{"id":1432,"date":"2026-03-03T22:16:57","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T22:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=1432"},"modified":"2026-03-04T10:25:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T10:25:38","slug":"ai-companies-are-spending-millions-to-thwart-this-former-tech-execs-congressional-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=1432","title":{"rendered":"AI companies are spending millions to thwart this former tech exec\u2019s congressional bid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve seen the recent ads attacking New York assembly member Alex Bores, you\u2019ll know he used to work for Palantir, the AI company that\u2019s powering the controversial raids<\/a> and high-volume deportation efforts from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ads even accuse Bores of having made hundreds of thousands of dollars building the tech for ICE and \u201cpowering their deportations.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not quite the whole story. \u201cI quit Palantir specifically over its work with ICE in 2019,\u201d Bores told TechCrunch on last week\u2019s episode of Equity<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now he\u2019s running for New York\u2019s 12th congressional district, with Big Tech billionaires funding outside groups targeting his campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ads are funded <\/a>by a super PAC called Leading the Future,<\/a> which, ironically, has the backing of Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, as well as OpenAI President Greg Brockman, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, AI search startup Perplexity, and other Silicon Valley heavy-hitters. The PAC has raised $125 million<\/a> to go after candidates in state elections that are introducing AI legislation and to support candidates with a light-to-no-touch approach to regulating AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have committed to spending at least $10 million against me\u2026because they know I am their biggest threat in their quest for unbridled control over the American worker, over our kids\u2019 minds, climate, and our utility bills,\u201d Bores said. \u201cThey\u2019re targeting me to make an example of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his background working in tech, including at Palantir and several startups, is exactly why Leading the Future made him its first target.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI actually deeply understand the technology and I can\u2019t be dismissed as \u2018this person just doesn\u2019t understand it,\u2019\u201d Bores said, adding that if elected, he would be only the second Democrat in Congress with a computer science degree.<\/p>\n

Bores incurred the ire of Silicon Valley after sponsoring the RAISE Act, <\/a>an AI transparency bill that was signed into law in December. The law requires large AI labs \u2014 specifically those making more than $500 million in revenue \u2014 to have a publicly available safety plan in place, to stick to it, and to report when a catastrophic safety incident has occurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the sort of light-touch law that other industries might kill for \u2014 more disclosure and planning than proactive oversight.<\/p>\n

Bores says he doesn\u2019t believe Leading the Future wants to see any AI regulation, unless, as the PAC has said, it\u2019s at the federal level. Over the last year, states have been fighting<\/a> against industry to protect their rights to regulate AI in the absence of a federal standard. In December, President Trump signed an executive order<\/a> directing federal agencies to challenge \u201conerous\u201d state AI laws, like Bores\u2019 RAISE Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bores pointed to his campaign\u2019s proposed national AI governance blueprint<\/a> \u2014 spanning eight issue areas and 43 policy recommendations \u2014 adding that anyone serious about federal AI regulation should be supporting him. He has also introduced legislation that would force companies to disclose what goes into their training data and to embed metadata standards that would make synthetic content easier to trace.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leading the Future isn\u2019t the only Silicon Valley-backed PAC getting involved in the midterms. Meta has put $65 million <\/a>into two super PACs \u2014 American Technology Excellence Project and Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across (Meta) California \u2014 to elect state-level candidates who are friendly to the AI and tech industry. And AI companies, industry groups, and top executives donated at least $83 million<\/a> in 2025 to federal campaigns and committees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a \u2018We want to have a piece of the conversation,\u2019\u201d Bores said. \u201cThis is: \u2018We want to intimidate elected officials and browbeat anyone who doesn\u2019t agree with us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe average assembly race in New York raises maybe $100,000 total, maybe less,\u201d Bores continued. \u201cFor one company (Meta) to be spending $65 million on state races, let alone everything they\u2019re doing in Congress \u2014 I think it\u2019s tough for people to understand how much that is above the norm.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Bores has garnered the support of a separate Anthropic-backed PAC called Public First Action, which is spending $450,000<\/a> on the New Yorker. Public First Action also describes itself as pro-AI, but with a focus on transparency, safety, and public oversight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leading the Future, he says, represents \u201can extremely small minority of voices\u201d who see any regulation as a threat to AI progress and who just \u201cwant to let it rip.\u201d Among Bores\u2019 base of supporters<\/a> are tech workers at the very firms whose leaders want to thwart his campaign \u2014 part of a broader pattern<\/a> of grassroots organizing inside tech companies<\/a> over how AI is deployed<\/a> and who it serves.<\/p>\n

On the other end of the spectrum are the minority of people who \u201cwant to pretend AI never existed and put the genie back in the bottle and burn all the data centers,\u201d Bores said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He thinks most Americans are somewhere in the middle \u2014 they use AI and see its potential but are concerned at how fast it\u2019s moving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[They] wonder if the government is up to the task of ensuring we have a future that benefits the many instead of the few,\u201d Bores said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 If you\u2019ve seen the recent ads attacking New York assembly member Alex Bores, you\u2019ll know he used to work for Palantir, the AI company that\u2019s powering the controversial raids and high-volume deportation efforts from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ads even accuse Bores of having made hundreds of thousands of dollars building the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45,284,285,286,287,283,288,289],"tags":[277,278,279,280,281,282],"class_list":["post-1432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-ai-regulation","category-alex-bores","category-equity","category-exclusive","category-government-policy","category-leading-the-future","category-pro-ai-pacs","tag-ai-regulation","tag-alex-bores","tag-equity","tag-exclusive","tag-leading-the-future","tag-pro-ai-pacs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}