America turns on Donald Trump’s tech cheerleaders

{"text":[[{"start":10,"text":"Silicon Valley’s elites are grappling with how to rebuild their relationship with the American public after the alliance between tech billionaires and Donald Trump cost the Republican Party dearly in the midterm elections."}],[{"start":17.58,"text":"Democrats, some of whom ran on explicitly anti-AI platforms, swept to power in both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s vote and vowed in their victory speeches to bring the “AI billionaire class” to heel."}],[{"start":32.4,"text":"The tech moguls who flattered Trump, bankrolled his vanity projects and funded his Maga allies’ campaigns, in the hope that his administration would let the multitrillion-dollar AI industry rip, now need to plot a new political strategy."}],[{"start":45.28,"text":"“It was a repudiation of the tech bros who cosied up to president Trump and tried to forestall reasonable regulation,” said Brad Carson, a former Democrat congressman who leads the advocacy group Americans for Responsible Innovation. The backlash, he said, proved there was “authentic, American opposition to the overall AI project”."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":65.76,"text":"Tomorrow Together, a political action committee that ran advertisements against Republicans over their support for unfettered AI, on Wednesday unveiled a poster “thanking” figures such as venture capital billionaire and Maga mega-donor Marc Andreessen. “Last night wouldn’t be possible without you,” it read."}],[{"start":83.56,"text":"Republican campaign groups took more than $600mn from tech donors, while their White House allies spent the past year quashing plans by red states to pass AI safety legislation and denigrating data centre protesters — who Trump said want to be “backwards and poor”."}],[{"start":99.38,"text":"In the aftermath of the midterms defeat, party activists said Republicans need to quickly respond to public outrage."}],[{"start":105.8,"text":"“The party should send the tech bros back to Silicon Valley,” Brendan Steinhauser, a former Tea Party operative and longtime Republican strategist, told the FT. He said the party “should distance itself” from Elon Musk, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and David Sacks, the venture capitalist who was Trump’s top AI adviser."}],[{"start":124.32,"text":"Amy Kremer, a Maga activist who helped organise the pro-Trump rally on January 6 2021, said Republicans had “gambled our majorities on big AI money [and] ignored their own voters”."}],[{"start":136.16,"text":"Laura Loomer, the far-right influencer, predicted that the tech titans “who supported the GOP will go right back to supporting the radical left”, and reminded her followers that Meta and others had once banned Trump from their platforms."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":151.32,"text":"Republican lawmakers, soon to be in the minority, are under pressure to join Democrats in cracking down on AI to forestall further electoral pain in 2028."}],[{"start":162.24,"text":"“Voters are just very clearly saying that they want their policymakers to do a better job listening to them when it comes to AI,” Janet Kelly, a Virginia Republican who leads conservative pro-regulation group Alliance for a Better Future, told the FT. “They expect action very quickly.”"}],[{"start":180.14,"text":"The AI industry’s woes now extend beyond bad publicity. Come January, Democrats are vowing to use their newfound powers to force tech executives to testify under oath on Capitol Hill and investigate Musk and others who do business with the federal government. Some are pushing for laws that would slow down AI development."}],[{"start":200.52,"text":"“Top of the Democratic agenda on day 1 needs to be a pause on advanced AI development . . . and a ban on artificial superintelligence,” said Yassamin Ansari, the Arizona Democrat who was re-elected to Congress this week."}],[{"start":214.74,"text":"Musk also faces significant checks on his power in his adopted home state of Texas. Despite spending more than $200mn backing Republican candidates for the Senate and governorship, the state elected Democrats to both positions for the first time in decades."}],[{"start":230.26,"text":"Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has vowed to impose a moratorium on new data centres, potentially imperilling Musk’s plans to build a third massive “Colossus” supercomputer on a site near Brownsville. He is also constructing “Terafab”, the largest chip manufacturing facility in the world, in Grimes County. Since the midterms, SpaceX and Tesla have lost a combined $420bn in market value."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":255.7,"text":"In the late stages of the midterms campaign, some tech billionaires moved to temper their support for Trump-aligned candidates. OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, who along with his wife gave $25mn to the main pro-AI PAC, Leading the Future, told employees he would not follow through on a pledge to donate a further $25mn after internal dissent at the AI lab."}],[{"start":278.2,"text":"Companies including Palantir and Meta also rushed to hire Washington lobbyists with closer ties to Democrats ahead of their anticipated victory. OpenAI hired Jessica Schumer, daughter of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer."}],[{"start":290.64,"text":"Since the election, AI companies have talked about rebranding data centres as “compute campuses” and promised a suite of incentives such as school funding, power investments and environmental concessions to entice local residents."}],[{"start":304.08,"text":"But such moves, and an attempt by OpenAI, Meta and others to embrace more regulation, have come too late, activists warned, and will be treated with suspicion by an AI-wary Congress."}],[{"start":315.32,"text":"“I don’t think they understand yet that any bill, any proposal, any policy idea that they put on the table is going be toxic from the get-go because of their association,” said Shaunna Thomas, head of Guardrails Alliance, a pro-regulation PAC that is supported by employees of leading AI labs. “They are underestimating their own toxicity in the halls of government.”"}],[{"start":336.64,"text":"Democrats are already urging their party to reject any rapprochement. “Voters rejected Republicans in part because they were bought and paid for by Al billionaires,” said Greg Casar, the Texas congressman who heads the party’s progressive caucus. “Democrats must hold them accountable instead of cashing their checks.”"}],[{"start":353.52,"text":"Tech companies are also wary of overcorrecting. One senior executive at a large public company said they would hedge their bets going into the next election, anticipating that voters could turn on the Democrats after two years."}],[{"start":365.12,"text":"“We’re not going to underestimate the Democrats’ ability to suffer their own backlash and open the door to [Republicans Ron] DeSantis or [Marco] Rubio,” they said."}],[{"start":373.08,"text":"A Meta executive said Democrat Brian Rice has taken a more prominent role after former Republican lobbyist Joel Kaplan said, shortly before the election, that he would leave as head of public affairs. But they noted Kaplan’s deputy, another Republican, is staying on, for now. “There’s a deep bench with a mix of political views,” the person said. “We always spread our bets.”"}],[{"start":393.68,"text":"Additional reporting by Rafe Rosner-Uddin"}],[{"start":399.44,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1793950225_9137.mp3"}