Where Tech Political Spending Goes Next
Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:
• The Big Read: How a Chinese megabillionaire became the Jensen Huang of batteries.
• Style and Shopping: Tech invaded Cannes. Then we went shopping.
• Plus, Recommendations—our weekly pop culture picks: “Long Buried,” “How to Not Die in Prison” and “Dust Bunny”
On Tuesday, a closely watched Congressional primary in New York City ended in defeat for Alex Bores, a former Palantir engineer turned state legislator who authored one of the country’s most stringent state AI bills. Bores had attracted the ire of Leading the Future, the political action committee created by OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz, with the race turning into one of the most expensive in state history. Ultimately, AI-affiliated groups spent nearly $30 million to support or oppose Bores, who lost by just 5,000 votes. (Ironically, the victor, Micah Lasher, had been a co-sponsor on Bores’ AI bill.)
During his concession speech, Bores echoed a sentiment that I think merits revisiting days later. He criticized the oligarchs who are “hell-bent,” as he put it, on preventing AI regulation, and he offered them a warning. “While we came up short tonight, the example set here tonight was very much not the one they intended,” he declared.
In other words, Tuesday’s results were very much a Pyrrhic victory for Leading the Future and its backers. Technically, they got the outcome they wanted: Bores lost. But their interest in Bores made what should’ve been a sleepy race into national news, and as a result, it seems likely to make voters think even more about AI when they head to vote in November.
“Every candidate running in any district—from city council to president—is going to have to answer what their plan is to ensure that AI doesn’t replace them and their way of life,” said Cooper Teboe, a Democratic campaign strategist who works with California Reps. Ro Khanna and Sam Liccardo. “It’s now a litmus test for other candidates going forward: Where do you stand on AI?”
Brad Carson, the architect of Public First, a pro–AI safety super PAC group that supported Bores, described Tuesday’s results to me as a “tactical defeat” for his side, with the hope that it galvanizes support for Public First’s agenda.
The voter backlash against everything AI related, from data centers to job losses, is growing. As both Bores and his opponent, Lasher, highlighted in their speeches on Tuesday, AI oligarchs attempting to buy elections with tens of millions of dollars of campaign spending can be added to the pile of anxieties. It’s why Liccardo, whom I wrote about for Weekend earlier this month, has been trying to funnel small amounts of tech dollars to fellow Democrats: He figures voters won’t care as much if they’re not billionaire-size contributions.
Looking ahead to the midterms in November, the pro-safety and pro-innovation super PACs that threw money behind Bores and Lasher aren’t facing off in other races—at least not so far. Public First has given money to support California legislator Scott Wiener, who authored his state’s own AI bills and is staring down a competitive general election to replace Nancy Pelosi. Meanwhile, the author of a Colorado AI bill, Manny Rutinel, has his own Congressional primary next week, and is supported by just $1 million in AI super PAC money.
Silicon Valley—and California more broadly—have an eventful November coming up. There’s the gubernatorial race between Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, with Becerra the new tech favorite after the defeat of industry darling Matt Mahan in the primary. Then there’s the proposed billionaire tax, which has galvanized opposition from figures such as Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has spent more than $80 million to defeat it. (Meanwhile, Brin and other people from the Bay Area have decided to hide out in tax-friendlier places, like Incline Village on Lake Tahoe’s Nevada side.) Even the race for the state insurance commissioner has drawn $1 million in funding from billionaire crypto founder Chris Larsen. Beyond California, Meta Platforms is spending tens of millions on state legislator races in Texas and Illinois, two states central to its data center plans.
And here’s a thought about what comes after November: As voters wake up to the realities of AI, the tech campaign spending spree is almost certainly just getting started.—Leo Schwartz ([email protected])
Weekend’s Latest Stories
How a Chinese Megabillionaire Became the Jensen Huang of Batteries
Robin Zeng, exacting and detail obsessed, keeps a stranglehold over a market that touches everything from AI data centers to electric cars. Even if Silicon Valley wanted to, it couldn’t live without him.
What to Wear When Work’s a Beach
Tech invaded southern France this week—with executives from Apple, OpenAI and many other companies turning out in force for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, a summit that draws both Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Their looks gave us some shopping ideas.
Listening: “Long Buried”
Just a weekend ago, I was looking around the Hudson Valley and thinking to myself: Gee, not much happens around here. Well, I was wrong. A lot of murderin’ happens in that neck of the woods.
In 2024, a construction worker unearthed a skeleton encased in a concrete grave, setting off a lengthy investigation recounted in “Long Buried,” a podcast from the Times Union newspaper based in Albany, N.Y.. At first, authorities thought it might actually be the remains of Kathie Durst, the wife of Robert Durst (who seemed to confess to her murder in HBO’s “The Jinx”). Nope! Not Katie, they figure out. Could it be the victim of another long unsolved crime? I won’t spoil it all, which would do a disservice to the fine storytelling from host Phillip Pantuso, a Times Union reporter. In someone else’s hands, the tale would just be more true crime dreck.—Abram Brown
Reading: “How to Not Die in Prison” by Taylor Sheridan and Tom Nelson
The TV empire erected by Taylor Sheridan, the writer-creator impresario, runs on a basic principle: that entertainment is best when it is boisterous as all hell. In between keeping his “Yellowstone” franchise, “Landman” and a half-dozen or so other series on the air, Sheridan has also found time to pen a book imbued with the same energy: “How to Not Die in Prison.” And just like those of “Yellowstone” and “Landman,” the work’s title is an exercise in literalness: It is a guide to surviving incarceration that Sheridan co-wrote with a friend, Tom Nelson, who spent much of his early life in the clink.
Sheridan and Nelson initially met years ago at a Los Angeles gym, and Nelson, with his jail-hardened physique, cut a stark contrast to the other people, who Sheridan describes as “Ken Dolls heading straight to the spray tanner after their workout.” Still, Nelson had something in common with a good many of those bronzed Angelenos: He’d written a screenplay, one loosely based on his time in jail. “It read like a ’90s action movie,” Sheridan writes. “It was good. It was funny. And moreover, it was insightful.”
They adapted it into “How to Not Die in Prison,” which begins by offering the reader a self-assessment rubric that grades a person’s readiness for life behind bars. (I scored a 4 out of 18—in Sing Sing, I’d be a goner.) They then present a chatty compendium of advice, including a helpful glossary of prison slang. (“Tina,” for instance, refers to crystal meth. “Queer juice” is meth. A “cellie” is someone’s cellmate. And “going to the hoop” involves secreting an object in your rear end to evade its detection in a strip search.) Interwoven throughout are Nelson’s recollections from the pokie: They are as rowdy and depraved as anything Sheridan has put on screen. In one anecdote, Nelson discusses a former fellow inmate who killed his cellie and kept his corpse carefully posed for days—à la Norman Bates—to fool the guards into thinking the other man was still alive: He simply wanted to claim the man’s meals for a while. Now, don’t get any ideas about applying the same strategy to in-office catering.—A.B.
Watching: “Dust Bunny”
The fruit of the initial partnership between American director Bryan Fuller and Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen was one of the least conventional programs on network television in the 2010s: “Hannibal,” a stylized adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter novels that presented the doctor’s unusual appetite as a macabre pastiche of “Chef’s Table.” They make a long overdue reunion with “Dust Bunny,” which showcases more of Fuller’s dark, winky humor and Mikkelsen’s deft touch with it. (The film, which Fuller also wrote, was underseen in its release late last year and recently made it to HBO Max.)
Mikkelsen is a nameless assassin who just so happens to live next to a little girl, Aurora (Sophie Sloan), whose foster parents have vanished. She blames their disappearance on a monster under her bed—a man-eating, rabbit-shaped entity composed of dirt and debris: literally, a giant dust bunny. Mikkelsen’s character has his doubts about the creature’s existence and suspects Aurora’s family may instead have been collateral damage in his fight with one of his adversaries. As Fuller allows the mystery to linger, the body count mounts amid several slick, well-choreographed fight scenes. And while the spotlight goes to Mikkelsen, “Dust Bunny” has a number of other notable stars in smaller roles: Sigourney Weaver as Mikkelsen’s malicious, frustrated boss—and the apartment building itself. Fuller shot some of the film within Budapest’s Hungarian State Treasury Building, an Art Nouveau landmark that gives “Dust Bunny” a surreality that borrows as much from Antoni Gaudí as it does from Tim Burton.—A.B.