AI companies are spending millions to block this former congressional tech exec’s request

If you’ve seen the recent ads attacking New York assemblyman Alex Bores, you’ll know he used to work for Palantir, the AI ​​company that powers controversial raids and high-volume deportation efforts from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The ads even accuse Bores of making hundreds of thousands of dollars to build ICE technology and “enabling their deportation.”

But that is not the whole story. “I left Palantir for its work with ICE in 2019,” Bores told TechCrunch in last week’s episode of Equity.

Now he’s running for New York’s 12th congressional district, and Big Tech billionaires are funding outside groups targeting his campaign.

These ads are sponsored by a super PAC called Leading the Future, ironically backed by Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, AI search startup Perplexity, and other Silicon Valley heavy hitters. The PAC has raised $125 billion to go after state candidates who are introducing AI legislation and to support candidates in light of the way to regulate AI.

“They’ve committed to spending at least $10 million against me…because they know I’m the biggest threat to their quest for unbridled control over the American worker, over our children’s minds, over our climate, and over our utility bills,” Bores said. “They came to me so that I can set an example.”

He said his background working in technology, including at Palantir and several startups, is why Leading the Future made him its first target.

“I actually have a deep understanding of technology and I can’t be dismissed as ‘this person doesn’t understand,'” Bores said, adding that if elected, he would be the second Democrat in Congress with a degree in computer science.

Bores caused outrage in Silicon Valley after sponsoring the RAISE Act, an open AI bill that was signed into law in December. The law requires large AI labs — especially those with more than $500 million in revenue — to have a security plan that is publicly available, adhered to, and reported in the event of a security incident.

It’s the kind of light-touch regulation that other industries would kill for – more disclosure and planning than effective oversight.

Bores says he doesn’t believe Leading the Future wants to see any AI legislation, unless, as the PAC has said, it’s at the national level. Over the past year, states have been fighting with industry to protect their rights to regulate AI in the absence of a federal standard. In December, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to challenge the country’s “difficult” AI laws, such as Bores’ RAISE Act.

Bores pointed to his campaign’s proposed national AI administration plan — which includes eight issues and 43 policy recommendations — adding that anyone serious about federal AI legislation should be supporting it. He also introduced legislation that would force companies to disclose what goes into their training data and embed metadata standards that would make training content easier to track.

Leading the Future isn’t the only Silicon Valley-backed PAC involved during the terms. Meta has invested $65 million in two major PACs — America’s Best Tech Project and Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across (Meta) California — to elect government officials friendly to the AI ​​and technology industry. And AI companies, industry groups, and top executives have contributed at least $83 million by 2025 to the organization’s campaigns and committees.

“This is not about ‘We want to have a conversation piece,'” Bores said. “It’s this: ‘We want to intimidate elected officials and beat up everyone who disagrees with us.’

“A typical rally race in New York raises maybe $100,000 total, maybe less,” Bores continued. “For one company (Meta) to spend $65 million on state races, let alone everything it does in Congress — I think it’s hard for people to understand how much that is out of the ordinary.”

Bores, on the other hand, has received support from a separate Anthropic-backed PAC called Public First Action, which is spending $450,000 on the New Yorker. Public First Action also describes itself as pro-AI, but with a focus on planning, safety, and public oversight.

Leading the Future, he says, represents a “very small minority of voices” who see any legislation as a threat to the progress of AI and “want to let it rip.” Among Bores’ base of supporters are tech workers at the very firms whose leaders want to thwart his campaign — part of a broader pattern of strategizing within tech companies about how AI is used and who it serves.

At the other end of the spectrum are a handful of people who “want to pretend AI never existed and put the genie back in the bottle and burn down all the data centers,” Bores said.

He thinks most Americans are in the middle — they use AI and see its potential but are concerned about how fast it is.

“[They] I wonder if the government is up to its task of ensuring that we have a future that benefits the many instead of the few,” said Bores.