There’s a thread doing the rounds about the US government moving to individually approve access to frontier AI models. GPT 5.6, apparently, is now something you need permission to use. I’ve been sitting with this for a few days, turning it over, and I still don’t know whether to be more disturbed by the policy itself or by how unsurprised I am.

Let’s be honest about what’s actually happening here. When a government decides that a software tool is so powerful that ordinary people need to apply for access to it, that’s not safety policy. That’s industrial policy dressed up in safety language. The big players get their licences, their enterprise agreements, their backroom nods from regulators. Everyone else waits in line, or goes without. The moat gets built, and the people who funded the drawbridge get to decide who crosses.

The news broke quietly, almost like the government hoped we wouldn’t notice until it was too late. Come December, Australians will need to verify their age to access adult content online. The eSafety Commissioner’s office frames it as protecting children, but scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find a privacy nightmare that would make George Orwell reach for his laptop.

Reading through the discussions online, it’s clear I’m not alone in feeling deeply uncomfortable about this entire scheme. The technical realities are stark - major sites like Pornhub have already started geo-blocking entire regions rather than deal with age verification requirements. They did it in Texas, they’ll do it here. We’re not special enough to warrant custom compliance systems.