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Silicon Valley's New Lobbying Monster -- From crypto to A.I., the tech sector pours millions into super pacs that
intimidate politicians into supporting its agenda.https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley-the-new-lobbying-monster
non paywall
"... The super pac [Fairshake]and two affiliates soon revealed in federal filings that they had collected more than a hundred and seventy million dollars, which they could spend on political races across the nation in 2024, with more donations likely to come...Pro-crypto donors are responsible for almost half of all corporate donations to pacs in the 2024 election cycle, and the tech industry has become one of the largest corporate donors in the nation. The point of all that money, like of the attack on Porter, has been to draw attention to Silicon Valley’s financial might—and to prove that its leaders are capable of political savagery in order to protect their interests. “It’s a simple message,” the person familiar with Fairshake said. “If you are pro-crypto, we will help you, and if you are anti we will tear you apart.”...
[Katie] Porter’s defeat, in fact, was the culmination of a strategy that had begun more than a decade earlier to turn Silicon Valley into the most powerful political operation in the nation. As the tech industry has become the planet’s dominant economic force, a coterie of specialists—led, in part, by the political operative who introduced the idea of “a vast right-wing conspiracy” decades ago—have taught Silicon Valley how to play the game of politics. Their aim is to help tech leaders become as powerful in Washington, D.C., and in state legislatures as they are on Wall Street. It is likely that in the coming decades these efforts will affect everything from Presidential races to which party controls Congress and how antitrust and artificial intelligence are regulated. Now that the tech industry has quietly become one of the most powerful lobbying forces in American politics, it is wielding that power as previous corporate special interests have: to bully, cajole, and remake the nation as it sees fit.
Chris Lehane was just shy of thirty years old when he came up with the notion of “a vast right-wing conspiracy,” to explain Republican efforts to undermine Bill and Hillary Clinton. It was such an inspired bit of showmanship that Hillary Clinton adopted it as one of her signature lines. At the time, Lehane was a lawyer in the Clinton White House tasked with defending the Administration from charges of scandal, but he specialized in seizing control of the political conversation...
Peter Ragone, a prominent adviser to numerous Democratic politicians, told me that, among the handful of political consultants transforming Silicon Valley, “Chris is the tip of the spear. His capacity for processing information at speed is breathtaking.”
The Valley’s enthusiasm for Biden, however, was short-lived. The President quickly appointed three prominent tech skeptics—Gary Gensler, Lina Khan, and Jonathan Kanter—to oversee the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the antitrust division of the Department of Justice, respectively. Soon the government was suing or investigating Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and dozens of other companies. Some of those suits and inquiries had been initiated under Trump, but Biden’s S.E.C. found a particular target in the cryptocurrency industry. Gensler, an ally of Elizabeth Warren, filed more than eighty legal actions arguing that crypto firms or promoters had violated the law, most often by selling unregistered securities. Some of the executives being sued by the S.E.C. had contributed lavishly to the Democrats. Brad Garlinghouse, the C.E.O. of the crypto firm Ripple, who had been a fund-raising bundler for Obama, was among those under legal fire, and he clearly felt victimized. He told Bloomberg that the federal government was acting like “a bully,” and tweeted, “Dems continue to enable Gensler’s unlawful war on crypto—sabotaging the ability for American innovation to thrive. It’s no wonder the GOP has announced a pro-crypto stance . . . . Voters are paying attention.” ...
After Porter’s defeat, many politicians who had once treated crypto with disdain or hostility suddenly became fans. In May, two months after Porter’s defenestration, a pro-crypto bill came up for a vote in the House. In previous years, similar bills had languished amid tepid Republican support and strong Democratic opposition. The new bill—known as the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act—was openly opposed by President Biden. But it sailed through the House, with nearly unanimous Republican backing and seventy-one votes from Democrats. The Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, recently joined a Crypto4Harris virtual town hall and promised that passing the legislation this year is “absolutely possible,” adding, “Crypto is here to stay.” The Democratic senator Sherrod Brown—a longtime crypto critic—is running for reëlection in Ohio, where Fairshake has directed forty million dollars to ads in support of his opponent; Brown has lately been tempering his public criticisms of the industry. Earlier this year, crypto donors indicated that they might get involved in Montana’s Senate race, where the incumbent Democrat, Jon Tester, once a crypto skeptic, is facing a difficult fight. Soon afterward, Tester voted to weaken S.E.C. oversight of cryptocurrencies, earning him the unusual grade of “C (Neutral on crypto).” It looks like Fairshake will stay out of Montana as long as Tester keeps voting the right way. A similar dynamic occurred in Maryland: after the super pac threatened to take sides in the Democratic Senate primary there, both major candidates proclaimed their pro-crypto bona fides.
In total, Fairshake and affiliated super pacs have already spent more than a hundred million dollars on political races in 2024, including forty-three million on Senate races in Ohio and West Virginia, and seven million on four congressional races, in North Carolina, Colorado, Alaska, and Iowa. Three and half million dollars was used to help vanquish two left-wing representatives who were members of the so-called Squad: Jamaal Bowman, of New York, and Cori Bush, of Missouri. Of the forty-two primaries that Fairshake has been involved in this year, its preferred candidate has won eighty-five per cent of the time. The super pac’s latest filings indicated that it had more than seventy million dollars to spend in the remainder of the election cycle. Its donations to political candidates are on par with those of the oil-and-gas industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and labor unions...."
Like him or not, remember the name, Chris Lehane, the a pro-Democratic Party strategist who's helping Silicon Valley control Washington, DC.
Who are in Lehane's SV zone? Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, venture capitalist funders, who made a 90 minute video accusing President Biden of weakening America, with Horowitz claiming that "They've subverted rule of law to attack the crypto industry" and see the future of America at stake. They believe the Biden's administration's anti-crypto actions threatened to doom America's economy, tech superiority and military might, and they felt they had no choice but to endorse Donald Trump. That video prompted co-signs from Elon Musk, who are joining Silicon Valley tech bros in the politics "game."
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