Cookie banners produced 90% opt-in and almost no real consent. As Europe tries to fix them with a browser signal, the same design mistake is being wired into AI rules.
Every new car in Europe now ships an eye-tracking AI model no buyer chose. How that feature is failing is a preview of what happens when AI gets mandated onto a product.
South Africa delayed Starlink for years to protect an ownership principle. Ontario built a rural internet plan on Starlink, then had to cancel it. Both got the sequence backwards.
The US government has moved from checking who uses frontier AI to deciding which institutions get to use it at all. Annex A is the permanent structure, and it changes the competitive picture for anyone not on the list.
Anthropic now requires a government ID before accessing its most capable models. What looks like a safety measure is export control, and it is nudging developers toward the Chinese AI alternatives the US is trying to contain.
