The polling site at Davies Student Center on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024 at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
The age of the AI super PAC is here, and it has ballot boxes across the U.S. in its sites ahead of the midterms. If there’s a winning election formula the AI industry is looking to repeat, it is the crypto industry’s highly effective lobbying muscle in 2024.
The crypto-friendly super PAC Fairshake was the single largest corporate donor in the 2024 election cycle and supported over 50 candidates that were elected to public office. It has amassed another war chest for the 2026 elections. The Leading the Future super PAC formed last summer has financial backing from some of the Silicon Valley donors prominent in Fairshake, which was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, also co-founders of the venture capital firm a16z, as well as OpenAI founder Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and AI startup Perplexity. Meta also launched a super PAC late last year focused on AI regulation.
Crypto continues to attract broader interest from a wider cross-section of Americans, but AI is seen as an issue that may rise to a much higher level among the public, especially in light of concerns about job losses. Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., recently told CNBC, “I am making a major bet as someone trying to get rehired now as a senator this will be an issue in 2026, and even much more so in 2028, the issue of our time.”
While the stock market continues to boom based on AI optimism, public polling about AI is typified by concern.
“Many are worried about AI and fear it will take jobs, invade privacy, and be biased in how it makes decisions,” said Darrell Wes, senior fellow at Brookings Institution.
Corporate leaders and investors are far more optimistic about the potential benefits of AI than the general public, according to a recent report from Just Capital. But some are speaking in terms similar to Sen. Warner. At Davos last week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said, “You can hope for the world you want, but you’re going to get the world you got and your competitors are going to use it, countries are going to use it. … I do think it may go too fast for society.”
“So you go back, trade adjustment assistance was supposed to do that. If a town loses a factory and they lose jobs, you have income assistance, relocation, early retirement, retraining. We may have to do that. And I think we’re doing it already ourselves,” Dimon said.
Later in the interview with The Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, Dimon said, “We’re not going to kill all of our employees tomorrow because we’re just not like that.” But he did say that looking out five years into the future, “my guess is it’ll be fewer employees.”
Recent polling from Pew Research showed Americans to be much more concerned than excited about AI’s impact on their daily lives. Gallup data shows a similar tilt with more Americans viewing AI as a threat rather than opportunity. The situation sets up a tension between the public interest and the plans of the AI super PACs in the 2026 elections.
According to LTF, the super PAC “is focused on advancing a positive, forward-looking agenda for AI innovation in Washington, D.C. and across the states, proactively engaging in the political process by identifying, maintaining, and growing pro-AI candidates in order to support an AI innovation policy agenda at the state and federal level.”
Brian Rice, Meta vice president of public policy, said in a statement explaining its decision to back state-level candidates across the country that, “amid a growing patchwork of inconsistent regulations that threaten homegrown innovation and investments in AI, state lawmakers are uniquely positioned to ensure that America remains a global technology leader.”
Meta will support the election of state candidates across the country who “embrace AI development, champion the U.S. technology industry, and defend American tech leadership at home and abroad,” Rice said.
Wes said a number of tech billionaires have said they plan to spend large amounts of money promoting tech-friendly candidates, but there is the risk that this type of influence in 2026 could have the unintended consequence of provoking a backlash against the tech sector.
There is also the issue of President Trump’s recent executive order which could make federal policy preempt state controls, though legal experts say the EO has weak legal foundations. “Trump is trying to repeal federalism by usurping states rights and having the national government deregulate AI policy,” according to Wes.
The crypto political influence campaign of 2024 did not transparently sell crypto as a political issue to the public. Money went to ad campaigns to either solidify the wins of crypto-friendly politicians or to topple the advancements of crypto critics, but in each instance, the ads didn’t focus on the benefits of crypto, shaping ad content to whatever angle was mostly likely to influence the outcome of the race.
In the Ohio Senate race, in which crypto-allies spent a reported $800,000 a day to oust Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, ads focused on the southern border and China, framing Brown as weak on both fronts. The strategy worked: Brown lost to crypto-friendly Republican nominee businessman Bernie Moreno.
China messaging is already being threaded into the AI super PAC narrative. “LTF and its affiliated organizations will oppose policies that stifle innovation, enable China to gain global AI superiority, or make it harder to bring AI’s benefits into the world, and those who support that agenda,” the group said in the release announcing its formation.
“The emergence of tech/AI-related super PACS was inevitable,” said Rick Hasen, chair in law and professor of political science at UCLA. “This is how big industries and groups participate in influencing elections and policy, and with Congress and state legislative bodies considering new regulation in the area of AI, one would expect a reaction on the part of industry to have greater influence.”
He said AI companies see Trump as an ally, and could support his AI policies as a potential tool to block state regulation of the industry they see as burdensome, but he added that the legality of the EO specifically remains a major question. “I expect that Trump’s EO will be challenged in court,” Hasen said.
But whatever the fate of the executive order, “Trump and his related entities will continue to get strong support from the industry as the challenges move forward,” Hasen said.
Still, as in the case of crypto, the rise of the AI super PAC should not be seen as a clearly partisan phenomenon. Even in states with a particular party dominance, such as Democrats in California or Republicans in Utah, the activities of the super PACs may focus more on influence individual race by race, he said. “Whether the groups will end up favoring Republicans over Democrats seems uncertain at this point, Hansen said. “There are plenty of tech-friendly and tech-nervous people on both sides of the aisle.”
Evidence of the influence of AI super PACS like LTF has already emerged. The New York State RAISE Act (Responsible AI Safety and Education) was met with strong opposition from LTF. LTF’s leaders John Vlasto and Zac Moffat adopted talking points of the AI industry in their opposition to the New York bill, saying in a statement to CNBC late last year that the bill is “a clear example of the patchwork, uninformed, and bureaucratic state laws that would slow American progress and open the door for China to win the global race for AI leadership.”
Those leaders represents power spread across political parties: Vlasto previously served as press secretary for Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and chief of staff for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Moffatt has previously served as an advisor to Republican politicians including Mitt Romney and Tim Scott.
Wes said that although the theme of less regulation is typically a Republican-leaning ideology, “it remains to be seen how unified the tech area will be because there are many Democrats who work for tech companies. It may be hard for the sector to have a unified voice on policy issues.”
But the first big state law battle of the AI super PAC era didn’t go their way. The RAISE Act was signed into law by New York Governor Kathy Hochul in December.
