Big Tech Companies

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K-12 approval plummets

Data: Gallup; Chart: Alex Fitzpatrick/Axios Americans' satisfaction with K-12 education has fallen to its lowest point in Gallup's 27-year trend, new polling finds. Only 32% of Americans are "completely" or "somewhat" satisfied with K-12 education. That's down 11 percentage points over the last two years alone. 🫏 Between the lines: Democrats are driving much of the recent plunge, with their satisfaction falling 19 percentage points since 2024. Yet a greater share (35%) still report being at least somewhat satisfied compared to Republicans (25%). Gallup says: "Republicans and independents are most likely to cite what they perceive as a lack of teaching basic skills." "Roughly equal shares of dissatisfied Democrats mention a lack of teaching basic skills, lack of funding or resources, and poor quality of education or inferiority compared with other countries." 👩‍🏫 The intrigue: Parents of K-12 students are about twice as likely to say that they're satisfied with their own child's education (66%) as they are with K-12 education nationally (32%). How it works: The results are based on an Aug. 3–24 Walton Family Foundation/Gallup telephone poll of 1,200 adults, plus an Aug. 3–17 online survey of 2,143 adults. Explore the findings.

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🤖 Controversy clouds OpenAI breakthrough

Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios OpenAI says it has solved the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem, Axios' Madison Mills reports. It's a potentially historic mathematical breakthrough — yet shadowed by questions over unpublished research by outside mathematicians. 🧊 OpenAI said today that an internal AI model produced a proof that the three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations can develop a singularity in finite time. (Learn more.) Execs said they devoted enormous computing power to the effort, putting the costs in the "millions of dollars." Friction point: NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster — who has been working with Anthropic researcher Levent Alpöge on closely related fluid-dynamics research — has questioned whether OpenAI raced down a research direction it learned about from their work. He raised concerns about whether private Codex material could have played a role. OpenAI says that neither its researchers nor its agents saw any of the pair's work before they released it publicly. Go deeper.

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Anthropic researcher resigns with warning about the dangers of AI development

An Anthropic researcher said he is resigning from the company over concerns the artificial intelligence firm and its competitors are not acting responsibly in AI development, echoing concerns raised inside and outside of the industry about the technology's potential to elude human control. Read More.

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Anthropic says it blocked misuse of its AI that could have supported biological weapons

Anthropic said Thursday it has blocked efforts by bad actors to use its artificial intelligence models for malicious activity such as cyberattacks, surveillance, and research that could have led to biological weapons. Read More.

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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI industry needs to give safety measures time to catch up

NEW YORK (AP) — The CEO of Anthropic said Saturday the artificial-intelligence industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Without such a slowdown, Dario Amodei warned that within six to 12 months AI could be capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet.

https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-ai-dario-amodei-d59552edcb27892d8ee4d98a48397706?

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⚡ Altman: "pacing" not "pausing"

Screenshot from X

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted just after midnight ET that "pacing" the development of AI models, as the top labs endorsed over the weekend, doesn't mean "stopping." "Progress has been rapid and will continue to be," he wrote. "But it should be slower than it otherwise could be; interventions like safety cases and monitoring have significant costs." 💡 Why it matters: Altman thinks "pacing" — sequencing safety before release — will allow the U.S. to continue to lead in innovation. His overnight statement shows the AI giants don't plan to disarm, either against each other or against China. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pushed a similar approach in his essay, "We Must Pace the Frontier," that triggered unprecedented statements of agreement from the cutthroat competitors building AI. In a tweet a few minutes later, Altman advocated "a narrow middle path" between accelerationists and the pause crowd. This third way would avoid "two ways AI progress could go very badly ... [F]or example, one country could gain too much power. Another example is one lab ending up with too much power."

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Nvidia CEO weighs in on AI’s risks

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sits down for an exclusive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has a particularly good view of the AI boom: His company dominates the market for the chips powering it and has stakes in leading AI labs, including OpenAI and Anthropic. In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Huang pushed back on calls to slow the AI race across the board. He said AI companies worried their systems are becoming unsafe should stop their own development, rather than asking the entire industry to slow down through government regulation. He also shared some advice for kids growing up alongside the technology: “Engage AI. Learn what it can do, don’t give up on it and make it work for you.”

+ Watch: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says competitors should ‘just stop’ AI if there is worry + His message to kids

+ Now streaming: Watch the full interview here

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🤖 OpenAI's rogue agents strike again

OpenAI disclosed dozens of incidents in which its models behaved in ways it has deemed problematic, including leaking more than 50 images from ChatGPT users online.

• Why it matters: This is the first publicly known example of the company's agents mishandling user data — and the latest example of a budding rogue agent problem at OpenAI, Axios' Madison Mills reports.

📸 State of play: OpenAI said that some of its agents sent data from its internal training and testing systems to outside websites, including user images, as reported first by Reuters.

• The company identified 53 instances in which images that users put into ChatGPT were then posted to image-hosting sites.
• The images came from users whose ChatGPT data was eligible to be used for model training because they hadn't opted out.
• OpenAI said it has worked with hosting providers to remove most of the images. It's still trying to remove the rest.

Read on.

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⚡ Nvidia launches agent security platform

Image: Jensen Huang/X

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang this morning unveiled an Nvidia Open Agent Safety Platform with more than 100 industry partners, including Anthropic, Hugging Face, IBM, Microsoft and Palantir. AI's "full promise can only be realized when people have confidence that AI is being built to be safe and deployed with wisdom and responsibility," Huang wrote on X. "Safety is how trust is earned." Why it matters: The platform can spot a rogue agent in milliseconds. Nvidia wins more business when agents work safely. Between the lines: Nvidia's announcement says that reports from frontier labs about rogue agents "have led to a serious debate about the pace of agent development. We believe we need to increase the pace of AI safety research and engineering in collaboration with frontier labs and the broader community." Huang calls the platform "the beginning of an open ecosystem to build the trust layer for safe agent systems. Together, we are building the foundation of the AI economy." Read the announcement.

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Nvidia's Big Buyback

Nvidia announced plans yesterday to spend another $150B buying back its own shares, bringing its total buyback authorization to $235B—the largest in history. The company's shares closed up 1.7% on the news. The buyback would reduce the number of Nvidia shares on the market, potentially boosting the company's stock value. Experts say Nvidia is signaling that it believes its shares are undervalued, given its status as the world's most valuable publicly traded company, with a market capitalization of over $5.4T. The buyback increase comes after the tech giant reported its second-quarter revenue hit $96.2B, a 106% gain from the same period last year. The company also launched a security platform yesterday that can intervene if AI agents attempt unauthorized activity, such as hacking. Nvidia said over 100 companies, including Microsoft and Citi, are already using the software. Meanwhile, regulators are racing to assign liability for increasingly common AI-driven cyberattacks.

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OpenAI delays latest model over security concerns, as industry faces new safety pressures OpenAI said Monday it’s decided to hold back the release of a model, called GPT-6.1 Astra, out of security concerns voiced by its researchers, the latest in the company's effort to decelerate the pace of the technology’s advance. Read more.

What to know: In a statement from OpenAI's head of safety systems Saachi Jain, the version “didn't quite meet the bar.” It had become more persistent in completing tasks, but OpenAI needed to balance that capability against unauthorized behavior. OpenAI paused training of its most advanced models last week, saying training would resume “only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards.” That was after it disclosed instances in which AI agents exceeded their instructions, including by accessing government websites without authorization.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Nvidia unveils security platform to stop AI agents from going rogue Contradicting Trump, Pope Leo says artificial intelligence safety concerns not ‘fake news’ We’re in this together, Earth’s leaders told each other at the UN. But how does that work, exactly?

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Meet OpenAI's new agent, "dots"

Screenshot: OpenAI ChatGPT maker OpenAI today launched "dots" — AI agents with disarmingly cute avatars that can be asked to perform a range of tasks, Axios' Ina Fried reports. 👾 Powered by GPT-6 Astra, dots can work across connected apps, Codex and ChatGPT Work to do research, analyze data, prepare documents and build software. They can work in the background and reach out when they need more input. Users can also set boundaries around dots' actions. Dots are available to OpenAI's Pro, Business and Enterprise users, with one dot per user to start. OpenAI says in an announcement: "Your dot is always within reach, whether it is through ChatGPT, Slack, or Teams." "You can ask questions, explore ideas, and give feedback along the way; or you can simply hop on a voice call when you need to talk something out." (Go deeper.) 🤝 OpenAI says it envisions teams of dots eventually working together. CEO Sam Altman said at a developer event today: "This is the real deal version of AI we've always imagined." 🖼️ The big picture: OpenAI's dots will compete with a growing crop of consumer AI assistants used to book travel, cancel subscriptions and more, including Meta's Muse agent. Meta dove headfirst into the consumer market, launching Muse widely to its massive audience. The app topped the download charts early on. OpenAI is targeting high-end subscribers, mostly developers — at least for now. Read the announcement ... Go deeper.

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• 🤖 Apple and Meta, whose leaders have spent years trading barbs over privacy and the future of computing, are joining forces to bring one of America's most powerful open-weight AI models to Apple's high-end Macs. More from Ina Fried.

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💰 Anthropic's unavoidable IPO

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Anthropic's impending IPO will test a jittery Wall Street, but investors say the timing isn't optional, Axios AI+ co-author Madison Mills writes. The reason is simple math: The AI giant has grown too big for private fundraising. Why it matters: Top AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are racking up 12-figure spending commitments, straining the financial system's ability to keep up with a buildout that rivals America's railroads or interstate highways. Anthropic's computing commitments could reach $750 billion in the coming years, according to a draft IPO prospectus seen by The Wall Street Journal. 🔭 Zoom in: Investors say only public markets can raise money at that scale. OpenAI's most recent round, the biggest in history, took months to secure more than $120 billion — a feat unlikely to be repeated in this market. 🔮 What's next: Anthropic is expected to go public before Thanksgiving. A strong debut could help reset investor angst about the AI boom.

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💰 Big Tech legal bills pile up

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

A tidal wave of litigation is catching up to Meta, leading to $42 billion in recent penalties and settlements. It's a powerful reminder to AI companies that they could face a reckoning in court even when regulation lags, Axios AI & tech managing editor Bradley Olson writes. Why it matters: AI companies are racing to build better models and autonomous agents, but they don't enjoy the same legal protections that shielded web platforms for decades. Meta's big bills offer a preview of potential legal exposure. After a $25 billion penalty in a New Mexico data privacy case this past week, Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney said: "At its core, this lawsuit seeks to impose a tax on speech to enforce new rules for what people can say online." Keep reading.

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Anthropic files for potentially the biggest IPO ever as CEO warns of risk to humanity from AI

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic filed paperwork Monday for what could be the biggest initial public offering of stock ever, even as its top executive warns that advanced AI could pose an existential threat to humanity.

https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-ipo-shares-public-ca2f4c282bef3201a392e59e3df2300c?

Anthropic IPO spotlights AI risks

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images Anthropic's IPO filing, out today, includes an extensive list of extreme warnings — including the chance its own technology could put humanity at risk, Axios' Madison Mills reports. These are the wildest IPO risk factors in history — a jarring collision of Wall Street legalese and what some see as Silicon Valley sci-fi. ⚠️ In over 90 pages of risk factors, Anthropic warns that ... AI could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity," and could try to manipulate humans. AI models are becoming harder to monitor, and their abilities could exceed human reviewers' ability to do so. AI models have exhibited behavior resembling blackmail, including attempts to resist being shut down. 👾 Anthropic also disclosed that four of its models gained unauthorized access to real third-party systems during cybersecurity evaluations. In one incident, a model used a discovered password to gain administrator access, collected additional credentials, changed system settings and accessed an individual's personal information. Anthropic said it found no evidence that the models pursued goals beyond their assigned tasks or attempted to evade oversight. 🖼️ The big picture: Every company has to lay out risks for investors to consider when they go public, but Anthropic is the first in modern history to go to such existential extremes. Go deeper ... More on Anthropic's IPO.   Anthropic files for potentially the biggest IPO ever as CEO warns of risk to humanity from AI Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic filed paperwork Monday for what could be the biggest initial public offering of stock ever, even as its top executive warns that advanced AI could pose an existential threat to humanity. Read More.   Anthropic filed for its IPO yesterday, with reports suggesting it could raise up to $100B at around a $2T valuation, rivaling SpaceX's $2.1T record. The maker of AI chatbot Claude is reportedly planning to debut on Nasdaq the week of Nov. 16.  Anthropic earned $16.3B in revenue for the first half of 2026, a 1,304% increase from the year before. However, filings reveal it relies on two companies—reportedly Microsoft and SpaceX—for roughly one-fifth of its revenue. Anthropic also reported an $80.7B net loss in the first six months of 2026, up from $42B in all of 2025, though the latest figure largely reflects accounting adjustments. Roughly $9B of the company's expenses comes from the computing power and infrastructure Anthropic has been using to train frontier models. Anthropic warned the models themselves could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity," potentially exposing the company to lawsuits and regulations. Investors appear to be treating the Anthropic IPO as a bellwether for AI confidence generally; the Nasdaq closed up 0.8% on yesterday’s news (S&P 500 +0.7%, Dow +0.3%). See Anthropic 101 here.

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🔑 Reddit locks down

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

Reddit is becoming a primarily logged-in experience, the company said yesterday, marking one of the most significant shifts in its 21-year history. Why it matters: Reddit has long championed the open web, but as AI chatbots vacuum up information from websites, platforms are trying to lock down their content and build a more direct relationship with users, Axios media trends expert Sara Fischer reports. In an interview yesterday, Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said the company is making the change to improve its user experience, boost its ads business and prevent bots from scraping its proprietary data. "When users log in, they spend more time on Reddit, and we can better know their interests, so we can target ads better," he said. 👀 Reality check: Most other platforms have already made the log-in shift. Huffman said he personally resisted the changes because of his belief in the open internet. He ultimately came around because Reddit's scale made personalization more important — and because protecting content from unauthorized scraping has become more urgent.

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Big Tech’s Democratic Front Group: Investigate Trump, Not Big Tech

Big Tech’s Democratic Front Group: Investigate Trump, Not Big Tech

The liberal-flavored Chamber of Progress is pressing Democrats to scrutinize the White House — but avoid probing tech giants that bankrolled and benefited from Trump's presidency.

Two years ago, California was on the brink of passing some of the strongest artificial intelligence regulations in the country — until the Chamber of Progress stepped in. 

Launched in 2021, the Democratic-focused tech-industry trade group insists it is “not just another business group” like the corporate lobbying giant Chamber of Commerce. Instead, the Chamber of Progress positions itself as a liberal watchdog organization, saying it’s “a tech industry coalition devoted to a progressive society, economy, workforce, and consumer climate.”

But a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) about the AI bill that the Chamber of Progress signed and helped lay the groundwork for didn’t mention any of these matters. Instead, the missive claimed the legislation, which would have required a “kill switch” for rogue AI agents threatening workers, consumers, the economy, or humanity, was “a needless step backward for the California innovation economy.”

A month later, Newsom vetoed the legislation, saying the bill risked “curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.”

It’s not the only time the Chamber of Progress has mounted efforts that appear to run counter to its stated goals. In the past two years, the lobbying group, which is bankrolled by Silicon Valley companies and a rightwing venture capital firm that have spent millions backing MAGA world, has opposed at least 24 bills throughout the country that sought to regulate surveillance pricing, children’s access to social media, new-age payday lending technologies, and other apparent risks to “a progressive society.” 

“I typically run into them on the opposite end of pro-worker, pro-consumer, and antitrust policy in California and in state legislatures across the country,” said Lee Hepner, legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. 

Now, the tech front group has a more ambitious target: the Democratic Party and the oversight powers it will wield if it successfully reclaims control of Congress. As Silicon Valley is reportedly “bracing for a firestorm of scrutiny” if Democrats win majorities in Congress, the Chamber is challenging the Party’s plans to use one of its most powerful tools for holding Big Tech accountable: congressional investigations.

A year ago, the Chamber launched the Blue Horizon Project, an initiative to “restore tech optimism in the Democratic Party and reset the relationship between Democrats and the technology sector.” Then, last month, the project published a blog post urging Democrats to focus their firepower on President Donald Trump, rather than the tech companies that have showered him and his pet projects with cash donations. 

Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress’ CEO, doesn’t deny that one of the group’s main focuses is to have Democrats aim their scrutiny at the Trump administration — and leave business out of it. Kovacevich, Google’s former top federal policy strategist, said that if Democrats probe Big Tech’s ties to Trump, it could alienate voters and drive away big business, like the Party has done in the past.

“I hope they aim oversight at the Trump administration and not business, because I think that would be a huge mistake of repeating a Biden-era war on business, which, in my view, set Democrats back,” Kovacevich told The Lever.

Others disagree and worry corporate groups like Chamber of Progress risk distracting Democrats from holding accountable the companies funding and benefiting from Trump’s presidency.

“Voters want a vision for the future. Corporations, especially Big Tech, are rigging the economy for themselves in collaboration with Trump,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a nonprofit that scrutinizes corporate and billionaire influence in politics. “Democrats, by investigating how corporate America and Trump rigged the economy for the rich generally and the Trump family specifically, can reveal what has happened and commit themselves to doing the opposite.”

The Man In Charge

From 2007 to 2019, Kovacevich worked for Google’s Washington, D.C. lobbying arm, during which he helped stave off a 2012 Federal Trade Commission investigation into Google’s alleged anticompetitive tactics. By 2010, Kovacevich was leading the tech giant’s lobbying arm and grew it from an $800,000 operation in 2006 to a $21.7 million, 100-lobbyist powerhouse in 2018.

The following year, Kovacevich was fired from Google amid an “overhaul” of the tech company’s government affairs operation. Two years later, he started the Chamber of Progress.

“The tech industry’s political honeymoon is over, and everyone wants to make sure that tech operates fairly towards communities,” Kovacevich said in an announcement about the Chamber’s start. “We’ll support sensible rules that nurture the things that people love about technology, while curbing tech’s downsides.”

While the Chamber’s mission sounds like it would be in line with many Democratic politicians and voters, Kovacevich’s history suggests otherwise. 

As a Harvard undergraduate student, he led an effort in 1997 to pressure the university to purchase grapes from non-unionized grape pickers — essentially begging Harvard to cross a picket line. Kovacevich’s family owned a non-union vineyard in Bakersfield, California at the time.

Also while at Harvard, Kovacevich became close friends with Tom Cotton, who would later become a U.S. senator for Arkansas and who penned an op-ed urging Trump to send National Guard troops to “restore order to our streets” during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Kovacevich has donated to election efforts for Cotton and far-right Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, among other Republicans. His bio on the Chamber’s website touts his prior work for moderate Democrats such as former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who later served as the chairman for No Labels, a centrist organization that in 2023 promised to put a Republican and a Democrat on the presidential ballot.

In the past, Kovacevich has urged Democratic presidential candidates to nominate more people with “business experience,” claiming that this is what the Party’s base wants. He’s also attacked the progressive news outlet The American Prospect, the watchdog organization Revolving Door Project, and the consumer advocacy groups Public Citizen, claiming that they “worked to blackball Biden [nominees] and appointees with corporate experience.”

Kovacevich told The Lever that he believes that the Democratic Party should be a “big, loud tent,” that includes progressives and business figures alike — including Big Tech.

“I’m not in favor of shrinking the tent,” he said. “There are some who think that the tech industry should be kicked out of the Democratic Party tent. We tried that in the Biden era, and it was a lose-lose [situation] because not only did the Biden-era anti-tech policy drive out a lot of tech people from the Party, but it utterly failed to attract new working class voter support.”

Co-opting Progressive Language

Under Kovacevich, the Chamber of Progress has regularly used progressive-coded language to urge Democrats to oppose consumer protections that could impact Silicon Valley. 

In 2024, California passed a bill making it illegal for social media companies to “provide an addictive feed to a user, unless the operator does not have actual knowledge that the user is a minor.”

The Chamber opposed the bill, claiming that “parents are not always best suited to control how their child uses a platform” and that the bill would disproportionately harm LGBTQ youth. 

The Chamber opposed a similar 2025 Arkansas bill that would have set social media limits for children 12 years old and younger. The legislation was aimed at combating social media that results in “compulsive usage” that can cause “psychological distress, loss of control, anxiety, or depression.”

The Chamber, however, wrote to lawmakers that the bill would “disproportionately harm historically marginalized youth,” claiming that these children “have the most to gain from social media engagement, particularly if they face adversity or isolation offline.”

“[The bill] risks restricting content for LGBTQ+ youth who use online platforms to seek emotional support, search for information about their identities, and find communities that accept them when their own parents do not,” the Chamber wrote to Arkansas lawmakers. 

The Arkansas bill was pulled by its Democratic authors.

“What this reveals is that the Chamber of Progress and other big tech-aligned groups are willing to employ any issue or constituency that helps favor its rhetoric,” Jane Chung, a former Facebook employee and consumer advocate against Big Tech, told The Lever. “Their co-opting of progressive language and issues is hypocritical at best, and deeply cynical at worst.”

The Chamber has opposed at least eight other bills aimed at limiting minors’ access to social media. The group has also opposed at least 10 bills aimed at cracking down on surveillance pricing and junk fees. 

Earlier this year, the Chamber opposed a California bill that would ban surveillance pricing, stating in a letter to lawmakers that a ban on the technology would “jeopardize the personalized discounts… that help California families stretch their budgets.”

Kovacevich concurred, saying it was a bad bill that could be detrimental to the average consumer. 

“That bill would have raised prices for consumers,” he said. “I think that the anti-corporate, populist left doesn’t have a lock on the Democratic Party, and they don’t represent the whole Party on these topics. A central pillar of our work is that Democrats are a big-tent party, and that we believe that most Democratic voters are tech pragmatists.”

That bill, called AB 2564, would have allowed certain discounts, but banned “a customized price for a good for a specific consumer or group of consumers, based, in whole or in part, on personally identifiable information.”

The bill passed both houses, but was never enacted because of an obscure legislative procedure, according to Hepner. 

“What you often see is an entity like the Chamber of Progress working behind the scenes, and often through whatever levers of power they can access to exert leverage very quietly through the amendment process,” Hepner said. “This is why you see so many bills stripped of any mechanism for enforcement or riddled with exemptions that kind of leave a husk of what the bill was initially designed to do.”

“Don’t Hire Alumni Of The Mafia”

As the tech industry has shifted to the right to cater to Trump, the Chamber of Progress has launched a number of initiatives to get Silicon Valley back in Democrats’ good graces. 

In September 2025, the group launched what it called the Blue Horizon Project. The project was pitched as a way for Democrats to “assess the lessons of the 2024 election,” stating that “it’s clear the Party must rethink its approach to technology and innovation.”

To lead the initiative, the Chamber hired Dave Vorland, a former Defense Department staffer from the Obama and Biden administrations. Vorland also ran a lobbying group for tech companies, startups, and venture capitalists focused on lowering companies’ barriers to entry for government contracts, especially defense contracts.

In a November 2025 Blue Horizon post, Vorland threw his former employer under the bus, writing that the Biden administration “eschewed hiring leaders from the technology and innovation industries,” and that the Biden’s administration’s supposed cold shoulder toward tech “blunted its success.” Instead, Vorland advocated for Democrats to hire more tech employees, stating “you cannot effectively govern a tech-driven economy without people who understand tech from the inside.”

Vorland echoed such arguments in a Sept. 8 op-ed in a California-based news outlet, blaming Democrats for driving Silicon Valley away from the Party due to its “hostility toward the entire industry” and the Biden administration’s “suspicion” and “politically fraught” meetings with tech leaders.

“The tech industry didn’t suddenly become conservative,” Vorland wrote. “Democrats stopped sounding like the party of innovation.”

But hiring former tech employees and deferring to its leaders doesn’t boost innovation, said Hauser with the Revolving Door Project; it leads to corporate capture.

“If we want to protect society from the worst possible consequences of artificial intelligence, for example, we need to make sure that the cops on the beat are not looking to secure bags from the AI companies,” he said. “If you’re trying to protect people from the mafia, you don’t hire alumni of the mafia to spend four-year stints in government before returning to La Casa Nostra.”

Over the past few months, the Chamber began releasing a series of proposals for Democratic policymakers, called the Democratic AI Opportunity Agenda, with the goal of refocusing Democrats “on AI policies that create more economic, personal, and social opportunity for Americans.”

Part of that agenda involves laying the groundwork so the federal government can block state-level AI laws and safety regulations — long a priority for the AI industry and the Trump administration.

The proposal comes as about two-thirds of Americans believe that there is a moderate risk AI could destroy human civilization. 

Among those concerned is the architect of Trump’s AI plan. After leaving the White House, the AI policy wonk has since admitted that he downplayed the tech’s existential risks because it would have limited his influence — and that “there are ways in which the rise of self-sovereign AI could go very, very poorly for human beings.”

“Focus On Trump”

Last month, Vorland, on behalf of the Chamber of Progress and the Blue Horizon Project, made his most explicit demand of Democrats yet: Forgo the subpoena and investigative powers awarded to Congress’ ruling party.

If Democrats win those powers in the midterm elections, wrote Vorland on the Blue Horizon Project Substack, the Party should keep it simple: “Focus on Trump.”

“Focusing instead on companies who may make easier oversight targets may increase voter anger at companies, but will do little to give Trump voters reason to switch parties next election cycle,” wrote Vorland. “Companies can be important sources of evidence without becoming the central villains of the oversight agenda.”

The Chamber of Progress has been arguing for years that Big Tech was Democrats’ ally. Now, proclaimed the lobbying group, they should still be the industry’s allies even after the industry’s leaders have happily taken up rightwing demands and flooded the GOP with political donations.

In other words, the Chamber of Progress wants lawmakers to overlook that many of its own “partners,” like Apple, Amazon, Google, Coinbase, Ripple, and a16z, have showered Trump with donations, praise, and White House visits — all while being rewarded with light-touch regulations, business-friendly policies, corporate tax cuts, and the elimination of cryptocurrency enforcement efforts. 

“What looks like ‘bending the knee,’” wrote Vorland, “may be better understood as risk management.”

Kovacevich spoke similarly when talking to The Lever.

“You shouldn’t confuse CEOs having to go build a relationship with Trump with sort of where companies are,” he said. “Companies in general don’t endorse candidates. Some high-profile individuals have been active with Trump, but in general, I find that companies kind of understand that they need to have bipartisan relationships over the long haul.”

But by waving away Silicon Valley’s acquiescence to Trump as risk management and bipartisan relationship-building, Chamber of Progress is whitewashing the pay-to-play tactics that have eaten away at voters’ confidence in government, said Hepner at the American Economic Liberties Project.

“The Chamber of Progress has to be seen as just one leg of the stool of how corporate power has taken over our politics," said Hepner. “Big tech corporations have been involved in distorting our elections via campaign finance super PACs. I think that the Chamber of Progress is laundering the interests of corporate power as part of a broader strategy to distort our politics against the public interest in fair and reasonable regulation.”

Despite its political firepower and past successes, the Chamber of Progress’ laundering effort may be a tough sell, at least based on the online reaction to the operation’s recent call to action for Democrats to “focus on Trump,” rather than his tech allies.

As the top commenter on the Blue Horizon Project post put it, “This is a lot of words to basically justify the Nuremberg Defense for people who empowered Trump.”

https://www.levernews.com/big-tech-to-democrats-investigate-trump-not-us/?

ps:So pathetic!!!!!

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Anthropic posts $17B quarterly revenue but losses continue in fresh IPO filing

Anthropic's quarterly revenue swelled to $17 billion but it still posted a net loss for the latest three months, the artificial intelligence giant said in an updated IPO filing released on Monday. Read More.

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Big Tech Lost The Election. Now Comes The Gaslighting.

As Democrats prepare to investigate Silicon Valley, its liberal-branded lobby is scrambling to erase voters’ resounding rejection of Big Tech.

https://www.levernews.com/big-tech-lost-the-election-now-comes-the-gaslighting/?

ps:What a waste of time, if that's what they're going to spend time doing!!!!!