The legal battle between Elon Musk and Sam Altman has captivated the tech world, but according to journalist Karen Hao, this high-profile feud distracts from a far more significant issue: the imperial ambitions of AI companies. In a recent article, Hao argues that whether Altman is untrustworthy or Musk is even less so is irrelevant, as the AI industry's frontrunner could easily be replaced by another indistinguishable competitor.
The Feud in Context
Musk is suing Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, alleging they tricked him into forming and funding OpenAI as a non-profit before restructuring it into a for-profit entity. OpenAI counters that Musk was aware of these plans and frames the lawsuit as an attempt to derail a competitor. Hao, who has reported on OpenAI since 2019, notes that this world breeds bitter rivalries, with nearly all original founders leaving under acrimonious conditions.
If Musk wins, he seeks $150bn in damages from OpenAI and Microsoft, along with returning OpenAI to a non-profit and removing Altman and Brockman from leadership. However, Hao emphasizes that the future of AI development will not be determined by a personality contest.
The Deeper Problem
Hao points out that even if OpenAI falters, another company like Musk's xAI or Anthropic would simply take its place. These companies engage in similar behaviors: compromising careful decision-making for speed, disregarding intellectual property, and aggressively scaling computing infrastructure at the expense of communities. The trial and OpenAI's financial structure will not change the imperial drive to consolidate data and capital, terraform the earth, exhaust labor, and embed themselves within state apparatuses.
Before the industry pivoted to resource-intensive AI models, a wide range of AI flourished: small systems for cancer detection, language preservation, weather forecasting, and drug discovery. Alternatives like DeepSeek show that different techniques can achieve similar capabilities with far less scale. Sara Hooker, former VP of research at Cohere, notes that scaling is a cheap formula for performance but highly imprecise.
Capital Consolidation
In Q1 2024, nearly half of all venture money went to OpenAI and Anthropic, hollowing out academia and starving alternative research. The percentage of AI PhD graduates joining industry jumped from 21% to 70% between 2004 and 2020. Climate tech funding plunged 40% in 2024 as investors redirected dollars to brute-force AI scaling.
Grassroots Resistance
Despite these challenges, Hao observes a growing wave of collective resistance. Data center protests have emerged across the US, from New Mexico to Memphis, where communities demand transparency and accountability. Workers are striking in healthcare, data labeling, and cultural sectors across multiple countries. Educators, students, and victims are also organizing.
This pushback is already forcing the AI industry to downsize ambitions. Over $150bn worth of infrastructure projects were blocked or stalled in 2025, and OpenAI shuttered its video-generation app Sora due to flatlining usage, rocky public perception, tightening financials, and computational constraints.
A Different Path
Hao concludes that empires depend on devouring resources for survival, making them vulnerable when those resources are withheld. The real accountability for the AI industry and a different vision of development will come not from billionaire feuds, but from grassroots action. As she traveled to dozens of cities, she saw this realization dawning: people everywhere are picking up the mantle of collective resistance.
