How Palantir and AI money is shaping the midterms

“He’s running from his past, while ICE is in our communities,” the ad’s narrator says.

The target of the ad is Alex Bores, a congressional candidate in New York City who used to work for Palantir, the tech company with long ties to defense and intelligence agencies.

An image flashes of Bores’ LinkedIn page. The narrator notes Palantir’s work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose operations in New York City have sparked outcry on the left.

“ICE is powered by Bores’ tech. Manhattan is smarter than that,” the narrator says.

In a twist, the ad is backed by some of the very industry forces it condemns. The super PAC behind it is an affiliate of a new political committee, Leading The Future, launched last summer by a group of tech giants – including Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale – to confront a growing bipartisan backlash to artificial intelligence ahead of the midterm elections.

“Listen, we are on the verge of something amazing for our civilization, right?” Lonsdale said on CNBC in November. “But you have a lot of crazy populists, you have a patchwork of just really intense stuff they are doing that would just break all of this. And we can’t let that happen.”

Palantir executives and leaders from OpenAI and venture capital are wading into the political fray, with more than $100 million already pledged by Leading the Future to boost candidates friendly to AI. They’re also cutting big checks to congressional leaders and President Donald Trump’s political network.

The stakes are especially high this year. Congress is poised to craft the rules of the road for industry for the next decade or longer, and voters are growing increasingly worried about the consequences of AI development, from energy bills to privacy to job loss….

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