Last week’s battle over a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the US government into 2025 got a lot of press coverage, much of it unfavorable. But one aspect of the saga was both underreported and, well, revolutionary.

Normally, Congress waits until the government is on the verge of shutting down before releasing a thousand+ page monstrosity of a spending bill that no one reads but everyone has to vote for if they want to go on vacation. The result: massively wasteful spending with zero accountability.

This time around, Congress loaded every conceivable cut of pork into a bill to keep the government running through the transition, safe in the expectation that it would pass like all its predecessors.

But they’d overlooked the fact that today’s AIs can summarize a 1,500-page legalese pork fest into just a few bullet points, allowing the whole world to read a bill that no one would have previously. Armed with a clear view of what Congress was trying to pull, legislators and reporters who would otherwise have been steamrolled were able to force passage of a less corrupt and vastly more understandable spending bill.

AI, in other words, shined a light on the everyday corruption of American politics and sent the cockroaches scurrying back into the woodwork.

I’m posting this on Christmas morning because it’s a gift for honest-government advocates everywhere.

🇺🇸 CHAMATH: 𝕏 KILLED A $200B GRIFT IN 12 HOURS—THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

“This was the most incredible shift in how politics will work.

A multi-hundred-billion-dollar grift was stopped in just 12 hours of tweets.

Going forward, we’ll have tools to break down 1,500-page bills… https://t.co/0qFv8qTc1u pic.twitter.com/sRs436UlYU

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) December 24, 2024