Welcome to “Regulator,” a newsletter dedicated to exploring the dynamic intersection of technology and politics from Washington, D.C. If you’re not already a subscriber, we invite you to join our editorial community today, especially as we reflect on the conclusion of the Musk vs. Altman saga. For those with insights or tips about upcoming or under-the-radar developments in Washington, please reach out to tina.nguyen+tips@theverge.com.
Editor’s Note: Regulator will be taking a brief hiatus for the next two weeks as I embark on a much-needed vacation. Unfortunately, this means I will miss the public unveiling of Pope Leo XIV’s anticipated encyclical on humanity in the digital age, which has been generating buzz for months. However, rest assured, The Verge team will cover it extensively, so make sure to bookmark our site!
In an intriguing twist, artificial intelligence super PACs are now emerging as potent political entities, and paradoxically, as political vulnerabilities. On Tuesday, Alex Bores, a Democratic congressional hopeful from New York who champions AI regulation, issued a challenge to Leading the Future—a $100 million pro-AI super PAC funded by Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, Andreessen Horowitz, and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman—for a live, face-to-face debate. The Bores campaign outlined their stipulations: Leading the Future could select the moderator and its representative, but they must agree to hold the debate before the June 23rd primary.
The odds of this debate actually occurring are slim, as Leading the Future has yet to comment on the challenge. Nevertheless, this marks a significant escalation in a trend I’ve been following: AI industry super PACs developing their own political identities, reflective of the companies and founders backing them, and using these identities to engage in political sparring.
When Leading the Future launched last year, it resembled a typical super PAC, supported by wealthy individuals and corporations with common policy objectives, and active at both state and federal election levels. This was politics on steroids, made possible by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which affirmed corporate free speech rights and led to the creation of special campaign finance vehicles allowing unlimited donations to political advocacy groups. However, shortly after, Meta announced its own AI-focused super PACs, signaling differing AI interests compared to those funding Leading the Future. Over time, Leading the Future has been viewed as an OpenAI-centric entity, especially as some of its backers are investors in the AI frontier company. This perception was reinforced when Anthropic contributed $20 million to Public First Action, a bipartisan super PAC network supporting Bores.
Legally, super PACs cannot coordinate directly with candidates on advertising and messaging. While it’s typical for companies to support certain candidates via super PACs, it’s rather novel for companies to use these entities to target corporate competitors, with the candidate sometimes being secondary. Now, Public First is synonymous with Anthropic and “doomerism” (in Leading the Future’s terms), while Leading the Future, as characterized by Bores, is recognized as the “Marc Andreessen-Greg Brockman-Joe Lonsdale-endorsed” super PAC. The beauty of non-coordination campaign finance laws is that Bores, coauthor of the New York state RAISE Act, can maintain plausible deniability regarding any Anthropic-funded political maneuvers on his behalf. After all, corporate money remains corporate money.
Legally, super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with candidates on things such as ad buys and messaging. But while it’s normal for companies to use super PACs to back candidates against other candidates, it’s rather innovative, perhaps, for companies to use super PACs to attack their corporate rivals (and the candidate is, in some ways, incidental). Now, Public First is synonymous with Anthropic and “doomerism” (in LTF’s terms), and LTF, as Bores put it, is now known as “the Marc Andreessen-Greg Brockman-Joe Lonsdale-backed Leading the Future super PAC.” And the beauty of non-coordination campaign finance laws is that Bores, the coauthor of the New York state RAISE Act, can plausibly distance himself from whatever Anthropic-funded political shenanigans are going on on his behalf. (Corporate money is corporate money.)
Dark money? More like dork money: We haven’t even gone into the shadier world of campaign finance vehicles, including one that might start firing on LTF in order to appease Trump. (Apparently, according to The New York Times, Leading the Future is too bipartisan to be trusted by Republicans.)
In March, a pro-AI, political advocacy messaging nonprofit called Innovation Council Action revealed itself to the public, run by Donald Trump’s former adviser Taylor Budowich and already boasting a $100 million war chest. Crucially, it received the “blessing” of a recurring Regulator character, David Sacks, former White House special adviser on AI and crypto. ICA will be focused explicitly on promoting Trump’s AI agenda, and that means addressing a new issue inside the Republican Party: populist-leaning candidates unwilling to cave to whatever pro-industry positions Donald Trump has been convinced to repeat at any given time.
(Who’s pushing this agenda? We currently do not know. ICA is known as a “dark money nonprofit,” which means that unlike super PACs, its donors do not legally have to be disclosed.)
Time to regulate prediction markets now!
The latest technology causing a meltdown in Congress is prediction markets, which currently exist in a regulatory no man’s land: Is trading on a prediction market gambling, or is it something else completely that deserves its own legislation? The Senate Commerce Committee is holding its first hearing on sports betting and prediction markets, and in a sign that the tech industry is really tech industry-ing, they’re sending in the big guns. Patrick McHenry, the former Republican chair of the House Financial Services Committee, who left Congress to join a16z and became a crypto lobbyist, will be testifying as a representative for a new industry advocacy group called the Coalition for Prediction Markets.
But what’s even more interesting is the growing coalitions of industries who really, really dislike prediction markets: the gaming industry (casinos and the like), the futures market, traditional sports betting, any sort of industry that thinks prediction markets threaten their business. It’s my first bet as to who’s behind FairPredicts, a “watchdog” group that’s launched a six-figure ad buy timed for this Senate hearing. The ads, which go up in Washington in metro stations and digital (as well as buses circling Capitol Hill — yes, really), are a direct parody of Kalshi’s giant green ads from earlier this year:
And speaking of strategic industry coalitions moving against Big Tech politics! The Clarity Act’s Senate Banking Committee markup last week sailed through surprisingly quickly, with two Democrats included in the 15–9 majority that approved it after roughly three hours of debate. The bill, which would create a financial framework around stablecoins, has already experienced a ton of drama: Coinbase dramatically revoked its support over interest yields, traditional banks had a meltdown in response, and all the while, the midterms have loomed in the background.
But the drama has yet to end, both procedurally and politically. There’s the reconciliation process, a Senate floor vote, the bill returning to the House, and whatever political shenanigans happen between then and now. And politically, a growing number of normally misaligned industry groups are echoing the banks in opposition to the Clarity Act, for a variety of reasons; the police unions think that it would prevent law enforcement from tracking money laundering, and the labor unions think it will drain workers’ pension funds. Once again, technology is making horseshoe theory happen!
Specifically, my recess. With any luck, politics and technology will not crash out at the intersection too aggressively while I’m out. But that might be a lot to ask for.
