The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections (bloodinthemachine.com)
91 points by speckx 2 hours ago
doodlebugging an hour ago
Probably a sign that it is past time to tightly regulate all AI-aligned companies and their products to set up guard rails to prevent this level of corruption. I am a person who lives in a state where it is totally legal for lobbyists to walk the floor of the state legislature handing out envelopes of cash to any representative who will line up behind their proposed legislation. Bribery buys state laws here and it buys pretty much anything else that those with deep pockets desire.
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.
voidfunc an hour ago
Hahaha... regulation lol. That aint happening in the US. If you do see regulation it will be so crippled as to be meaningless but it'll give something politicians can talk about as "for the people". All regulations are written by industry insiders.
dragontamer an hour ago
Regulation is not possible with today's politics. But it can become possible as soon as January 2027 politics, which is largely determined by the 2026 November election.
voidfunc an hour ago
vinyl7 an hour ago
savanaly an hour ago
Millions? Makes me think of https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...
ambicapter an hour ago
Comparing almonds to elections might be my new favorite way of saying "comparing apples to oranges".
nonethewiser 7 minutes ago
But the comparison is of money spent
ChrisArchitect 2 hours ago
Tech Influence Watch site: https://influence.citationneeded.news/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632474)
(Blog post: https://www.citationneeded.news/tech-influence-watch/)
thatmf an hour ago
Yeah, this is amazing and should be submitted here on its own if it hasn't already.
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-...
utopiah 2 hours ago
Very nice "Contributions by entity" visualization, thanks
hackingonempty 40 minutes ago
We aren't even getting a kiss.
pydry an hour ago
So they want a bailout when the inevitable happens.
mindcrash an hour ago
First it was Search (mostly Google), then Social (mostly Facebook) now AI turning the global internet into their own unregulated playground due to pay to play on US soil.
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?
rizsyed1 2 hours ago
This is interesting. I wonder how this might affect laws and regulations.
otikik an hour ago
If it's for sale, someone will buy
tiahura an hour ago
So about the same amount as the spend on a single row in a datacenter?
jlarocco 2 hours ago
"Voting with your Wallet" - the American way.
ToucanLoucan an hour ago
The rich love the concept of voting with your wallet, because by definition they get shitloads more votes than you.
WalterBright an hour ago
Ballot harvesting should be made illegal.
nonethewiser a minute ago
ausbah 2 hours ago
how long before “AI agents have voting rights too” becomes real
bulbar 2 hours ago
No need for that. People will ask their favorite AI who to vote for anyway.
mullingitover an hour ago
This will actually dovetail perfectly with candidates using AI to write up their policy stances and work it into dynamic, emotionally appealing stump speeches.
ortusdux 2 hours ago
I fully expect to see Grok proactively offer to help you with your ballot
firtoz an hour ago
I got mine to build me an interactive quiz for the UK elections, unsure if that's better or worse... It felt not so biased but who knows right?
bulbar 7 minutes ago
thisisit an hour ago
rectang an hour ago
Making it hard for politically inconvenient humans to vote is more straightforward than granting AI agents the right to vote.
gruez 2 hours ago
Never? Even the whole "corporations are people too" meme where this sentiment presumably originated from is often misunderstood. It doesn't mean corporations have the same rights as people, it just means they can conduct transactions and can sue/be used. It doesn't mean they can vote.
tines 2 hours ago
I thought that the "corporations are people" meme was the actual rationale for why corpos "should" be allowed to spend money on elections: spending money for political purposes is free speech, and people have the right to free speech, and corpos are people, so corpos have the right to spend money for political purposes.
gruez an hour ago
XorNot an hour ago
otikik an hour ago
Corporations can vote now. If they own land. In some states.
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.
mc32 2 hours ago
It also allows them to be sued. I suppose we could have other mechanisms to sue companies but this is what we’ve come up with.
jordanb an hour ago
XorNot an hour ago
wat10000 2 hours ago
It does in one town in Delaware, at least: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/delaware-court-upho...
weaksauce an hour ago
Joker_vD 2 hours ago
"AI right are human rights!"
AvAn12 an hour ago
If businesspeople want to get involved in politics, they should have the courage to run for office like anybody else. Lurking on the sidelines and waiving money around is really lame and laughable.
WalterBright an hour ago
If your business is large enough, if you don't donate to politicians, they will target your business.
The government is massive and inserts itself into business operations all the time. The inevitable results happen.
AvAn12 21 minutes ago
There ARE regulations for sure. But they exist to protect the population at large. For example, food safety laws were not created out of government hostility but rather because food was unsafe. Read (or read about) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair if you want to get creeped out about the food industry in the 1930s before regulations
somenameforme an hour ago
There are people who couldn't care less about political power, but want certain laws passed, and have lots of money. And then there those who couldn't care less about much of anything besides gaining political power and see money and quid quo pro as means to achieve that.
AvAn12 an hour ago
Then those people are on the sidelines like every other citizen. Play the game or be a spectator. Nobody gets to have it both ways.
Joker_vD an hour ago
testing22321 2 hours ago
What major industry in the US hasn’t been doing that for decades?
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.
guywithahat 2 hours ago
I mean many of these companies are doing tens of billions in revenue each, meanwhile their home state is becoming increasingly hostile to their presence. That said this article shares no numbers so I have no idea what the scope or scale of their impact is.