Big Tech Ads Blanket Battlegrounds, LTF Loses Bipartisan Cred

This week in The Dispatch: the AI industry's attack super PAC loses its only Dem donor; the AI midterms, two weeks out; Big Tech bankrolls Trump's ballroom; a new poll finds voters see its CEOs as Team Trump

Graeme Sloan—Getty Images

Welcome back to The Dispatch from The Tech Oversight Project, your weekly updates on all things tech accountability. Follow us on Twitter and Bluesky.

🗽🗓️ LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT'S THE TECH OVERSIGHT PROJECT: Dangerous AI chatbots are pushing their way into young people's lives, raising urgent questions about how to keep our kids safe, and what the companies building these products should be required to do about it. Today, The Tech Oversight Project, the TAG Movement, and Reset Tech bring survivor parents, young people, medical and youth-development experts, and New York lawmakers writing the rules into one room at the Brooklyn Heights Library for a free, open public conversation.

Alongside TOP's Sacha Haworth, participants include State Sen. Kristen Gonzalez, sponsor of New York’s pending AI chatbot safety legislation, who argues in a new City & State op-ed that the state needs stronger AI regulation to protect kids; NYU professor and author Jonathan Haidt; and Parents RISE! Executive Director Julianna Arnold.

JOIN US tomorrow, 10:30 AM–noon, at Brooklyn Heights Library, 286 Cadman Plaza West, Brooklyn. Event details and registration here.

📺 THE ONE THING EVERYONE CAN AGREE ON: In a bruising election year, there’s one thing dozens of candidates across the nation agree on: Americans have had enough of data centers. And the campaign ads in the final weeks before Election Day reflect that sentiment. Democrats are running them at roughly double the rate of Republicans, taking the advice TOP has pushed all year: the way to win is to stand with families over Big Tech. A few we're watching:

KANSAS: Democratic gubernatorial nominee Cindy Holscher’s statewide ad, "Sunflowers," calls for a pause on data centers until Kansas has set guardrails to protect its communities, farms, jobs, and budgets. Her criticism of data centers over the summer helped her win the primary.

COLORADO: In the 5th Congressional district, Army veteran Jessica Killin's ad "Lies" backs a local moratorium — saying Rep. Jeff Crank took over $100,000 from data center developers and Big Tech, then voted for tax breaks and favorable regulations.

CALIFORNIA: In a state where a majority of voters oppose new data centers and America’s first municipal data center ban passed earlier this year, multiple state house candidates are hitting their opponents hard on the issue.

NEW DATA: PROOF THE MESSAGE IS LANDING. New Economist/YouGov polling finds that voters who live within a mile of a data center are breaking toward Democrats – 61% now back the Democratic ticket, up from 54% in May, a sharper shift than the electorate overall. Local fights over energy costs, land, and community control are becoming national politics, and showing up at the polls.

Candidates are embracing the issue as campaigns lay out their closing message. In Michigan, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is making AI accountability central with a new plan, “AI Under Control,” which includes a pause on frontier AI development until federal oversight is in place, a Cabinet-level watchdog agency to regulate the labs, mandatory breach audits, whistleblower protections, and a national AI-safety emergency plan. They key argument: decisions that are this consequential for jobs, safety, and society shouldn't be left to tech executives to make by themselves.

MORE RACES TO WATCH: As Election Day approaches, there are races all over the country that will be likely swayed by their candidates’ approaches to Big Tech, AI, and data centers. Here are just some to keep an eye over these closing weeks:

Sherrod Brown (OH-Sen) – Pummeling Sen. Husted with data center ads
Jon Ossoff (GA-Sen) – Up with ads touting his online safety record and challenges to Big Tech in Washington.
Justin Pearson (TN-9) – Environmental justice champion taking on Big Tech's dirty data centers polluting Memphis
Manny Rutinel (CO-8) – AI safety champion taking on Rep. Gabe Evens who voted for state AI law ban and data center handouts.
Jake Johnson (MN-1) – Challenging Rep. Brad Finstad on an anti-corporate and data center message.

💸 AN INVESTMENT, NOT A DONATION: Big Tech put up more money for Donald Trump's new White House ballroom than any other industry — $126.1 million of the $333 million raised, according to a Washington Post investigation of the donor list. Nvidia and Apple led the way at $25 million apiece, the two largest single gifts on the list, and companies or executives with federal contracts or business before the government accounted for about half the total.

TOP’s Sacha Haworth: “Big Tech giants didn’t just chip in for Trump’s ballroom – they bankrolled it fully expecting a return on their investment. The same companies funding Trump’s vanity project lined up for tax breaks, chip deals, federal contracts, and a blind eye to lawbreaking. Under Donald Trump, there’s a two-tiered justice system. Big Tech plays by a different set of rules because they bought their way in.”

🏝️ LTF IS ON AN ISLAND, ALL BY ITSELF: Leading the Future – the Silicon Valley super PAC network built to defeat candidates who back AI safeguards and bully lawmakers into line – is coming apart two weeks before Election Day. This week it lost its only Democratic megadonor. Venture capitalist Ron Conway now regrets his $500,000 donation to the group, according to Jay Carney, the former Obama press secretary who now runs Conway's AI policy initiative. In an interview with Politico, Carney admitted: “Ron, if he had to do that over again, he wouldn’t make that donation.”

Conway's exit lands just weeks after OpenAI President Greg Brockman abandoned a planned second $25 million check to the PAC, telling OpenAI employees he has “no plans to donate more at this time” and that he feels “terrible about the fact that LTF keeps reflecting on the company.”

The defections cap a brutal stretch. As Transformer put it: “Leading the Future hoped it would be able to use obscene amounts of money to buy AI policy. A year in, it’s facing an electorate that wants AI regulation and a safety coalition that’s willing to outspend it. Its original goal is looking a long way off.” The Super PAC reported zero new donations last quarter, after burning through roughly $30 million – with little to show for it.

TOP’s Sacha Haworth: “Brockman and Conway stepped back from Leading the Future because it was an embarrassment to them, not because their politics or goals have changed. Never forget that LTF was supposed to be the Fairshake of 2026 – using aggressive, bullying tactics to intimidate lawmakers into supporting AI laws only the industry wanted. Now that intense public backlash against Big Tech AI is growing exponentially, they’ve been forced to change their tune. Color me skeptical, but industry-backed organizations are only going to be interested in passing tech-friendly legislation that passes off costs and responsibility to the American people.”

WE HAVE SOME QUESTIONS: Will Conway and Brockman also stop funding Build American AI, LTF’s dark-money vehicle? After spending $23 million of its $34 million backing Republicans and attacking Democrats, what credibility does LTF have left with Democrats? And with Conway now backing a separate Big Tech policy operation, why should Democrats trust Silicon Valley to put their interests ahead of its own?

We’re tracking all 17 of the industry-funded groups backed by Google, Meta, OpenAI, Palantir, a16z, and Anthropic with our AI Super PAC research book and digital ad library. Watch 200+ new campaign ads and fresh intelligence on the executives writing the checks.

📊 SEEING RED: Voters have noticed the pay-to-play – and they see which direction the money’s flowing. A new POLITICO Poll from PF Global, out yesterday, finds Americans across party lines now see Big Tech CEOs as firmly aligned with Team MAGA:

Pluralities of both Harris (38%) and Trump (26%) voters agreed that the AI and tech industry was the biggest spender for Republican causes.
59% believe Elon Musk is a Republican, to just 14% who call him a Democrat — matching the reality that he gave at least $276 million to boost Republicans last quarter alone, the most of any donor this cycle, continuing the political spending spree that arguably helped Trump secure a second term and a Republican Congress in 2024.
The AI-lab chiefs are read as leaning red, too, including Sam Altman (32% to 22%) and Anthropic's Dario Amodei (28% to 20%) – a far cry from the days when Silicon Valley leaders were thought to lean Dem.

Big Tech has spent years openly courting Trump, and the public has caught on. That's a problem for Republican candidates who are now tied to a public relations anvil. It's also a reminder that the same executives raising families' power bills and fighting safety protections for our kids are the ones who bought their seats at the president's table, at the rest of our expense.

🏡 THE WARNINGS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE: The New York Times editorial board slams AI companies’ insistent attempts to dodge responsibility for products they themselves warn can be dangerous, calling for strict enforcement of existing liability laws while new laws and regulations are written to encompass new technologies.