Silicon Valley billionaires just spent a record-breaking $26 million on a single congressional primary in Manhattan, and they still managed to lose the plot.
The political class is treating the defeat of New York Assemblyman Alex Bores as a definitive victory for Big Tech over the nascent AI safety movement. They think the money worked. They think a message was sent.
They are wrong.
The race for New York’s 12th Congressional District, vacated by retiring Representative Jerry Nadler, wasn't a clean victory for unchecked tech expansion. It was a chaotic proxy war that proved Washington has absolutely no idea how to handle the financial avalanche of artificial intelligence. By looking strictly at who won and who lost, pundits are completely misinterpreting how AI cash is going to reshape American elections.
The Illusion of a Tech Lobby Victory
Let's clear up the biggest misconception right out of the gate. Yes, Alex Bores lost the primary on Tuesday night. He came in second to Micah Lasher, a fellow assemblyman with deep ties to the local Democratic establishment and the backing of Nadler himself.
Because Bores was the champion of the Raise Act—one of the nation's first major state laws forcing AI developers to publish safety plans—the tech industry targeted him. A pro-innovation Super PAC called Leading the Future, backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, dumped over $8 million into crushing Bores.
The mainstream narrative says Big Tech successfully made an example out of a regulator.
But look at the guy who actually won. Micah Lasher didn't run as a friend to Silicon Valley. He co-sponsored the exact same Raise Act bill that Bores did. In fact, Lasher has previously vocally supported a moratorium on new data centers due to environmental strains.
During his victory speech on Tuesday night, Lasher explicitly rejected the tech moguls who tried to turn his district into a playground. He stated directly that he wouldn't take cues from AI companies when it comes to protecting jobs, kids, or the environment.
If Leading the Future spent $8 million to stop a guy who wants to audit algorithms, only to elect a guy who wants to halt data centers, that isn't a victory. It's an expensive tactical failure.
The Splintering of Silicon Valley Cash
What makes NY-12 truly fascinating isn't just the amount of money spent, but where it came from. The tech lobby is no longer a monolith. The primary became an open civil war between two heavily funded factions of the tech elite.
On one side, you had the "accelerationists." These are the venture capitalists and founders who believe state-level regulations choke American innovation and hand an advantage to foreign competitors like China. They want a loose, uniform federal framework, which is a polite way of asking for no real rules at all. They funded the attack ads calling Bores a hypocrite because of his past employment as a data scientist at Palantir.
On the other side, you had the "safety alignment" faction. Tech workers, progressive PACs, and billionaires like cryptocurrency founder Chris Larsen poured over $16 million into defending Bores. Larsen’s group, You Can Push Back, spent $3.3 million alone. This faction believes unregulated frontier models pose an existential threat to society. They ran emotional, heavy-hitting ads featuring parents who blame unregulated chatbots for the tragic suicide of their teenage son in 2025.
We aren't looking at a simple battle between politicians and corporations anymore. We are looking at a system where tech billionaires fund both sides of a primary, essentially turning a local Manhattan election into a highly expensive board meeting where they litigate the future of machine learning.
The Crypto Playbook With a Major Catch
The aggressive spending in Manhattan didn't happen in a vacuum. The pro-tech lobbies are explicitly borrowing the playbook used by the cryptocurrency industry during the 2024 elections. In that cycle, crypto-aligned PACs weaponized over $200 million to unseat skeptics and elect a friendly Congress.
But there is a massive structural difference that tech PACs are ignoring. Crypto had a highly motivated retail investor base. Millions of everyday voters owned Bitcoin or Ethereum, and they genuinely believed a pro-crypto government would make them wealthy.
AI doesn't have that built-in grassroots defense force. The public sentiment is overwhelmingly hostile. Recent polling from YouGov indicates that two-thirds of American voters across both parties believe artificial intelligence is moving far too quickly. Only about 20% think its long-term economic impact will be positive for working people.
When a Super PAC drops millions of dollars in text messages and mailers to defend tech companies, it doesn't rally a base. It alienates voters. By turning Bores into a target, the tech lobby accidentally transformed an obscure state assemblyman into a national martyr for the AI safety movement. They gave the regulatory camp a national blueprint, a fundraising apparatus, and a clear narrative of corporate overreach.
Where the Money Moves Next
If you want to understand how this plays out in the upcoming November midterms, don't look at Manhattan. Look at the rural districts across Utah, Texas, Ohio, and Georgia.
The battle lines are already shifting away from high-minded debates about algorithm transparency and moving toward local, material grievances. Tech PACs are quietly shifting millions into primaries where local communities are actively fighting the rollout of massive data centers. These facilities consume millions of gallons of local water and put immense strain on the electrical grid, all to power corporate cloud infrastructure.
That is where the real political vulnerability lies. Voters might not understand the nuances of a frontier model audit, but they absolutely care when their utility bills spike because a tech company built a server farm down the road.
The NY-12 primary didn't kill the momentum for tech regulation. It proved that throwing millions of dollars at an election cannot buy public trust for an unpopular technology. Bores lost his seat to a traditional establishment candidate, but the anti-Big-Tech rhetoric he championed has officially become standard policy for mainstream Democrats.
Next Steps for Tech Policy Observers
If you're tracking how corporate money will shape tech policy moving forward, change how you analyze these races.
- Ignore the win-loss column: Look closely at the policy platform of the victor. Don't assume a candidate is pro-tech just because a tech PAC helped clear their opponent.
- Watch the data center fights: Track municipal and congressional races in secondary tech hubs like Ohio and Texas. Local environmental pushback is proving to be a much more potent political weapon against tech companies than theoretical safety debates.
- Follow the safety PACs: Watch how groups like You Can Push Back redistribute their capital after the New York primary. The infrastructure built to defend Bores isn't dismantling; it's looking for its next target.
