By Jai Dulani
This article was originally published by Truthout
AI and crypto firms have spent record amounts on the 2026 midterms.
Late last month, the wealthiest tech executives on the planet smiled next to President Donald Trump after essentially pinky-swearing they would voluntarily adopt safety policies around AI. While Trump described the agreement as “morally binding,” legal liability or enforcement measures were not explicit parts of the accord. The key takeaway from this handshake deal is that the people with the most amount of political power sit in Silicon Valley, not in Washington, D.C.
With the midterm elections just weeks away, it’s a good time to reflect on what Big Tech’s actions during this election season have revealed about its agenda and the larger context of the industry’s political influence. From CNN to The New York Times to NPR, there has been extensive news coverage of the hundreds of millions of dollars Big Tech has spent on the midterm elections. Months before Election Day, corporate spending this election cycle had already exceeded total disclosed corporate spending in the 2024 presidential election by 12 percent. The top two industries setting this record — with over half a billion dollars spent and counting — are crypto and AI. This unprecedented corporate spending on midterm elections is key to the tech industry’s plan to rig every level of government to work for the industry, from state legislatures to Congress.
Crypto’s Spending in the Primaries Was About More Than Crypto Regulation
The crypto industry is the largest political spender this election cycle, having spent over $200 million so far. The race it spent the most on was Felix Barry Moore’s campaign for U.S. Senate in Alabama. Crypto super PACs spent over $12 million supporting Moore, who has a pro-crypto track record; as the U.S. representative for Alabama’s 1st district, Moore co-sponsored a bill that prohibits the Federal Reserve from developing or issuing a central bank digital currency for U.S. monetary policy. This leaves digital assets under private control, away from federal scrutiny, which is what the industry wants.
In Illinois, crypto-related PACs spent over $10 million against former Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Stratton has been vocal against the crypto industry. Politico reported that Stratton is endorsed by two prominent industry critics: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Pritzker signed a digital assets law last year establishing regulatory oversight and protections for consumers against scams and fraud. In 2025, the FBI reported over $11 billion in losses related to cryptocurrency fraud in its Internet Crime Report.
Crypto corporations were also the dominant corporate political spenders in 2024 and gave $18 million to Trump’s 2025 inauguration. These contributions have paid off many times over the course of Trump’s second term. Trump removed Biden-era regulators and replaced them with crypto industry business partners or former industry insiders. In April 2025, the Trump administration shuttered the Department of Justice’s crypto enforcement team. Trump pardoned several crypto companies and billionaires that were under investigation for criminal money laundering and fraud, often after receiving investments in his own crypto empire. In June of this year, it was revealed that the Trump family has made at least $2.3 billion from crypto-related ventures during Trump’s second term.
This election season, Trump and the crypto industry were pushing for Congress to pass the Clarity Act, a bill essentially written by the crypto industry that locks in deregulation. From 2025 through August 2026, crypto companies Coinbase and Ripple spent a combined $18 million on lobbying Congress. Crypto donors gave Trump’s primary super PAC, MAGA Inc., over $88 million, more than any other industry. On September 15, the Clarity Act failed to advance through the Senate by a vote of 49-50. However, the attempt shed light on what the industry is seeking in terms of legislation: exemption from robust oversight, weak consumer and investor protections, and no prevention of conflicts of interest for self-enrichment and corruption.
One doesn’t need to be invested in crypto to be harmed by the industry. Crypto is increasingly making its way into banks, retirement plans, and payment systems. As economic expert Tonantzin Carmona has noted, when it comes to crypto, “Fundamental public interest questions remain underexplored in current policy discussions. … From financial instability to investor fraud to environmental and public safety risks, the potential consequences are real and growing.” Indeed, Black and Latino communities are disproportionately harmed by the volatility and predatory targeting of the crypto industry. Chastity Murphy, a former economic policy adviser to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, said the fight around regulation is “about who controls money, and whether digital infrastructure serves the public or entrenches private power.”
Crypto’s political spending is about entrenching private power and extracting wealth, leaving everyday people vulnerable to a destabilized financial system with no recourse when scammed.
The AI Debate: Two Sides of the Same Coin
As Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender describe in their book, The AI Con, there are two camps in the AI world: AI doomers and AI boosters. Each camp is part of the same AI hype machine, in which, as scientists and advocate Timnit Gebru states, “the utopia and doom is still a marketing ploy.” Over the course of the AI industry’s massive spending leading up to the midterms, the two forces that have embodied this debate are OpenAI and Anthropic. The Leading the Future super PAC network, often referred to as OpenAI’s super PAC, and the Public First Action super PAC network, backed by Anthropic, have been framed as pro-innovation and pro-safety respectively.
A look at super PAC spending in North Carolina exemplifies the difference between the two super PAC networks, as well as how they ultimately advance the same outcome. Anthropic’s super PAC spent over $1.6 million on ads backing Rep. Valerie Foushee in the primary for North Carolina’s 4th congressional district. Foushee is one of three co-chairs of the House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy, to which she was appointed in December 2025. Foushee has supported regulation such as a requirement to label when content is made by generative AI. Also in North Carolina, Leading the Future spent over $500,000 on ads promoting Republican Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina’s 1st district Republican primary. Buckhout has promised to maintain “American dominance in AI.” While the “innovation” camp tends to spend more on Republicans and the “safety” camp on Democrats, these two sides are fundamentally the same; focusing on future hypothetical hype or doom leads to the public ignoring the current harms of AI: surveillance, data centers, labor exploitation, pollution, and discrimination.
David Sacks, former AI and crypto czar for the Trump administration, has described Anthropic as running a “sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.” In many ways, Sacks is right. As Lina Khan, who served as chair of the Federal Trade Commission from 2021 to 2025, has pointed out, “Much of the commentary from the executives suggests they currently operate in a legal vacuum, as if AI has wiped clean the regulatory map. In fact, their business practices — including how they develop and deploy their technologies — are already subject to longstanding laws.” As Big Tech and corporate media set false terms of debate — innovation vs. regulation — we must remember, there are plenty of laws on the books to tackle the harms of AI. What we’re lacking is enforcement.
Crypto and AI’s Political Spending Pivot to States
Last year, Trump and the AI industry pushed for federal preemption, proposing to block states from regulating AI for a decade. Crypto exchange Coinbase also asked the Department of Justice to submit a “views letter” to Congress arguing that any new federal crypto legislation should include strong preemption provisions, meaning that when federal law is explicit, it overrides conflicting state crypto regulations. The tech industry didn’t win preemption. Now, in response to the growing wins in the grassroots movement to resist data centers, the industry has pivoted to political spending in state and local races.
California has been a major battleground of this pivot. Just this past year, nearly 30 AI-related measures have been enacted in the state, with Gov. Gavin Newsom having recently signed 11 AI regulatory bills into law. Crypto and AI corporations have poured money into lobbying efforts as well as California state PACs. Meta launched its own California PAC, Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across (Meta) California, pouring in $20 million solely for local elections in the state. The result has largely been watered-down bills and some vetoes, with some notable exceptions. Workers were able to claim victory as bills were passed that protect workers against surveillance and the ability to be fired by an algorithm. Overall, the industry is running the same playbook at the state level that it ran federally: game the system to ensure there is little to no meaningful regulation.
Research reveals that the policies Meta and Google opposed via super PAC spending include AI safety laws like California’s Senate Bill 53 (S.B. 53), which would require companies to disclose how various safety issues are approached, how “catastrophic” risks are inspected, and how “critical safety incidents” are responded to. S.B. 53 would also make it easier for members of the public and company whistleblowers to report potential safety risks.
Another law Meta and Google opposed via super PAC spending is California’s Assembly Bill 2013 (A.B. 2013), also known as the Generative AI Training Data Transparency Act. The law requires AI developers to clearly explain which dataset sources were used to train models and if personal information or synthetic data was used to train the model.
Crypto billionaires Chris Larsen and Tim Draper also funded the Grow California PAC, which focused on electing corporate-friendly candidates as a “counterforce” to the state’s labor movement. In District 67 (Los Angeles and Orange County), Grow California spent nearly $1.5 million opposing UNITE HERE Co-President Ada Briceño. This was the highest spending in any state assembly race in California. The tech billionaires outspent organized labor almost 7 to 1. Briceño lost in the primary. Big Tech is not just protecting its industry; it is also funding opposition to worker organizing.
Big Tech is also funding broader attacks on democracy. Larsen is funding a ballot measure in San Francisco that would make it harder to advance public proposals via petitions. Proposition D would increase the number of signatures required to qualify ballot initiatives from 2 percent to 8 percent of the city’s registered votes, or roughly 10,000 to 42,000. Previously, Larson has also personally spent over $9 million expanding police surveillance in San Francisco through a fleet of drones and 2,700 private cameras that cops can watch in real time.
What has been revealed this election cycle is that, in the age of crypto and the AI boom, Silicon Valley has carried out a near-total capture of our federal government. Meanwhile, Big Tech has pivoted to state elections in an attempt to undermine the levels of government where our organizing still has leverage. Our best tool is to continue organizing people — fighting data centers, fighting flock cameras, fighting the tech companies that are destroying our lives. It is only through this grassroots power that we can show politicians and political parties that they need to be more afraid of organized people than they are of upsetting tech donors.
This article was originally published by Truthout and is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Please maintain all links and credits in accordance with our republishing guidelines.
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.