Big Tech Buying Influence, Threatening Nonprofits, and … Summoning the Antichrist?
This week in The Dispatch we’re covering Big Tech’s no-holds-barred lobbying campaign that secured a last-minute veto of the nation’s strongest kids’ AI safety bill, OpenAI’s legal intimidation campaign, and Palantir CEO Peter Thiel’s bizarre obsession with the Antichrist.
Welcome back to The Dispatch from The Tech Oversight Project, your weekly updates on all things tech accountability. Follow us on Twitter at @Tech_Oversight and @techoversight.bsky.social on Bluesky.
💌 FROM OPENAI, WITH THREATS: As California was on the verge of passing one of the nation’s first AI safety laws, OpenAI didn’t just lobby against it — it tried to weaponize the courts to stop it. It was a fishing expedition — a billion-dollar company using discovery in one case to gather intelligence on a law meant to regulate it.
In August, a sheriff’s deputy showed up at the home of Nathan Calvin, General Counsel of the three-person nonprofit Encode Justice, with a subpoena from OpenAI demanding his private emails, texts, and legislative communications – not just about potential funding from Elon Musk (which they don’t receive) but also related to SB 53, California’s landmark AI bill that applies basic guardrails to AI and protects whistleblowers’ ability to come forward when catastrophe arises.
This is exactly the kind of bill OpenAI spent months trying to water down. The company already tried writing to the Governor, lobbying him to exempt firms that work with the federal government, effectively gutting the bill.
“This is not normal,” Calvin wrote in a thread on X. “OpenAI used an unrelated lawsuit to intimidate advocates of a bill trying to regulate them — while the bill was still being debated.”
OpenAI’s excuse was that the subpoena was part of its lawsuit against Elon Musk. But it explicitly sought “all communications concerning SB 53 or its potential impact on OpenAI.” That’s not just bullying; it’s an unprecedented abuse of process.
Joshua Achiam, OpenAI’s Head of Mission Alignment, bravely came forward to condemn the move on X:
“The dangerously incorrect use of power is the result of many small choices that are all borderline but get no pushback; without someone speaking up once in a while it can get worse. So, this is my pushback.”
OpenAI’s Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon tried to spin the subpoenas as “standard process.” They weren’t. No other AI company subpoenas its opponents in policy fights. In a surprise to no one outside of OpenAI’s C-suite, a federal magistrate judge has already reprimanded OpenAI for overreaching in that same case.
The sad part: OpenAI calls itself a nonprofit for humanity. They are supposed to be harnessing AI for the public good. They should be better than this, but unfortunately they aren’t. And that speaks volumes about the motives behind Sam Altman’s quest to convert the company to a for-profit.
🤖 CHILD SAFETY DOWNGRADED TO “NON-ESSENTIAL FEATURE”: California had the chance to lead the nation on kids’ AI safety and tripped at the finish line. AB 1064 (LEAD for Kids Act) would have prohibited “companion” chatbots from engaging with minors unless they met strict safety standards — creating badly needed, comprehensive guardrails for AI chatbots used by kids. Instead, Governor Newsom sided with Big Tech and vetoed AB 1064 after an unprecedented barrage of bad-faith arguments and a lobbying campaign larger in size and scope than Sacramento has ever seen on kids’ safety before.
It was a Big Tech lobbying blitz — proxy groups and trade associations up front, a flood of ads, PACs, and cash behind them.
Big Tech’s anti-kids war chest:
- Meta: rolled out both a California PAC and a national “American Technology Excellence Project,” each pledging tens of millions to shape state tech law. It spent $13.8 million in the first half of 2025 — with 86 lobbyists on payroll.
- OpenAI + a16z: bankrolling Leading the Future, a $100M+ super PAC built to install AI-friendly politicians and shield their products from oversight. OpenAI’s own lobbying hit $1.7 million in H1 2025.
- Google, Apple, Amazon: fund trade and proxy outfits — “small business” groups like the Connected Commerce Council — to send scripted letters and ads that look grassroots but trace straight back to Silicon Valley.
- The American Innovators Network (a16z-backed) ran 90+ California-targeted ads (>$50k) painting AB 1064 as an “education ban,” while TechNet and the Chamber of Progress each logged roughly $200k in lobbying during the first half of 2025.
Altogether, Big Tech companies and their associations poured at least $2.5 million into Sacramento lobbying just in the first six months of the year — with third-quarter totals, expected to be even higher, due out in the coming weeks.
Read some more thoughts on this from The Tech Oversight Project's Executive Director, Sacha Haworth here.
OpenAI even issued a press statement calling Newsom's decision ‘responsible’ – despite previously, and probably falsely, claiming they never officially registered opposition to it. But there's nothing responsible about lobbying to kill the strongest child-safety bill in the country while kids are dying and families are grieving.
California’s 2025 session still proved something bigger: Lawmakers and advocates still pushed through landmark bills on AI accountability, privacy, and youth safety — proof that organized pressure can beat industry scare tactics and rewrite the playbook in the heart of Big Tech’s backyard. We’ll be back in January, alongside parents, experts, and coalition partners, to continue fighting for the protections AB 1064 would’ve delivered — and make it impossible for Big Tech to buy another veto.
🇺🇸 AMERICA “BIG TECH” FIRST, ACCOUNTABILITY NOWHERE: In a surprise to literally no one, turns out Trump’s “America First” agenda is actually a Big Tech First agenda — designed to lock in deregulation worldwide, baking corporate immunity into trade deals so no country, state, or agency can penalize them for lawbreaking — if states pass AI transparency or child-safety laws, and Congress dares to follow suit, Big Tech’s trade negotiators can claim those rules violate “digital trade commitments.”
Public Citizen found that Trump’s trade agenda is built to wipe out rules at home and abroad — from gutting watchdogs like the FTC and CFPB to handing out tax breaks and dropping enforcement cases that — god forbid — might keep Big Tech accountable.
We’ve already seen domestic attempts: Ted Cruz’s AI moratorium — crushed 99–1 for being a blatant Big Tech giveaway — and now its sequel, the SANDBOX Act, a rebranded attempt to waive any federal law the Trump White House deems “inhibiting.”
Big Tech doesn’t want competition. It doesn’t want regulation. It certainly doesn’t want public accountability. So they’re trying to hijack the rules themselves — using trade agreements to immunize their behavior from democratic oversight. It’s the same scam, just international — a way to preempt democratic regulation before it exists.
👹 FAITH IN THE ALGORITHM, AMEN: Peter Thiel has decided that those who stand in his way are not only obstacles to Big Tech supremacy but also demonic agents … and he’s intent on letting all of Silicon Valley know. In his four-part lecture series on the Antichrist, he argues that anyone calling for guardrails on AI is literally on Satan’s payroll. He’s fusing Revelation with revenue — casting critics of AI as “legionnaires of the Antichrist” while his companies build the surveillance tech everyone’s actually scared of. It’s transhumanism meets televangelism: a gospel where salvation looks a lot like another Pentagon contract.
Supplemental material for your Peter Thiel doomsday studies...
What’s up with Peter Thiel and the Antichrist?
Aaron Mak, Politico
The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession
Laura Ballard, Wired
Elissa Welle
David Ingram
Carmen Arroyo
Emanuel Maiberg
Peter Kafka
Rae Witte
Lauren Goode