The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
bloodinthemachine.com
bloodinthemachine.com
(Blog post: https://www.citationneeded.news/tech-influence-watch/)
I just found that one of my reps got an absurd amount of money from some shadowy group called "Think Big". Which is in turn part of a larger org called "Leading the Future" [0], which is:
> A coordinated network of AI-industry super PACs working to head off stricter AI regulation, chiefly by pushing a single federal framework that would override stronger state-level rules on issues like consumer protection and liability. Leading the Future is the lead committee, channeling money to the Democratic-facing Think Big and the Republican-facing American Mission. All draw on the same core backers — chiefly Andreessen Horowitz, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife.
[0]: https://influence.citationneeded.news/2026/networks/leading-...
We kept looking for the pony for most of the day. We found some pony exhaust, but we didn't find the pony. The rest of the group presented a plan for future research. I chose to give the minority report: based on the information we were able to obtain, California could solve its water shortage if every household ate 16 less almonds a day; an almond taking roughly one gallon of water to produce.
A couple years later the almond industry ran some ads that the "gallon of water" meme was somehow wrong, because other useful products were produced from almond trees besides almonds... so they said. Of course, it could have been a coincidence.
One of my team members (from Montana) shared a quote from Samuel Clemens: "whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over". That hasn't changed with data centers.
One day people in this state will wake up and burn it all down by electing representatives who serve the people, not the corporate entities that desire a low drag place to do business. There are active anti-AI and data center groups now in the state. Once they get enough traction this bullshit will end.
Anyone at any of these AI companies that attempts to influence elections should be held accountable and should suffer the harshest consequences including confiscation of all personal assets. Multi-generational enforced poverty should be their reward.
Just my two cents.
Senate is statewide so it's innately immune to Gerrymandering. Like.... Do you even know what that word means?
I dont know what is so difficult about this for you.
Manipulating the election and perpetuating minority rule rather than responding to popular will has its limitations. We need to be prepared for a second civil rights movement.
The House is a hilarious mix of terrible Gerrymandering (ex: Florida assuming that Latinos will vote Republican) or defeated Gerrymandering (Texas gerrymandering effect being defeated in court).
All in all, it's a hilarious self own where Republicans couldn't even be trusted to Gerrymander correctly and may have made the House a worse situation for themselves. So if anything, the Gerrymandering is seemingly leading to Democrat advantage because of how incompetent Republicans have been.
So as I said before: we are looking at House blowout for Democrats and even a surprise 50/50 odds for Senate. That is a huge change of that happens.
Your invocation of corruption/Gerrymandering doesn't mean anything if you actually look at what has happened. It only matters if Republicans Gerrymandered correctly.
Then the Trump Administration came in (likely after donations from Google, and other tech bros) and suddenly that Google case was dropped.
Regulating against awful behaviors was happening under Biden, and no longer is happening under Trump. It's about as simple as night and day if you are paying attention.
What changes now is that historically, tech firms were largely apolitical. Today they are hard right support, so Democrats weren't used to memes or lack of free viral marketing (etc etc.)
Today, Democrats are finally waking up to the fact that they are being suppressed by both national media and tech media (Twitter and Facebook) and have begun gaining alternative means of getting their messaging out.
Things have gotten worse, but that causes the strategies to shift and the overall political fight to grow stronger.
The secret of modern democracy is figuring out 2/4 years is how long it takes for people to forget the electoral promises that weren’t delivered upon.
But hey, next time my party is going to fix the economy, housing and corruption! Just remember to vote!
I still wonder how many elections does it take for one to see the farce of it.
All of which together will make algorithmic bias, data harvesting, and hyper-realistic misinformation flourish.
I really wonder when US citizens had enough. Third time is the proverbial charm?
But what about the "AI industry"
How could corporations voting not dilute the human votes by the very nature and reason of voting in the first place?
Because you're being misled (i.e. lied to) about the actual nature of the situation.
This is a snooty vacation town shithole. Non-resident landowners have been allowed to vote here since day 1. The purpose of incorporating as a town is/was essentially to have a town that's run by business. Think like City of Industry CA fucked the Hamptons, this is the kid.
Back when they did this in 1950-whatever this worked fine. All the land was owned by McScumbag A, McScumbag B and McScumbag C who invariably lived in DC, NYC, etc, etc. Back then people owned vacation cottages, businesses, motels, etc, etc, in their own name. So, as everything moved to LLCs and whatnot over the years the scummy developers and investors slowly lost influence to the "filthy townies" or whatever and so in 2000-whatever they amended their constitution to allow their LLCs to vote and now, here we are litigating the implications in court.
Yeah, it's stupid on like a dozen different levels but this isn't the "random normal-ish town goes apeshit and decide to let DuPont vote" it's being cast as. This town was already apeshit, it's just being fought about in court.
And INB4 anyone puts words in my mouth, no I don't support the ruling.
And now you get to "nobody at all" when effectively nothing happens to the leaders the instant the need to bear accountability
> plus this firewall makes it so people will be more willing to build businesses.
Doubt.
"We can direct the corporation we own to dump raw sewage into rivers but you can't hold us accountable personally for that decision" is an absolutely messed way to run things
"Corporate personhood" is a legal concept where how person-like a corporation is can be defined in whichever way is convenient to how we want the law to operate.
From wikipedia:
>The majority also held that the First Amendment's free press clause protects associations of individuals in addition to individual speakers, and further that the First Amendment does not allow prohibitions of speech based on the speaker's identity. Corporations, as associations of individuals, therefore have free speech rights under the First Amendment.
In other words, corporations have the right to spend money for political purposes not because of corporate personhood or "corporations are people too", it's because first amendment protections apply to associations of people. This covers corporations, but also includes other groups like trade unions.
You realize republicans can make the same argument to bash unions?
???
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/carpenters-joiners-union/su...
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/service-employees-internati...
>and can't do things like strike in solidarity with other unions which would be pretty clearly be speech if we're counting corporate donations to political campaigns as speech.
Seems like a stretch to lump industrial action with political donations.
It's complex, but those are not donations to a candidate, even more so than the normal PAC and Super PAC song and dance. You have to give up your non profit status to donate more directly to a candidates campaign.
> Seems like a stretch to lump industrial action with political donations.
Seems like a stretch to say that political donations are speech and should be protected, but literal picketing isn't.
Doesn't that apply to corporations as well? If you click on a random company[1], you see a notice that says
>NOTE: Organizations themselves cannot contribute to candidates and party committees. Figures on this page include contributions and spending by affiliates.
and indeed, I don't see any candidates. This more or less matches the recipients list for unions.
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/citadel-llc/summary?id=D000...
> Seems like a stretch to say that political donations are speech and should be protected, but literal picketing isn't.
Are you sure that the reason why solidarity strikes are banned because union members are holding up a bunch of signs, and not say... walking off the job?
No. For profit corporations can donate to PACs that are directly in support of a candidate rather than a broad swath of policy. It's a non profit versus profit distinction that creates this additional ratchet.
> Are you sure that the reason why solidarity strikes are banned because union members are holding up a bunch of signs, and not say... walking off the job?
How is that not one of the most fundamental forms of protected speech?
So make the union for-profit instead? In other words the distinction isn't corporations vs unions, it's for-profit vs non-profit. This seems.. okay? What's the alternative, that organizations can get tax breaks and do whatever politicking they want?
>How is that not one of the most fundamental forms of protected speech?
Walking off the job when you have an agreement not to walk off the job is "protected speech"?
The alternative is neither get to do politicking rather than only those who aren't formally working for some public good.
> Walking off the job when you have an agreement not to walk off the job is "protected speech"?
Yeah, it's called a protest.
They're allowed to walk off for their own issues. It's solidarity strikes that are banned. Ie. the nature of the speech is what makes it illegal.
Just like corporations can be regulated for monopoly (which by the logic that "corporations, as mere groups of people, have all the same rights as people" should be unregulatable because individuals have the right to assemble), we can regulate them for other things, without contradiction.
Which is fine, they only get one vote.
But they can also divide a piece of land into small plots, make a bunch of shell companies, each one owning a small piece of land, and vote using that.
Isn't this just on Fenwick Island? And the state would have to approve the (possibly suspicious) creation of numerous shell companies for this purpose.
At this point it’s a perfectly common cost of doing business there. Pay money to get favourable laws passed. But it’s not bribery. No no no.
It is very abnormal, and is legal bribery.
Yet they still have paid political ads. All political advertisements arent banned in other countries. Should they be?
The government is massive and inserts itself into business operations all the time. The inevitable results happen.
Consider the enormous difficulty and expense people in Palisades have getting permits to rebuild.
Yes, I read "The Jungle". It's a work of fiction, not a documentary. So is "The Grapes of Wrath".