Trader consensus assigns an 83.5% implied probability that the FTC will not open a dedicated investigation into AI book destruction practices in 2026. Advocacy groups sent letters in August urging the agency to examine “hoard-and-destroy” methods used by firms including Anthropic and Amazon to acquire, scan, and discard physical books for large language model training, framing the activity as potentially anticompetitive under Section 5. However, the FTC has instead directed recent civil investigative demands and subpoenas toward OpenAI and Anthropic on separate safety, security-incident, and consumer-protection matters. No official announcement or docket has targeted the specific data-acquisition conduct, and historical patterns show the agency moves deliberately on novel antitrust theories tied to training data. Key near-term catalysts include any follow-up statements from FTC leadership or new disclosures from ongoing copyright litigation.