Maybe OpenAI thought that publishers, especially nonprofit ones like us, would not be able to put up a fight. Our budget, after all, is something like one-half of one percent of Sam Altman’s net worth, and their legal team—let’s just say you can’t toss a golf ball in San Francisco or Washington without hitting one of them.

And OpenAI has Donald Trump on its side too: This week, the administration went to the trouble of filing a brief in the lawsuit, an unusual step for the government to take at such an early stage in the process. The brief supports OpenAI, saying it’s a vital national interest for AI companies not to have to pay for content (with a dig about how that would just be a subsidy for “old mainstream media companies” anyway). Given Trump’s history with paying people, that tracks.