The voluntary review process the Trump administration assembled has a consensus that Meta's absence now defines. When every comparable lab has signed on, Meta's refusal to submit for government review stops reading as a principled open-source position and starts reading as an exception that requires explanation. Federal security processes gain legitimacy through participation; a named holdout does not simply stay outside the frame — it becomes the frame.
For a company whose open-weights releases have been positioned as a democratic alternative to closed-lab secrecy, refusing government review is a structural contradiction. The