AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying

I don't think these are the only expenses, why should politician listen to them if lobbyists are not promising them support in next elections in the form of marketing, payments for expenses and so on

Lobbyists are in the business of wafting. It is quite enough for them to bring credible rumors of corporate agenda and plans to spend in pursuit of them. Political entrepreneurs will move to capture that spend without a single back-alley transaction involving burlap sacks of cash with comically large $ signs printed on the side. It has the same effect, though.

I think its entirely reasonable that the industries affected by regulations spend money to combat incorrect information like water usage of data centers.

>some humanities or social science majors

this? Im sensing some meaning towards you calling out their degrees.

Your comment implies you have some deep civic understanding so can you expland on what your POV is? Im not american and would like to konw.

And how does one get the access to do that?

No. It is not. For starters, ask anybody who works at a DC restaurant or sporting venue.

- The AARP ($21M annual spend) has 38M members

- The National Association of Realtors ($54M annual spend) has 1.5M members

- The American Medical Association ($24M annual spend) has 300K members

Of course that doesn't mean that their interests necessarily align with your interests.

Besides, if I were to gather up 4 million to lobby, the opposition would simply spend 8 million instead which they could come up with just as easily. They don't have to outrun the bear, the just have to outrun you.

They primarily only get headlines for outrage topics when people don’t like what they’re pushing toward. Many of the top PACs are from groups like realtors or sheet metal workers lobbying for their interests.

Most people skip PACs and donate straight to political candidates instead. Individual donations to candidates outweigh anything the AI companies are spending by a huge number.

Everything that we want to do can be done through ordinary collaboration with no need for the state. The special services which the state provides (violence and threats of violence, imperialism, inhibition of movement of people and goods across imaginary lines, etc) are the kinds of things that are really only interesting to the kinds of people who are already spending their money on lobbying.

Over $5 billion was spent on lobbying in 2025 [3].

To truly move policy you need to get pliable representatives first and that's not just money. There is a pipeline here. First, you get the right connections. That could be coming from a wealth family, be the nephew or grandson of some politician, do your time as a staffer or whatever. Going up through the ranks acts as a giant filter to make sure you will maintain the status quo. So you have to find candidates to run for these offices who have been weeded out by the existing processes. And if you don't have enough of them, the DNC or RNC will spend selectively against you in the primary and general election. And an increasing number of races have over $100 million spent on them.

Buying back democracy would be very, very expensive.

And then after all that there's the income and jobs pipeline. Your children get six-figure jobs with think tanks and interested companies. You leave office and get placed on boards of large companies. You can't compete with that.

[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/2026-el...

[2]: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5818507-gop-super-pac-...

[3]: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying

Several million dollars, as mentioned in the article, could easily be the cost of paying, e.g., 20 people to perform and communicate an assessment, as opposed to a direct "donation" to a politician. It's not said where that money was spent.

https://www.forbes.com/2008/01/10/jpmorgan-consultancy-advis...

Congress can and does ask companies for their expertise/stance on any given issue or policy, for free. They want to be involved for the same reason they lobby.

In my experience, yes, it is actually wanted. But, it's not enough to just offer to help. Legislative processes are very very human -- i.e., you have to spend time in person, meeting people, getting to know people, remembering their names and faces and trivia about them, building relationships. When you're not doing that, you have to be making informational materials. And when you're not doing that, you have to be building influence in whatever community or subject area you're trying to represent the interests of.

It would be really wonderful to see more people with the means to do so getting involved in this way. One of the reasons everything seems to be getting worse in so many areas is that most of the people doing this work aren't doing it on behalf of the interests of the average person.

Effective altruism has some data that suggests it works marginally for state leglislators but works quite well for undecided federal officials.

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5oStggnYLGzomhvvn/...

Busclickers are S-tier captchas IMO, always easy to identify. Motorcycles and bicycles, on the other hand, are maybe the worst – D-tier at best.

/tangent