Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt calls OpenAI and Anthropic modern colonial trading companies

In a Foreign Affairs essay, historian Niall Ferguson, researcher Lisa Klaassen, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt compare OpenAI and Anthropic to colonial-era East India Companies, citing a June case in which the US Commerce Department ordered Anthropic to cut off foreign nationals from its two most capable models. They argue model progress depends on energy, minerals, chips, and capital, and describe raw materials from the Congo and low-paid data workers in Kenya as "the plantation economics of the chatbot age." The authors outline an "imperial trilemma" in which defense, tech leadership, and a generous welfare state cannot all survive at once, and warn that a potential "Taiwanese chip crisis" remains the greatest danger.