I think that a move by a frontier company would be shocking. It would, at least for a few weeks, receive massive amounts of international and domestic coverage (plausibly more than all of AI gets now in a typical week). Front pages would cover the political turmoil caused by it, commentators would speculate about motivations, and politicians would lose sleep. The OpenAI board drama, for example, massively spiked coverage of the company. It would be as if Lockheed Martin announced one day that it was moving to Canada. Anthropic faced threats of being cut off from all defense contracts merely for disputing usage terms with the Pentagon; the reaction to a full departure would be much more severe. The move would signal, at least to political leadership, a critical loss of confidence in America, and threaten the US’s global leadership in tech. It might be read by the American public equally negatively. Such a big move might trigger a cascade event, with investors and companies leaving en masse. At least the government would fear it could. I picture the move massively expanding the Overton window for AI policies, and prompting immediate decisive action from the executive. To appease public outcry and alarmed national security officials, the US president would be pushed to take drastic measures to prevent the exit of the company.