Those are the folks who run the industry

Except for the uncomfortable fact that he controls the salary and job status of the people who do know much about LLMs.

OK. So? Would you say Harry Truman was a nuclear scientist?

Franklin D. Roosevelt is a better fit for an administrative nuclear program "founder" analogy.

Truman was totally in the dark until April 1945 by which time the bulk of the PoC and weapons prep work was done and the project was running fully independently w/o POTUS involvement.

Yet the guys in the lab coats worked for him.

Not for the bulk of the Manhattan project and not all the people in lab coats .. the intellectual founders that repeatedly pushed for the project and demonstrated feasibility weren't even US citizens.

I picked the guy whose contribution was smaller on purpose to highlight the hollowness of the claim about “controlling the careers” of people who understand what’s going on.