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Discussion (74 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
(Blog post: https://www.citationneeded.news/tech-influence-watch/)
I just found that one of my reps got an absurd amount of money from some shadowy group called "Think Big". Which is in turn part of a larger org called "Leading the Future" [0], which is:
> A coordinated network of AI-industry super PACs working to head off stricter AI regulation, chiefly by pushing a single federal framework that would override stronger state-level rules on issues like consumer protection and liability. Leading the Future is the lead committee, channeling money to the Democratic-facing Think Big and the Republican-facing American Mission. All draw on the same core backers — chiefly Andreessen Horowitz, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife.
[0]: https://influence.citationneeded.news/2026/networks/leading-...
We kept looking for the pony for most of the day. We found some pony exhaust, but we didn't find the pony. The rest of the group presented a plan for future research. I chose to give the minority report: based on the information we were able to obtain, California could solve its water shortage if every household ate 16 less almonds a day; an almond taking roughly one gallon of water to produce.
A couple years later the almond industry ran some ads that the "gallon of water" meme was somehow wrong, because other useful products were produced from almond trees besides almonds... so they said. Of course, it could have been a coincidence.
One of my team members (from Montana) shared a quote from Samuel Clemens: "whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over". That hasn't changed with data centers.
All of which together will make algorithmic bias, data harvesting, and hyper-realistic misinformation flourish.
I really wonder when US citizens had enough. Third time is the proverbial charm?
One day people in this state will wake up and burn it all down by electing representatives who serve the people, not the corporate entities that desire a low drag place to do business. There are active anti-AI and data center groups now in the state. Once they get enough traction this bullshit will end.
Anyone at any of these AI companies that attempts to influence elections should be held accountable and should suffer the harshest consequences including confiscation of all personal assets. Multi-generational enforced poverty should be their reward.
Just my two cents.
From wikipedia:
>The majority also held that the First Amendment's free press clause protects associations of individuals in addition to individual speakers, and further that the First Amendment does not allow prohibitions of speech based on the speaker's identity. Corporations, as associations of individuals, therefore have free speech rights under the First Amendment.
In other words, corporations have the right to spend money for political purposes not because of corporate personhood or "corporations are people too", it's because first amendment protections apply to associations of people. This covers corporations, but also includes other groups like trade unions.
How could corporations voting not dilute the human votes by the very nature and reason of voting in the first place?
Which is fine, they only get one vote.
But they can also divide a piece of land into small plots, make a bunch of shell companies, each one owning a small piece of land, and vote using that.
Isn't this just on Fenwick Island? And the state would have to approve the (possibly suspicious) creation of numerous shell companies for this purpose.
"Corporate personhood" is a legal concept where how person-like a corporation is can be defined in whichever way is convenient to how we want the law to operate.
The government is massive and inserts itself into business operations all the time. The inevitable results happen.
At this point it’s a perfectly common cost of doing business there. Pay money to get favourable laws passed. But it’s not bribery. No no no.