“He’s running from his past, while ICE is in our communities,” the advert’s narrator says.
The goal of the advert is Alex Bores, a congressional candidate in New York City who used to work for Palantir, the tech firm with lengthy ties to protection and intelligence businesses.
An picture flashes of Bores’ LinkedIn web 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 advert is backed by a few of the very {industry} forces it condemns. The tremendous PAC behind it is an affiliate of a brand new political committee, Leading The Future, launched final summer time by a gaggle of tech giants – together with Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale – to confront a rising bipartisan backlash to synthetic intelligence forward of the midterm elections.
“Listen, we are on the verge of something amazing for our civilization, right?” Lonsdale mentioned 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 enterprise capital are wading into the political fray, with greater than $100 million already pledged by Leading the Future to spice up candidates pleasant to AI. They’re additionally reducing large checks to congressional leaders and President Donald Trump’s political community.
The stakes are particularly excessive this 12 months. Congress is poised to craft the guidelines of the street for {industry} for the subsequent decade or longer, and voters are rising more and more fearful about the penalties of AI improvement, from energy bills to privacy to job loss. Underscoring the pressure, a number of Democrats have been pressured to return marketing campaign contributions from Palantir-linked donors.
“The recent surge in election-related activities of big tech companies such as Palantir and OpenAI can be understood as preemptive measures against potential fallouts from the election,” mentioned Syracuse University professor Hamid Ekbia, the founding director of the Academic Alliance for AI Policy. “Palantir, in specific, is in a vulnerable position because of recent revelations about its heavy involvement with ICE activities.”
Bores, who led one among the first main efforts to control synthetic intelligence at the state degree in New York, accused Leading The Future and its {industry} backers of hypocrisy.
“I quit their company over its ICE contract, choosing principle over my career and millions of dollars. They profited off of it, and are now using those funds to lie to New Yorkers and attack me,” he mentioned in a press release.
Palantir didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark.
Two outstanding Palantir stakeholders have been energetic midterm donors: Peter Thiel, a co-founder and billionaire enterprise capitalist with shut ties to Vice President JD Vance and others in the Trump administration, and the firm’s CEO, Alex Karp.
Both Karp and Thiel gave tons of of 1000’s of {dollars} final 12 months to committees aligned with Republican congressional management, in response to FEC information. Thiel’s giving in 2025 alerts reengagement after he largely sat out the 2024 election cycle. Karp has a extra enigmatic donor historical past.
FEC information present that in 2023, Karp gave $360,000 to the joint fundraising committee for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. A 12 months later, he contributed $1 million to MAGA Inc.
Artificial intelligence has been a boon for Palantir, which has seen its market capitalization skyrocket by greater than 1000% since 2022. The protection tech agency has labored to leverage AI alongside its experience organizing information and logistics.
“Our rise has been, and we believe will continue to be, driven by an increasingly discerning set of companies and institutions in the United States that understand the value of artificial intelligence,” Karp wrote to shareholders this week.
And he’s been an outspoken advocate for AI improvement, framing the argument in absolutist phrases.
“We are going to be the dominant player, or China is going to be the dominant player, and there will just be very different rules depending on who wins,” Karp mentioned on “The Axios Show” last year. “So, when people are worried about surveillance, of course, there are huge dangers there, but you know, you will have far fewer rights if America’s not in the lead.”
Leading the Future, the industry-funded PAC, raised greater than $50 million in the second half of 2025, together with $25 million from OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman and his spouse, Anna, in addition to $25 million from the enterprise capital agency a16z, in response to Federal Election Commission information.
Jesse Hunt, a strategist working with LTF, argued {that a} fractured regulatory panorama is a menace to American competitiveness.
The tech {industry} is pushing for a federal normal that may preempt state legal guidelines. Trump has voiced assist for a moratorium on state laws, signing an executive order to take action, and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz proposed laws to that finish.
“How doomer do we get here and how restrictive are the policies that one is advocating for?” Hunt requested. “Ultimately, what we don’t want to do is stunt innovation and allow what is now the global leader in artificial intelligence and the innovation sector to flatline because policymakers fall prey to fringe ideology.”
LTF – and its opponents – anticipate to face off this 12 months throughout New York, California, Texas, Illinois and Ohio.
Countering LTF is Public First, a corporation led by former Oklahoma Democratic Rep. Brad Carson and former Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart.
The group is aiming to boost $50 million in funding and says it should “focus on electing candidates who champion responsible tech policies that reduce harm and protect against AI’s worst risks.”
“What we’re trying to do at Public First is, in many ways, saving AI from itself,” mentioned Carson. “Because left alone, this kind of no touch approach is going to lead to an incredible public backlash that is already brewing. People are already sharpening their pitchforks.”
While emphasizing that “we haven’t made any formal decisions about who we’re going to support or not yet,” the group pointed to candidates like Bores, who sponsored the Responsible AI Safety and Education, or RAISE, Act whereas serving in the New York state legislature.
When it takes impact in March, the laws would require AI corporations to provide you with security protocols aimed toward stopping “critical harm” – reminiscent of “the creation or use of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapon,” the invoice states, or the conduct of a criminal offense – and report incidents in improvement and operations, like information breaches or harmful malfunctions.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is operating for reelection this 12 months, signed it into legislation final 12 months and known as out AI coverage challenges in her State of the State tackle final month.
“We will not allow technology to undermine our infrastructure, and we won’t let it undermine our democracy either,” Hochul mentioned.
A Gallup survey final 12 months discovered that 80% of Americans consider the authorities ought to preserve guidelines for AI security and information safety, “even if it means developing AI capabilities more slowly.” And there are bipartisan issues about AI information facilities driving up utility payments together with potential job losses and {industry} disruptions.
And a unfastened and politically broad coalition, from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, each Republicans, to unbiased Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is decided to protect states’ rights to make their very own guidelines.
“Let’s not try to act like some type of fake videos or fake songs are going to deliver us to some kind of utopia,” DeSantis mentioned at a December occasion in Sebring, Florida, touting his proposal for state laws – a “Citizen Bill of Rights for AI” – offering privateness protections, nationwide safety restrictions, and laws for information heart building.
Long controversial with liberals, Palantir is already arising in midterm debates.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the front-runner in the Illinois Senate Democratic main, was challenged in a current main debate for his historical past of marketing campaign contributions from Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, totaling simply over $29,000 since 2015, together with $7,000 final 12 months.
“You already demonstrated that you’re not going to show up when it matters – to take money from one of the ICE contractors, the Chief Technology Officer of Palantir, and that funds your campaign, that demonstrates that that’s not what’s your priority,” mentioned Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, one among Krishnamoorthi’s rivals.
“As for the donation that I received from a Palantir exec, when it came to my attention, we donated it to Illinois migrant rights groups,” Krishnamoorthi responded.
Other Democrats are additionally returning marketing campaign contributions from Palantir as public scrutiny grows – together with an internet tracker highlighting top recipients of political donations linked to the firm.
In Colorado, the place Palantir is headquartered, Sen. John Hickenlooper and Rep. Jason Crow each introduced this week that, like Krishnamoorthi, they’d give tens of 1000’s of {dollars} to immigrant rights teams to offset years of donations from Palantir workers, after the Colorado Sun made a number of inquiries about their fundraising information.
The firm’s lightning-rod standing additionally displays broader issues about synthetic intelligence and its penalties.
“I have yet to see AI solve cancer, and I would love to see it right now,” mentioned Reed Showalter, a Democratic antitrust legal professional operating in Illinois’ seventh District. “The consequences have largely been increased costs for electricity and water and a medium-term decrease in employment and wages for the people in both the district, the state, and the country.”
Stewart, the former Utah Republican congressman with Public First, acknowledged the issue policymakers face grappling with a poorly understood and quickly creating expertise.
“All of us are trying to develop, you know, more thoughtful answers on this, because this is such a new issue,” Stewart mentioned, including that “it’s not a partisan issue right now, and I hope it doesn’t become a partisan issue.”
He urged candidates to take voters’ issues critically and provide particular options on find out how to cope with AI’s fast results.
“In all my 12 years in Congress, I don’t remember ever having a conversation with someone about electrical bills, right? And it’s gonna come up,” he mentioned. “And they’ve got to be prepared to, you know, not just kind of shrug and say, ‘yeah, it’s a problem.’ We’ve got to be prepared to say, ‘this is what we think we should do.’”