How David Sacks Turned the No Copyright Czar—and Why That’s Even Worse Than Congress’s Failed AI Moratorium
One Viceroy to Rule Them All
President Trump’s AI Govt Orders make it plain: beneath the Trump directive, all federal AI coverage, infrastructure, and enforcement technique now flows from the White Home—not from Congress, not from businesses just like the Copyright Workplace, FTC, and even the Division of Justice. And by govt order the President has appointed one man–David Sacks a/ok/a “Defendant No. 1”–to rule over all of us.
The president’s order provides Sacks and the Nationwide Safety Council the authority to design America’s AI framework from high to backside—coaching information, copyright permissions, enforcement priorities, export guidelines, infrastructure siting, and sure, suppression of state-level regulation. Anybody who thought that concern was solved is simply downright silly. This isn’t “session.” It’s consolidation.
And it didn’t cease at planning. The Motion Plan lays out greater than 90 concrete actions, lots of which preempt state authority or recommend that businesses rewrite their very own guidelines to match White Home priorities.
We’ve seen this film earlier than. Besides prior to now, when Congress tried to do that by the AI moratorium in H.R. 1, a minimum of there was a invoice, a vote, and a listening to. However Trump and Sacks didn’t trouble with any of that. They issued instructions. They put in a czar. After which they turned out the lights.
Say goodnight, Elvis.
Why It’s Worse Than the AI Moratorium
Adam Theirer’s AI moratorium—dangerous because it was—nonetheless moved by the legislative course of. It tried (and failed) to muster constitutional help for overriding state legal guidelines and suspending creator rights. Let it not be mentioned that the AI moratorium had no public enter. It did–and it was voted down within the Senate 99-1.
However what the Trump orders do is arguably much more harmful:
– They bypass Congress totally, invoking nationwide competitiveness to rewrite federal IP coverage with out statutory adjustments and set up a Silicon Valley Viceroy within the White Home.
– They sideline impartial businesses, putting rulemaking and enforcement beneath a political loyalist with no legislative mandate and even public remark beneath the Administrative Procedures Act.
– They violate the separation of powers, permitting the chief department to carry out legislative features and concern broad regulatory edicts.
The Structure doesn’t allow the president to do by pen what Congress couldn’t do by vote. The president just isn’t a super-legislator. And but right here we’re—with David Sacks appearing as if he’s each Librarian of Congress and Secretary of All the pieces With out Portfolio.
This isn’t only a procedural glitch. It’s a structural assault on constitutional governance.
Who Elected the Viceroy?
Artists didn’t vote to have their recordings scraped to coach AI fashions with no permission and no royalties. States didn’t comply with forfeit their authority to manage biometric surveillance, proper of publicity, or voice cloning. And nobody elected a Silicon Valley investor to resolve the scope of copyright legislation in america.
If Congress’s AI moratorium was an unconstitutional overreach, Trump’s orders are worse. As a result of they arrive with out deliberation, with out accountability, and with out recourse.
And except the courts or the general public cease it, each state and each creator is now topic to the fiat of a single advisor with a clean test.
Say goodnight, Elvis. The Viceroy has arrived, the king has left the constructing—and the Structure may’ve gone with him.
Overriding the ELVIS Act
Think about Tennessee’s ELVIS Act—formally, the Making certain Likeness Voice and Picture Safety Act—which grants publicity rights to performers towards unauthorized voice cloning and AI simulations. It was heralded as a landmark safety for artists in a digital age, handed with bipartisan help and celebrated by the music business.
However beneath Trump’s govt orders, and the AI Motion Plan written beneath David Sacks’ course, these rights will not be well worth the paper they’re printed on. The plan requires a single nationwide AI normal, superseding state-level innovation ‘limitations.’ And by centralizing coverage authority within the White Home, the plan creates a mechanism whereby federal businesses and contractors could also be barred from complying with state legal guidelines just like the ELVIS Act in the event that they’re deemed inconsistent with federal innovation targets.
If a platform working in Tennessee desires to deploy an artificial voice software skilled on Elvis Presley or Dolly Parton—with out consent—it might level to the AI Motion Plan and its deregulatory mandate David Sacks doesn’t even should make a telephone name. He can simply ignore Tennesseeans. And if Tennessee objects, it dangers dropping federal infrastructure funding or being preempted outright by company steering blessed by the White Home.
In impact, David Sacks now has the authority to nullify the ELVIS Act from Washington—with out ever profitable a vote within the Tennessee Normal Meeting, with out going through a single constituent, and with out passing a legislation. He doesn’t even must make a telephone name. And if he’s like most Huge Tech weasels, he’s joyful to not have to influence anybody of something and simply order individuals round.
That’s not federalism. That’s fiat.
