AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

11vuio0pswjnm7 about 2 hours ago 14 commentsRead Article on ft.com

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simonw•about 2 hours ago

> 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.

01284a7e•about 1 hour ago

It's so cheap that normal people could band together and re-buy democracy. It's the banding together part that is hard.

jonas21•37 minutes ago

Many of the groups that spend the most on lobbying are composed of "normal" people who have banded together for some common interest. For example:

- The AARP ($21M annual spend) has 38M members

- The National Association of Realtors ($54M annual spend) has 1.5M members

- The American Medical Association ($24M annual spend) has 300K members

Of course that doesn't mean that their interests are necessarily aligned with your interests.

0xdeadbeefbabe•30 minutes ago

Also if they want my money then their interests align.

nancyminusone•about 1 hour ago

I already pay for my government in taxes (which ironically these big cos don't pay).

Besides, if I were to gather up 4 million to lobby, the opposition would simply spend 8 million instead which they could come up with just as easily. They don't have to outrun the bear, the just have to outrun you.

simonw•about 1 hour ago

Yeah, I would like my taxes to go to paying for expertise to help make good governance decisions, personally.

verisimi•2 minutes ago

"re-buy democracy"

triceratops•about 1 hour ago

Normal people can't offer speaking fees, consulting gigs, and other sinecures to politicians and their staffers after they leave the government.

thewebguyd•20 minutes ago

Right. That's what actually buys you the politician. Being able to promise "Pass this regulation for us and we'll make sure you are set up for life, since we know it's politically unfavorable"

the ~$2M just gets your foot in the door, that's it.

renegade-otter•41 minutes ago

I think of that Netflix series on FIFA and its rampant corruption. The bribes in question are laughable, considering that FIFA is a multi-billion dollar operation, and it's always some round number like $1M. At least add some cents to it so it's not glaringly obvious in the bank accounts.

TeMPOraL•8 minutes ago

Are the bribes round, or is it just usual bullshit journalism practice of fudging the numbers and rounding them in the process (usually made apparent when there are multiple reports for the same number, each using different units of currency or measure).

voicedYoda•19 minutes ago

That's how Groupon originally started.

butlike•6 minutes ago

Well you don't want to push the price up any more than you have to since then each subsequent lobby will cost a minimum of that amount.

InsideOutSanta•30 minutes ago

These numbers are so small that I'm doubly ashamed of all the corruption happening. If politicians at least sold out for fuck-you money, I'd understand, but no.

shevy-java•7 minutes ago

That's most definitely not the real sum.

People need to look at financial kick backs. There is a certain guy here in central Europe who left politics quite recently, but suddenly has 400 million euros wealth - out of nowhere. And nobody questions how he got that ...

The corruption happens not only via direct lobbyism. One has to look at the whole corruption bribe bubble here.

bena•about 1 hour ago

Because lobbying is essentially just the process of petitioning the government. Mostly.

It's buying dinners so you can talk with a Representative or Senator one-on-one. It's traveling to D.C. or the Congressperson's home state. It's paying for studies and etc to support your points. It's financing campaigns of politicians who already agree with your viewpoints. It's not "here's money, make law".

paytonjjones•about 1 hour ago

Alternatively, couldn't this be seen as evidence on favor of the "corporate narrative" on lobbying? Namely, that the purpose of lobbying is to ensure politicians have instant and easy access to high-quality, insider information relevant to their decision-making on corporate issues (as opposed to simply being bribed)?

I remember my poli sci teacher on college tried very hard to convince the class of this (with little success).

dividefuel•about 1 hour ago

I have a family member who's a lobbyist. When he talks about his job, a common theme is that a huge amount of his work is trying assess the impacts of policy on businesses (albeit mainly big businesses) and make sure lawmakers are able to take that into consideration. I don't know how well that represents lobbying as a whole, but that part always made sense and didn't seem like a bribe.

Several million dollars, as mentioned in the article, could easily be the cost of paying, e.g., 20 people to perform and communicate an assessment, as opposed to a direct "donation" to a politician. It's not said where that money was spent.

rawgabbit•5 minutes ago

[delayed]

kylecazar•about 1 hour ago

I never understood that narrative either. You won't get high quality information from someone that is paying you for influence. You will get a lopsided/biased perspective, and the unwritten expectation is you will use it or contributions will cease.

Congress can and does ask companies for their expertise/stance on any given issue or policy, for free. They want to be involved for the same reason they lobby.

paytonjjones•about 1 hour ago

The same could be said about the judicial system though, right? Both the prosecution and defense are paid to influence the judge, and will naturally provide a biased perspective. But that doesn't mean there's not high quality information within.

I don't think biased information is a total dead end, but the onus is just on judges and politicians to tease out information from more than one angle. And often they don't.

Kapura•about 1 hour ago

is that good

ChrisArchitect•about 2 hours ago

Is anyone reading your endless ft.com posts?

https://archive.ph/PASMJ

butlike•5 minutes ago

I never used to mind captchas until llms came around. Now, train your own damn robot

peter_stokes•about 2 hours ago

for the first time ever, i got a reCaptcha that required me to scan a QR code? Thankfully when I refreshed the page, I got a new busclicking captcha

nozzlegear•25 minutes ago

> I got a new busclicking captcha

Busclickers are S-tier captchas IMO, always easy to identify. Motorcycles and bicycles, on the other hand, are maybe the worst – D-tier at best.

/tangent

dieselgate•about 1 hour ago

I've been seeing them too. Towards the bottom of the recaptcha box there's an option to select "conventional" or similar and not use QR, it's easy to miss

peter_stokes•about 1 hour ago

oh, thanks for pointing this out ill click that next time. i can be a bit unaware sometimes.

one time i visited a compromised site that put up a fake cloudflare challenge that told me to paste a script into powershell, and i was all ladeeda nothing seems wrong. only because i forgot how to paste in powershell, did i not run it. i sure tried though. I typed ctrl v about 5 times not realizing it wasnt supported in powershell and then ragequit. funnily enough, whne i refreshed that page to try and get rid of the challenge the page loaded fine. I fail upward like this all the time.