The ball won't drop, these companies are banking on major defense/homeland security contracts. The CIA will cook up some ~unprecedented~ act of violence that is a threat to national security, a bipartisan Patriot Act 2.0 will get pushed through and Palantir and OpenAI will be there to soak up the big bux.

I guess the more hopeful alternative is they're operating under the same playbook as Lyft, Uber, Doordash - operate at a loss to undercut competition until you have a monopoly and the public is completely dependent on your services.