Quote · This Week in Tech (Audio)
TWiT 1086: The Great Beagle Migration - Pope Leo XIV's 1st Encyclical & Ferrari's 1st EV
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Crypto, AI and the Takeover of American Politics
At 44:30 · chapter starts 44:10
Molly White drops a significant announcement: she is expanding her Follow the Crypto election spending tracker — which has documented crypto industry's massive political influence — to cover AI lobbying as well, renaming it Tech Influence Watch, available via citationneeded.news. [1] — Molly White "Hundreds of Wikipedia volunteer editors are threatening to strike after the Wikimedia Foundation disbanded its dedicated community wishlist…" 2:22:27 Gary Rivlin makes the stunning observation that Andreessen Horowitz has become the single largest political donor in the current election cycle, outspending even Elon Musk's $250 million and eclipsing traditional power industries like oil and banking. The panel details specific examples: AI and crypto PACs spending tens of millions against California state legislators who proposed mild AI regulations, Palantir funding attack mailers against a data scientist state legislator, and crypto groups running attack ads against politicians while the super PAC's own donors have ICE contracts. Molly White draws the connection to Citizens United: when the payoff of spending $100 million on lobbying is billions in favorable regulation, the math always works out in favor of spending. She notes a rare bipartisan note of optimism — Maine's 2024 referendum to limit corporate political spending passed with 75% of the vote.
The tech industry's favorite argument is that AI development is inevitable — if we don't do it, China will. Molly White and Pope Leo XIV both reject this framing, arguing that humans retain the capacity to decide whether, and how, to develop AI. It's not physics. It's a choice.
A Quinnipiac poll found 65% of Americans support some form of AI regulation, while only 22% oppose regulation on innovation grounds.
The auto industry lobbied furiously against seatbelts and emissions standards. They lost. And in the 60 years since, the industry innovated more than in its entire prior history. Sam Abuelsamid argues this is the perfect counter-argument to Silicon Valley's claim that AI regulation will kill innovation — constraints force creativity.
