Frontier Overhangs

The AI industry’s obsession with doomsday scenarios serves as a philosophical shield for frontier labs to consolidate power, stifle competition, and build defensive moats. By framing progress as a safety risk, companies like Anthropic and OpenAI attempt to justify slowing innovation, which paradoxically increases vulnerability to cyber threats that require fully autonomous, advanced defensive systems. This strategy ignores the economic reality of "capability overhangs," where modularity and integration determine profitability. As models become commoditized, the competitive advantage shifts toward owning end-user touchpoints rather than maintaining pure model superiority. Ultimately, the push for "pacing the frontier" is less about existential safety and more about protecting business interests, as the current capital-intensive model requires rapid revenue growth to survive the looming exhaustion of available funding.