tl;dr: A consultant reports that virtually every corporate AI project they've observed in the past 18 months has failed, yet executives, boards, and employees are trapped in a coordination problem where admitting this truth risks termination, creating a cult-like environment of mandatory AI enthusiasm. Companies are now "AI-washing" ordinary work, firing skeptics, gaming token-usage metrics, and buying AI products they don't need, while honest decision-making has ground to a halt. The author offers tactical advice for surviving the mania: avoid group confrontations, use anonymous polls to surface dissent, limit AI news consumption, and job-hunt early if you're drowning in it.