Karen Hao

In the summer of 2023, Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder and the chief scientist of OpenAI, was meeting with a group of new researchers at the company. By all traditional metrics, Sutskever should have felt invincible: He was the brain behind the large language models that helped build ChatGPT, then the fastest-growing app in history; his company’s valuation had skyrocketed; and OpenAI was the unrivaled leader of the industry believed to power the future of Silicon Valley.

Federal workers are scared. They don’t know who to trust. As President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have hacked away at federal agencies over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken with more than a dozen workers who have outlined how the administration is pushing a new ideology and stoking paranoia within the government’s remaining ranks.

Last week, it seemed that OpenAI—the secretive firm behind ChatGPT—had been broken open. The company’s board had suddenly fired CEO Sam Altman, hundreds of employees revolted in protest, Altman was reinstated, and the media dissected the story from every possible angle.

Updated at 12:32 a.m. ET on November 20, 2023To truly understand the events of the past 48 hours—the shocking, sudden ousting of OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, arguably the figurehead of the generative-AI revolution, followed by reports that the company was in talks to bring him back, and then yet another shocking revelation that he in fact would not return—one must understand that OpenAI is not a technology company.

Earlier today, President Joe Biden signed the most sweeping set of regulatory principles on artificial intelligence in America to date: a lengthy executive order that directs all types of government agencies to make sure America is leading the way in developing the technology while also addressing the many dangers that it poses.