Elon Musk and Sam Altman Are on the Same Side
The Trump administration, for its part, has been more than happy to help companies that have stepped up to the plate. In just one recent example, the Justice Department indicated that it was “evaluating possible intervention or amicus participation” in a lawsuit filed against Musk by the NAACP, alleging that Musk’s xAI illegally installed and operated 27 gas turbines to operate its Colossus data center complex near Memphis, Tennessee. In response to the announcement that the White House may review new AI models before release, an anonymous senior White House official assured the press – and worried AI companies – that it was seeking “partnership” with industry rather than “government regulation.” Chief of Staff Susie Wiles also posted on social media that the government was not in the business of “picking winners and losers.”
As opposition to AI grows, companies supporting it have invested heavily in their lobbying and campaign finance operations. Meta, Nvidia and Microsoft spent $47.1 million on their combined lobbying efforts in Washington last year. OpenAI spent $1 million in the first half of 2026 and pushed the White House to anticipate state-level regulations on data centers and artificial intelligence. The nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen found that a quarter of federal lobbyists in Washington are involved in AI issues. The pro-AI Super PAC Leading the Future, launched in August by Open AI co-founder Greg Brockman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale (among others), raised more than $75 million ahead of the November midterm elections.
Despite the tens of millions invested in campaigns and lobbying efforts by billionaires, AI proponents have attempted to portray their opponents as those who defend the interests of “elites.” In the property of Jeff Bezos Washington Post, Two Palantir executives – Anthony Bak and Mehdi Alhassani – warned that bipartisan opposition to AI development risks making it “accessible only to the rich,” arguing that such fights are “the surest way to ensure that artificial intelligence becomes a tool of the wealthy elite.” It’s a stupid but predictable argument. For decades, the real right-wing elites have claimed that a different and selfish cadre of liberal elites has been the real the force behind everything from the War on Poverty to protests against the Vietnam War to the requirement for seat belts to, more recently, climate policy. Today’s AI enthusiasts have replaced the neoconservatives’ old complaints about the “new class” with screeds against The NIMBYs, those on death row and a “network of left-wing activist organizations” financed by George Soros and that the Washington Examiner recently blamed for a remarkably bipartisan pushback from data centers.
