There's a classic scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone says: "It's not personal, it's strictly business."
Bullshit. It's always personal.
OpenAI just closed a deal with the Pentagon. Hours — hours — after Anthropic, its main rival in the AI race, was effectively blacklisted by the Trump administration.
If you think that's a coincidence, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
The AI Game of Thrones
Let's break down what happened here, because the headline alone tells half the story, but the other half is where the devil lives.
Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI employees who left claiming "safety concerns," had been positioning itself as the "responsible" alternative in the AI market. The good-guy company. The one that cares about humanity. The one that does everything by the book.
And then came the hammer.
The Trump administration decided to cut ties with Anthropic, putting the company in a kind of federal purgatory. Official reasons? Still being digested. But in the underbelly of Washington, where defense contracts are worth billions and power relationships decide who eats and who starves, the message was crystal clear: you're out of the game.
And who stepped in? Sam Altman's OpenAI, of course.
Skin in the Game — or Lobby in the Game?
Look, I'm the last guy to push cheap conspiracy theories. But Nassim Taleb taught us we need to look at the incentives, not the speeches.
Sam Altman is no fool. The guy has been building bridges with Washington for months. He attended the dinners, made the right visits, said the right things at Congressional hearings. While Anthropic sat in its corner posing as "the responsible adults in the room," Altman was playing the game the way it's actually played.
Pentagon contracts aren't about who has the best technology. They're about who has the best relationship. Always have been. From Lockheed Martin to Peter Thiel's Palantir.
OpenAI understood that. Anthropic, apparently, did not.
What This Means for the Market
Let's get to what matters — because at the end of the day, we're here to figure out where the money is.
First: military contracts are the Holy Grail of predictable cash flow. The U.S. government pays. Pays a lot. And pays again. OpenAI just locked in a revenue stream that could be transformational for its transition from a "nonprofit" organization (the joke of the century) to the money-printing machine it clearly wants to be.
Second: Anthropic is in deep trouble. When you get blacklisted by the federal government, the cascading effect is brutal. Other government contracts dry up. Corporate partners get nervous. Investors start asking uncomfortable questions. Amazon, which dumped billions into Anthropic, is probably having a very awkward conversation right about now.
Third: this consolidates OpenAI as the "officially approved" AI company by the American establishment. And in the state capitalism we live in — because that's exactly what it is, regardless of whatever label they want to slap on it — being on the right side of the government is just as important as having the best product.
The Lesson Nobody Wants to Hear
The tech market loves to sell itself as a pure meritocracy. "The best code wins, the best architecture, the best model."
Not a damn chance.
The one who plays the full game wins. Technology, politics, relationships, timing. Warren Buffett always said investing is simple, but it's not easy. The same goes for building billion-dollar companies: the technology is the simple part. The political game is the hard part.
Sam Altman, with all his flaws — and there are plenty — figured this out before the rest. While Anthropic's founders were busy being the "good guys in the room," Altman was doing what every serious entrepreneur does: making sure that when the music stopped, he'd have a chair.
So tell me: do you still think in the world of big business, the best product always wins? Or is it time to take off the rose-colored glasses and face how the game really works?
