The government has no business in AI

The Washington Examiner op-ed delivers a consistent libertarian argument against government-built AI, supported by documented examples of federal technology projects that ran over budget or failed to launch on time.

Core Claims and Evidence

The piece centers on two practical objections:

• Government speed and capability limits. It cites the IRS’s multi-billion-dollar modernization effort, which required replacing legacy code no longer used commercially, and the Healthcare.gov rollout that encountered major technical failures despite extended preparation time.
• Cost and incentive problems. A public AI model would require sustained taxpayer funding while competing against private systems already iterating rapidly.

These points align with public records on the cited projects. The article also references Ezra Klein’s proposal for a government “public option” AI as the immediate prompt for the column.

Techniques Used

• Relies on historical performance data rather than abstract warnings about AI risk.
• Frames the issue around operational realities—procurement timelines, technical staffing, and update cycles—rather than regulatory philosophy alone.
• Avoids overstating certainty; the language stays within efficiency and incentive arguments typical of limited-government analysis.

Source and Author Context

Jeremy Nighohossian writes from a perspective that prioritizes private-sector development and views expanded state roles in technology as likely to produce obsolete or politicized systems. The outlet, the Washington Examiner, regularly publishes opinion pieces advancing similar institutional skepticism toward federal technology initiatives. No factual inaccuracies appear in the specific claims presented in the available text.

Limitations

The column is an opinion piece and therefore selects evidence that illustrates its thesis. It does not include counter-examples of government technology successes or address the scale of current private AI investment. These choices reflect the format rather than deceptive omission of verifiable facts.

Bottom line: The article functions as a clear, evidence-based policy argument within its ideological lane. Its strength lies in tying general concerns to concrete past performance; its limit is the inherent selectivity of any short op-ed.

Further Reading

No additional coverage comparisons were available for this specific column.