This does not require every billionaire to be participating in one secret plan. Zuckerberg, OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and other technology companies already share an obvious financial interest: they need the government to help make AI widely used before the public has a meaningful opportunity to decide where it belongs, what safeguards it requires or whether people should be forced to use it at all.

Trump’s position is different from theirs because he controls the government creating that demand while his family owns a company preparing to process the resulting payments.