Breaking Points: AI Lobbyists Spend Millions to Stop Regulation

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Power, money, and AI are colliding in plain view, and this latest Breaking Points episode really exposes what's happening. Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti dive into the tech industry's growing political muscle by focusing on New York State Assembly member Alex Bores. He's facing roughly $8 million in AI super PAC spending that he says helped push him out of Congress. Eight million dollars against one state legislator? That's remarkable. What did he do to trigger that kind of response? He made state-level AI regulation his signature issue. His Raise Act would set basic safety standards for frontier AI companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Meta. We're talking about requiring safety plans and reporting of critical incidents. Pretty reasonable stuff, right? But according to Bores, that triggered a furious backlash, with the industry pledging at least $10 million to defeat him and send a warning to others. And the episode highlights just how concentrated that money is. Major donors include Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman. But here's what's interesting: Bores argues the real divide isn't partisan in the usual way.

Right, he says it's between tech executives spending millions to avoid regulation and the much larger group of tech workers who are actually closer to the technology and more supportive of safety rules.

That split really matters because public opinion appears to be on the side of oversight. Bores says Democrats and Republicans alike generally want more AI regulation. Organizations like the Guardrails Alliance are trying to match industry super PACs with worker-led pressure. So the political fight isn't over whether people want safety, but over who gets to write the rules. And Bores is skeptical of the industry's public messaging. He points out that OpenAI and other leaders speak about AI safety in public, but their lobbying tells a different story. If executives truly wanted regulation, they would defund groups like "Leading the Future" and "Build American AI," which exist to block safety legislation.

The episode also questions whether Democrats need to "repair relationships" with tech executives at all. Bores argues that tech workers are already largely Democratic, and that the real repair needed is with a small group of executives spending tens of millions to stop regulation.

Despite the backlash, Bores remains optimistic. He says support for action is growing across the spectrum, with voices like Bernie Sanders, Chip Roy, and several Republican senators calling for federal measures.

But he warns that industry lobbyists now want Congress to pass a law that would preempt state rules. His bottom line is clear: Congress must not "take away the power of states to regulate AI," because states have been the only level of government successfully holding the industry accountable. That's the central tension, whether AI will be shaped by public safety or by the deepest pockets in the room.