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On why Anthropic is “radical woke” while OpenAI is not: What “business as usual” means in SuperPACs America

10 min readMar 1, 2026

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Remember the core logic that launched American democracy on the catastrophic experiment called SuperPACs.

It’s March 2010, barely three months after the Supreme Court has decided Citizens United. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is ruling on a question related to the one decided in Citizens United, but importantly distinct. Citizens United had addressed whether independent expenditures are constitutionally protected when made by corporations, unions, or political action committees. In Speech Now v. FEC, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was asked whether contributions to committees that make independent expenditures also cannot be limited.

In answering that question, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals made this astonishingly obtuse assertion:

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To see why “astonishingly obtuse,” here’s the bit to focus on:

“contributions to groups that make only independent expenditures … cannot corrupt or create the appearance of corruption.”

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