A coalition of artificial intelligence companies and Silicon Valley leaders launched a new political action committee that will advocate against strict AI regulation. The new PAC is called Leading the Future.
Leading the Future
Leading the new PAC are political strategists Zac Moffatt and Josh Vlasto. Moffatt is the founder and CEO of Targeted Victory, a campaign consulting agency. Vlasto is a partner at Bamberger & Vlasto, a firm focused on campaign management and more.
“This is about more than technology,” Moffatt and Vlasto said in a joint statement. “It’s about economic growth, national security, and global leadership. Leading the Future is here to make sure innovation wins.”
Major supporters include venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capitalist Ron Conway.
The PAC has already raised more than $100 million in initial funding. It will operate through a structured ecosystem of federal and state super PACs.
Unlike other PACs, this one will focus on one issue.
“A political party reflects lots and lots of different issues that the party supports different candidates for,” Richard Pildes, professor of Constitutional law at New York University, told Straight Arrow News. “The party may have somewhat different views of different issues. This is a very, very targeted, single-issue-oriented super PAC.”
AI regulation
The team behind Leading the Future said the goal is to make sure the U.S. remains the global leader in AI through policies at the state and federal levels. They added that AI has already transformed the global economy and said America should lead in advancing policies that drive both innovation and economic growth.
They plan to oppose policies that stifle innovation or enable China to gain global AI superiority.
Bloomberg spoke with former Meta executive Nick Chegg about the AI race with China, who said what’s going on between Silicon Valley and politicians here in America is similar to how it works in China.
“The convergence of political power in D.C. and industrial power in Silicon Valley is in part premised on the view that that is the way to beat China in the race for AI supremacy,” former Meta executive Nick Clegg told Bloomberg. “But there are two things which are really interesting to observe about this: Firstly, in coming together in this very new, intimate relationship between Silicon Valley and DC, oddly enough, America is behaving more like the Chinese.”
Silicon Valley has historically backed liberal candidates. But in the last election, technology companies and executives supported more conservative candidates, including President Donald Trump.
Trump has been very pro-AI, issuing an executive order during his first term that pushed the U.S. to be a leader in the industry.
“We’ll have to see which races they spend their money on,” Pildes said of the new PAC. “We’ll have to see how much other money is coming into those races. Competitive congressional races can now involve huge amounts of money on both sides.”
There is also a growing divide in Silicon Valley over regulating AI models before they become too powerful.
“There is a vast force out there that’s looking to slow down AI deployment, prevent the American worker from benefiting from the U.S. leading in global innovation and job creation and erect a patchwork of regulation,” Vlasto and Moffatt said in a joint statement to the Wall Street Journal. “This is the ecosystem that is going to be the counterforce going into next year.”
Leading the Future will operate similarly to Fairshake, which is funded by some of the biggest players in the cryptocurrency industry. The organization successfully backed candidates during the 2024 election.
Big money in elections
Federal law prevents corporations from making direct contributions to candidates for U.S. offices. But PACs and super PACs allow companies to back candidates of their choosing without violating campaign finance laws. Those committees are not allowed to be directly affiliated with campaigns or candidates.
“When it comes to the kind of independent spending that super PACs do, it doesn’t matter whether the money that comes into them comes from individuals or comes from the firms,” Pildes said. “Either one is constitutionally protected.”
It takes a significant amount of money to get anyone elected president. The Trump campaign and affiliated PACs spent nearly $1.5 billion during the last campaign season.
More than $245 million of that came from tech industry leader Elon Musk.
“I would be surprised if this particular new super PAC radically changes the debate about these issues and the reaction to the enormous amounts of money that now are spent on our elections,” Pildes said. “It’s already the case that in public opinion polling, very large majorities of Americans don’t like the system, don’t like the amount of money that’s spent on elections.”
In a recent Pew Research poll, 72% of those surveyed said there should be limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations can spend on political campaigns.
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Author: Alan Judd
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