A provocative piece by Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times recently compared the rise of AI to the technological explosion caused by the railroads in the late 19th century. The railroads, Bouie reminds us, had an enormous influence over American economic and political life.

They created vast fortunes for the few and dominated government at all levels, extracting land grants, minerals, loans, and other benefits while evading meaningful regulation.

Bouie points to the opposition that emerged against the railroads from the Populist movement, but he misses an important part of that history: Farmers and workers eventually built a new political party outside the two-party system to challenge not only the railroads, but also banks and other concentrations of corporate power.

Known initially as the Farmers’ Alliance, the People’s Party emerged nationally in the late 19th century explicitly attacking corporate monopoly and the political power of concentrated wealth. The People’s Party called for a new economic commonwealth based in part on cooperatives, businesses owned collectively—a vision that resonated with millions of farmers and workers.

Today, AI companies and their executives have rapidly accumulated political influence in both parties. Individual voices from a range of ideologies, like Bernie Sanders on the left and Steve Bannon on the right, speak forcefully against unfettered development. But without countervailing consolidated political power it is difficult to see where sustained pressure for meaningful AI regulation—and serious protections against job loss and growing economic inequality—will come from.

Consider the conflicts of interest already present in Congress.

A recent Sludge analysis of congressional financial disclosures found that 106 members of Congress—roughly one in five—reported household investments in AI developers, chipmakers, cloud infrastructure providers, data-center companies, or private AI startups.

Forty-four of those lawmakers, from both parties, sit on committees with jurisdiction over issues involving AI.

And then there is the torrent of AI political money.

According to the Washington Post, AI companies and their allies committed more than $185 million by March to influence the 2026 elections, as competing industry factions sought to shape how—and how much, or how little—AI would be regulated. The total today is surely much larger.

A New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission filings found that AI companies, industry-connected groups, and leading executives donated at least $83 million during 2025 alone to federal campaigns and committees.

And the spending has produced political results. For example, of the 20 candidates receiving AI-industry support in early Texas and North Carolina primaries, 19 won or advanced to runoffs, according to the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, autonomous AI systems have crossed lines that would have triggered serious law-enforcement action if performed by human hackers.

The latest example, just recently disclosed, involves an OpenAI agent that gained unauthorized access to an Australian government health-data portal. The incident occurred in June, but according to OpenAI, the company did not discover it until August, and the Australian government........

© Common Dreams