They don't think they're going to fail or else they wouldn't be doing it. But they do think they need a government moat to succeed. Whether that's framed as a "bailout" or "regulation", it's still the government stepping in to save the day.
In terms of "act responsibly" what I mean in this case is the perception that there's a lot of money flowing in circles here, where customers are investors and investors are customers and competitors. That's how I see this whole party crashing down if it does, if there's too much creative accounting going on when the music stops, some companies might not find a chair to sit on.