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AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

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Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#131

Post by andrewla »

testing22321 wrote: post #123
andrewla wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why should politician listen to them if lobbyists are not promising them support in next elections in the form of marketing, payments for expenses and so on Mostly because those things are directly illegal. Lobbying organizations (and PACs and SuperPACs etc.) are very limited in what they can provide either as direct monetary contributions or in-kind gifts to a candidate. The restrictions here are basically the sam…

> Mostly because those things are directly illegal Ah yes, said politician will just host a $100,000 a head luncheon so nobody is “bribing” them. That would be dirty.

Yes, you're right, they could just do this, and then spend the rest of their term thrown out of Congress and rotting in prison.

That is, they can hold such a lunch, but they can't pocket the money personally or even have the money contributed towards their campaign. Pocketing the money personally is just bribery, having it contribute to their campaign would violate the contribution limits (typically ~$10,000 per election max, though less than that in reality because the limit is split between primary and general).

You're right to be slightly suspicious because these lunches do exist. But they don't go to the campaign or the candidate, they can go to PACs and SuperPACs or to the party. In tern, PACs and SuperPACs cannot give this money to the candidate or the campaign (same limits as above with higher reporting requirements) and cannot coordinate campaign messaging.

This is not to say that corruption doesn't exist -- just that this simplistic form of it does not exist. You'll have to dig deeper than looking at lobbying activities to find the actual corruption, and it's usually masked in revolving door arrangements, speaking fees, and bulk sales of vanity books. But none of that can go through the typical lobbying system because it's too tightly regulated and tracked.

Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#132

Post by carlosjobim »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #122
carlosjobim wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which people do you allow to work together for their political goals then, oh grand hacker? Do you understand the basics of a free society, which include freedom of association? You don't have much of a democracy left if you remove that.

America wasn't a democracy before the 2010 Citizens United ruling allowed corporations and wealthy donors to spend unlimited money on elections? That's news to me. I don't feel more free at all on account of that ruling. Maybe if you said "freedom" one or two more times, that would do the trick.

"The political action committee emerged from the labor movement of 1943. The first PAC was the CIO-PAC, formed in July 1943 under CIO president Philip Murray and headed by Sidney Hillman. It was established after the U.S. Congress prohibited unions from giving direct contributions to political candidates."

The above from Wikipedia.

But I'm wasting my time talking to you, you are just raging and putting words into other people's mouths, because you are too high on your own supply of resentment to want to have a good discussion.

I'll put my opinion clearly: Everybody should have the freedom of association and be able to get together with likeminded to work for any political cause they want to advance, as long as they do it within the limits of just law.

Political donations by large groups of special interests aren't unique to America. Many countries have very strong labour union super-PACs.

Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#133

Post by TheTaytay »

falcor84 wrote: post #110
TheTaytay wrote: post #104

Lots of pitchforks in these comments. If you had read that the EFF was meeting with lawmakers in the US to convince them that there was no secure way to allow the government to break e2e encryption, or had read that academics were banding together to ask the government not to make open weight LLMs illegal, what would your reaction be? What if told you that those organizations had actually paid a consultant to help th…

You're making this very dichotomous, but I'm not convinced. Why shouldn't there be a way to bring issues to the parliament's attention without private money? For example, while flawed, the EU's Citizens' Initiative approach seems to be doing some good work bringing attention to issues that are in the public interest. I'd encourage us to look more extensively into these sort of open initiatives.

Fair point, and I concede I oversimplified.

I certainly don’t think that this should be the only way to talk to a lawmaker! I should be able to schedule time to go meet with my representatives or his/her people. I should also be able to pay someone to do so on my behalf.

I’m not familiar with the Citizen’s Initiative approach! I’ll look into it, and agree we should have more organized and official ways of doing it. I have called my congressman and senator’s office a couple of times in the US, and it doesn’t feel very productive. I wish it was easier to organize a group to make our concerns known.

Speaking of the EU, I have been surprised to watch the ChatControl stuff keep resurfacing and be struck down over and over and over again. It feels very much like the “government” wants something that the citizens and their private companies do not. Perhaps it is a result of lobbying for it by private interests, but it seems like an effort by the current powers that be to overstep what people would otherwise want to “lobby against”.

Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#134

Post by stult »

Aunche wrote: post #52
simonw wrote: post #4

> OpenAI nearly doubled its federal lobbying expenditure to a record $2.22mn in the first half of 2026, compared to last year, while Anthropic nearly tripled its spending to $3.53mn, according to federal disclosures. Never ceases to amaze me how cheap lobbying is. That's pocket change for these companies.

Lobbying expenditures are given to lobbyists not politicians. You're primarily paying for the salary of some humanities or social science majors and their travel expenses, which isn't that much money. This should be a basic fact. If those who spend a good portion of time being angry at lobbyists yet intelligent enough to make mid-six figures conflate bribery with lobbying, it should be no surprise the corporations ha…

That is a hopelessly naive description of lobbying, to the point that I assume you are being intentionally disingenuous. Lobbyists commonly funnel money to politicians via fundraiser bundling, donations to outside spenders like PACs, and other mechanisms that get around the weak remaining restrictions on direct campaign contributions that SCOTUS has not yet gutted. A lobbyist may not donate directly to a politician's campaign, but they get a group of their friends together for a fundraiser to effectively donate on their behalf (bundling). Or they donate to outside groups who then spend to support the politician's campaign, e.g. by funding advertising that benefits the candidate or hurts their opponent. Like when AIPAC sinks millions into ads against progressive candidates, that's tightly connected to their lobbying on behalf of Israel and you better believe that the politicians benefiting from that spending are well aware of how it is connected to their willingness to adopt the lobbyists' positions.

Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#135

Post by Aunche »

throwaw12 wrote: post #117
Aunche wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as if being elected is the end all and be all to being a politician. Politicians have a vague idea of how they want to shape society, but they can't be experts in completely unrelated subjects of healthcare, military, AI infrastructure etc. A good lobbyist will help a politician achieve these goals in the field of their expertise (or at least try to convince the politician that they're helping).

Why lobbyist can't just present their ideas publicly, like do a public free lessons to politicians and anyone who wants to attend, if they're so eager to teach politicians? Let them publicly say whatever they're preaching to politicians, and instead of 'funding' politicians directly, let them just teach everyone all at once. I would love to hear what AIPAC teaches politicians

At your job, would you like your 1 on 1s to be publicly available to the world? Are you even able to have a productive discussion when you're second guessing how other may react to what you're saying? Now imagine you're a politician with an army of enemies ready to clip anything you say out of context.

> I would love to hear what AIPAC teaches politicians

Thanks for bringing AIPAC up because it illustrates my point. AIPAC has plenty of publicly available material for you to read. It's not going particularly specific, but it most likely broadly aligns with what their lobbyists discuss with politicians: Israel is a valuable intelligence partner, aid to Israel brings stability in the Middle East, Iran is a destabilizing force that needs to be kept in check, etc.

How much merit do these arguments have? Maybe some. Maybe little at all. Even so, there is no mistaking that APAIC is talking about Earth here. The same cannot be said about the pro Palestinian side in America. "Stop funding genocide" is a fundamentally contradictory. The entire basis for a overwhelmingly better armed Israel giving Palestinians any sort of autonomy at all rests on American security commitments to Israel.

Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#136

Post by balarjin »

throwaw12 wrote: post #83
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are interested in learning about topics from credible people that impact businesses and voters, If the only motivation you can ascribe is making money or relection, it is circular. Wealthy people spend money to become politicians.

> They are interested in learning about topics from credible people Honestly, you surprised me with this statement alone. interested in learning? do you think Trump wants to learn anything from AIPAC? or Pharma lobby or Military Industrial complex? What do politicans want to learn from Military Industrial complex or AIPAC lobby for example? What's there, that politicians don't know already?

> > They are interested in learning about topics from credible people

> Honestly, you surprised me with this statement alone. interested in learning? > do you think Trump wants to learn anything from AIPAC? > or Pharma lobby or Military Industrial complex?

Trump is unusually sure of himself. But no man rules alone: There is a massive org under every president trying to run a government. I know for a fact that people two levels of management under Trump (i.e. Trump is their manager's manager) do take meetings with people who lobby on the issue of health care policy and (for and against) military procurement. I would be shocked if people who are for/against working with Isreal are never in a room with anyone who can set policy.

Imagine that it is your job to come up with policy for a bug expensive government program: The VA hospital system, a military procurement program that buys airplanes, the part of the state department focused on MENA, etc. If someone asks to meet, claiming that they did academic/technical work which shows you can get a better result with a policy change, you will take that meeting. Examples:

  1. An MD researcher shows you can cut drug costs by switching one medication for another.

  2. An engineer has reason to believe current stealth coatings on fighter planes won't work against China's missiles in 5 years.

  3. An economist thinks that an ally (Isreal, Korea, etc.) have demographics that will stop them from being able to field an army within 20 years.
You should go into these meetings with skepticism, and there is a 90%-99% chance the person's idea is bad. But if an idea is good/correct/important, and you blew him off, your boss will be angry, and your career will be over.

Most people in government want to solve problems (and get credit for doing so). Most problems governments face have hard tradeoffs that voters don't understand/care about. Voters want unlimited healthcare at no cost to themselves, 100% success thwarting terrorists with no spying on citizens, military supremacy without paying much for weapons, etc. People asked to solve these problems are DESPERATE for new ideas to allow voters to see that they are getting good outcomes. Telling them you have a way around a hard tradeoff is music to their ears.

Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#137

Post by mark_l_watson »

Welcome to our political system.

There are ways to fix this, in theory, but our government has passed the point of no return with corruption.

There is one solution: no one register as a democrat or republican: this would make the dirty D.C. system a little harder to corrupt the system.

Unfortunately, people let their emotions guide them in thinking about political parties. Most people are idiots who can’t see how they are divided into two groups and manipulated.

Too bad, this used to be a nice little country we had.

Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#138

Post by neutronicus »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #121
programmertote wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really irks me for some reason that American Medical Association (one of the top spenders in lobbying) is doing the lobbying. I did a quick Gemini/Google search and these are the topics they lobby for. ``` Core Legislative PrioritiesMedicare Reform: Fighting to fix stagnant physician payment formulas and account for inflation. Prior Authorization: Pushing to reduce administrative roadblocks and delays enforced by…

Yeah, doctors have been wilding and it's curious how completely they have been able to avoid public backlash for it. Probably some combination of knowing your doctor and more strongly associating billing/insurance with the financial pain even though providers are a big part of the cost spiral.

It's a "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" variant, I think. "Temporarily embarrassed parent of a future doctor".

Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#139

Post by istjohn »

andrewla wrote: post #89
throwaw12 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lobbying expenditures are given to lobbyists not politicians. You're primarily paying for the salary of some humanities or social science majors and their travel expenses, which isn't that much money. I don't think these are the only expenses, why should politician listen to them if lobbyists are not promising them support in next elections in the form of marketing, payments for expenses and so on

> why should politician listen to them if lobbyists are not promising them support in next elections in the form of marketing, payments for expenses and so on Mostly because those things are directly illegal. Lobbying organizations (and PACs and SuperPACs etc.) are very limited in what they can provide either as direct monetary contributions or in-kind gifts to a candidate. The restrictions here are basically the sam…

First, the inability to coordinate with the candidate on marketing doesn't strike me as much of an obstacle to SuperPAC effectiveness. Second, the Supreme Court ruled this summer that political parties cannot be prevented from coordinating campaign spending with candidates in NRSC vs FEC.

Re: AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

#140

Post by balarjin »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #118
carlosjobim wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be hard? It's something which should be completely unregulated in a free country.

Letting mega-billionaires spend mega-millions to buy the conversation around elections isn't my definition of freedom.

> Letting mega-billionaires spend mega-millions to buy the conversation around elections isn't my definition of freedom.

Spell out the details: Exactly who will not be permitted to speak under your definition of "freedom"?

If you say that only people with a billion dollars can be punished for speaking: Do you think the limit won't be lowered over time?

If the issue is that no person should be able to spend more than N million dollars in one "conversation", how do you allocate broadcast licenses when the price in an auction would be more than N million?

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