Most Americans have yet to work out quite what they think about artificial intelligence, but already the AI game is under way: the buying and placing of political pawns in readiness for America’s first comprehensive federal AI law. Voters have yet to elect their senators and representatives, but the power brokers – political donors – are spending, primary by primary, to help ensure their chosen candidates survive to write that all-important legislation.

Two rival networks with differing views about what this law should entail have raised more than $200 million for this year’s midterm elections. Through the end of June, federal filings show, they had put roughly$44 million behind some 40 House and Senate candidates, and, of the candidates they have backed whose primaries have been decided, all but a couple have won.

For anyone who remembers the crypto-currency campaigns of 2024, it’s a familiar playbook. Then the cryptocurrency industry built a super PAC network called Fairshake, funded chiefly by Coinbase, Ripple and the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which raised roughly $260 million over the election cycle. A super PAC may spend unlimited sums for or against candidates so long as it does not coordinate with their campaigns.

Fairshake concentrated enormous sums on a small number of races. It put more than $10 million into ending Katie Porter’s Senate hopes in a California primary. The Fairshake network spent about $40 million helping Bernie Moreno defeat Sherrod Brown, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, in Ohio.

Every ambitious legislator in America now knows what it costs to put your name on an AI safety bill

Every ambitious legislator in America now knows what it costs to put your name on an AI safety bill

The strangest part was what the advertisements said, which was everything except the word “crypto.” Axios reviewed 59 spots from Fairshake and its affiliates and found ads about insulin prices, border security and China, without a single mention of digital assets. Matthew Erickson, a political messaging consultant, told the outlet that the omission was “usually the sign of a group that’s operating with some sophistication.”

The advertisements praised or attacked candidates on other grounds entirely; their purpose was to seat lawmakers sympathetic to crypto and remove those seen as skeptical. Voters never saw the true argument, but every politician understood what was really going on. Within a year of the election, the crypto industry got its first federal law, governing stablecoins – digital tokens pegged to the dollar. A bill deciding who regulates the rest of the market has since cleared committee in the........

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