If anyone ever does try to argue this in court, they'll just change the justification to "national security."

We need the most powerful AI we can make because our rival nations are building their most powerful AIs. Our rivals are using their AI to control drone swarms, perform automated intelligence-gathering, do mass automated hacking, and perform influence operations. Wars are quickly devolving into battles of drone swarms vs drone swarms, and the limit is on the people needed to control the. Our rivals are revolutionizing their supply chains with AI. They may even be performing vast automated influence operations designed to target individual citizens. In the near future, if you're an American citizen, the Chinese government will know who you are personally, have a file on you, and will be using AI to try and psychologically manipulate you. We need to be able to fight this! We simply have no choice but to keep up. National security demands it. Companies participating in national security-crucial AI development will be exempt from copyright laws.

I'm no lawyer, but a law to allow this almost certainly already exists. US law is full of national security exemptions. For example, I'm pretty sure in wartime IP laws can be waived. If you've invented some amazing new technology with military applications? If the government comes knocking and you just refuse to sell to them or demand a completely impossible price, there has to be a mechanism in IP law for those rights to simply be waived, or the rights taken by a form of eminent domain. There's probably some provision of copyright law that would allow a president to void certain copyrights in a national security emergency.

Of course… But it might be fun to test the theory.

Flexible? That's a really wrong way to spell "inexistent" ...

"I was working on a MR. For America."