Election Day, November 5, 2024, at a polling place at the Davis Student Center at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
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The age of AI super PACs is here, with ballot drop boxes being installed at sites across the country ahead of the midterm elections. If there is an election-winning formula that the AI industry is trying to replicate, it is the crypto industry’s highly effective lobbying drive in 2024.
Crypto-friendly super PAC Fairshake was the single largest corporate donor in the 2024 election cycle, supporting more than 50 candidates elected to public office. New military funds have been accumulated in preparation for the 2026 election. The “Leading the Future” super PAC, formed last summer, is backed by some of Fair Shake’s prominent Silicon Valley donors. FairShake was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of venture capital firm a16z, as well as OpenAI founder Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and AI startup Perplexity. Late last year, Meta also launched a super PAC focused on AI regulation.
While cryptocurrencies continue to garner widespread interest from a wide cross-section of Americans, AI is seen as an issue with the potential to rise to a higher level among the public, especially given concerns about job losses. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) recently told CNBC, “As someone who is currently being rehired as a senator, I’m making a big bet. This is going to be an issue in 2026, it’s going to be an even bigger issue in 2028, it’s an issue of our time.”
While the stock market continues to boom on the back of AI optimism, public opinion polls on AI are dominated by concerns.
“Many people are concerned about AI, worried that it will take away jobs, invade privacy, and bias the way we make decisions,” said Darrell Wess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
According to a recent report from Just Capital, business leaders and investors are far more optimistic about the potential benefits of AI than the general public. But there are others who speak in similar terms to Sen. Warner. “You can want the world you want, but you’re going to get the world you got, and your competitors are going to take advantage of it, and countries are going to take advantage of it. … I think it may be too fast for society,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said at Davos last week.
“So go back. That’s what trade adjustment assistance was supposed to do. If a town loses a factory, loses jobs, there’s income support, relocation, early retirement, retraining. We may have to do that. And I think we’re already doing it ourselves,” Dimon said.
Later, in an interview with The Economist’s editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, Mr. Dimon said, “We’re not going to kill all our employees tomorrow, because that’s not who we are.” However, he said that looking five years into the future, “the number of employees will decrease.”
A recent Pew Research poll found that Americans are more worried than excited about how AI will affect their daily lives. Gallup data shows a similar trend, with more Americans viewing AI as a threat rather than an opportunity. This situation creates tension between the public interest and the AI Super PAC’s plans for the 2026 election.
According to LTF, the super PAC is “focused on advancing a forward-looking, positive AI innovation agenda in Washington, D.C. and across the state, and actively engages in the political process by identifying, retaining, and developing pro-AI candidates to support AI innovation policy agendas at the state and federal level.”
“Amid a growing patchwork of contradictory regulations that threaten homegrown innovation and investment in AI, state legislators are uniquely positioned to ensure America remains a global technology leader,” Brian Rice, vice president of public policy at Meta, said in a statement explaining the decision to support state-level candidates across the country.
Rice said Mehta will help elect state candidates across the country who “embrace AI developments, champion America’s technology industry, and defend America’s technology leadership at home and abroad.”
Wes said many tech billionaires plan to spend large sums of money to promote tech-minded candidates, but there is a risk that this type of influence could have the unintended consequence of sparking a backlash against the tech industry in 2026.
There is also the issue of President Trump’s recent executive order, which could preempt state control over federal policy, but legal experts say the executive order has weak legal basis. According to Wes, “President Trump is trying to abolish federalism by usurping states’ rights and forcing the central government to deregulate AI policy.”
Cryptocurrency political influence campaigns in 2024 did not transparently promote cryptocurrencies as a political issue to the public. Money was poured into advertising campaigns to either cement the victory of crypto-friendly politicians or defeat the advances of crypto detractors, but in each case, the ads did not focus on the benefits of cryptocurrencies, but rather shaped the ad content to point at all the angles most likely to influence the outcome of the race.
In the Ohio Senate race, where crypto allies reportedly spent $800,000 a day to unseat Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, ads focused on the southern border and China, portraying Brown as weak on both fronts. The strategy worked, and Brown lost to cryptocurrency-friendly Republican businessman Bernie Moreno.
Chinese messaging is already part of the AI super PAC narrative. “LTF and its affiliates oppose policies that stifle innovation and enable China to achieve global AI advantages, or that make it difficult for the world to benefit from AI, and those that support them,” the group said in a release announcing its formation.
“The emergence of technology/AI super PACS was inevitable,” said Rick Hasen, UCLA judiciary chair and political science professor. “As major industries and organizations participate in influencing elections and policy in this way, and as Congress and state legislatures consider new regulations in the field of AI, we can expect industry responses to have more impact.”
He said AI companies consider President Trump an ally and may support his AI policies as a potential tool to block state regulation of industries they see as a burden, but added that the legality of EOs in particular remains a big question. “President Trump’s presidency will be challenged in court,” Hasen said.
But regardless of the fate of the executive order, “Mr. Trump and his affiliates will continue to have strong industry support as the agenda moves forward,” Hasen said.
Still, as with cryptocurrencies, the rise of AI super PACs should not be seen as a distinctly partisan phenomenon. Even in states where a particular party is dominant, such as Democrats in California or Republicans in Utah, super PAC activity can be focused on influencing individuals by race, he said. “It seems unclear at this point whether each group will end up supporting Republicans over Democrats. There are a lot of tech-friendly people and tech-shy people on both sides of the aisle,” Hansen said.
Evidence of the impact of AI super PACS like LTF is already emerging. The New York State RAISE Act (Responsible AI Safety and Education) was met with strong opposition from LTF. LTF leaders John Brust and Zach Moffat borrowed AI industry arguments 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 patchwork, ignorant, and bureaucratic state legislation that will slow America’s progress and pave the way for China to win the global race for AI leadership.”
These leaders represent a distribution of power across party lines, with Brust previously serving as press secretary to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.N.Y.) and chief of staff to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Moffat has previously served as an advisor to Republican politicians including Mitt Romney and Tim Scott.
Wes said that while the theme of deregulation is typically a Republican-leaning ideology, “it remains to be seen how unified the tech sector will be because there are so many Democrats who work for tech companies. It may be difficult for the sector to have a unified voice on policy issues.”
But the first major state law battle of the AI super PAC era didn’t go as planned. The RAISE Act was signed into law by New York Governor Kathy Hochul in December.
