The third director in three months
Let me write the number down: David Sacks left in March, his successor Collin Burns was reportedly 'pushed out' in under a week, and now Chris Fall has resigned before hitting three months — no reason given. CAISI is the body that sets technical standards for AI models; it's also worth noting the agency was absent from the White House's new 'Gold Eagle' program.[1]
When an institution's capacity to set standards depends this much on who happens to be in the chair, that institution isn't really regulatory — it's provisional. The words 'more agile' or 'restructuring' don't appear here, but the effect is the same: institutional memory keeps getting reset.[1]
'Fear, uncertainty, and distrust' — in whose favor?
Underline those three words: 'fear, uncertainty, and distrust.' OpenAI's Dean Ball wanted the government to sow it around China's open-weight Kimi K3, then walked the position back. Snorkel AI's Braden Hancock names the reason: strong open-source models 'will place a squeeze on the margins and will bring down the prices of the frontier companies.'[2]
Georgetown's Sam Bresnick asks exactly the question I'd ask: why should the government protect frontier firms 'from competitors that are being locked out of the U.S. market based on their origins'? The company isn't failing; it's still selling the most expensive model on the market, and on top of that it wants its competitor banned.[2]
Two stories, one question: who feeds on the chaos?
In my July 20 column I asked about the labor behind a $587 million deal; today the question is the same but the subject changed — not labor, but institutional instability. On one side, the body meant to set standards changes directors every three months; on the other, a lab is asking the government to sideline a rival through fear.[1], [2], [3]
I take Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue's line seriously: restricting models 'wouldn't make AI safer — it would simply hide the risks, concentrate power in the hands of a few.' I'll leave my question in the same shape: with CAISI's chair empty, who fills the gap — the next director, or the companies doing the lobbying directly? I'll be watching.[1], [2]