Some will argue that a liberal democracy should leave frontier technology to the private sector—that government’s role is to set direction, not to do the work. It is a principled position. It is also one that no serious liberal democracy actually holds in practice when the stakes are high enough.The argument here is not that government should take over AI—no successful model anywhere suggests that. The goal is more specific: The government needs the technical capacity to drive it. To make credible bets on where the frontier is moving. To evaluate outcomes with informed judgement rather than administrative process. To...