One week after Donald Trump secured a return to the Oval Office, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of the venture capital firm a16z, recorded a podcast episode gloating about the 2024 presidential and congressional election results. Andreessen, who has a couple billion dollars to his name, marked the moment as feeling “like a boot off the throat.” No longer would he, his business partner, or the rest of the cryptocurrency world face “repression” at the hands of a Biden regime intent on enforcing securities law. Horowitz matched Andreessen’s excitement. “Hallelujah,” he said.
Just 11 months prior, the pair embarked on a mission to aggressively pursue political power, corralling crypto industry bedfellows to fund an ecosystem of Super PACs aimed at electing crypto-friendly officials, and punishing crypto skeptics. The gambit paid off handsomely. Andreessen and Horowitz contributed $22 million each to the crypto industry’s primary PAC, Fairshake. In return, Fairshake helped secure a crypto ally’s Democratic nomination for Senate in California; flip an Ohio Senate seat from incumbent crypto skeptic and chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Democrat Sherrod Brown, to Republican Bernie Moreno; and instill a sense of fear in any would-be crypto opponent.
Flush with this success, Andreessen concluded that their newfound command of a vast political warchest should “be a permanent role” in order to protect their business interests. Now, it appears they’re looking to double down on last year’s success, and export the model they pioneered with crypto to another industry they’re heavily invested in: artificial intelligence.
This August, Andreessen and Horowitz announced the launch of Leading The Future (LTF), a Super PAC focused on “ensuring the United States leads the world in AI innovation, development, and governance.” Their new political influence vehicle has been generously supported by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, venture capitalist Ron Conway, and AI search engine company Perplexity to the tune of $100 million — an outside spending budget large enough to have made it the sixth-largest Super PAC in the country in the 2024 election cycle, had it existed then.
The two individuals entrusted to lead LTF’s effort are Zac Moffatt and Josh Vlasto, both experienced operators with ties to crypto’s influence campaigns.
Moffatt is the CEO of a Republican-aligned consulting firm that has worked on behalf of crypto and a16z-backed dark money group Digital Innovation for America. He reportedly personally introduced Andreessen to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who has become a reliable ally of the crypto industry and whom the billionaire has become a big supporter of. Andreessen also recently brought on a former executive of Moffatt’s firm, Targeted Victory, to help run government affairs at a16z.
Vlasto is the “liberal” counterweight. A former chief of staff to governor Andrew Cuomo, Vlasto served as the spokesperson for crypto dark money group Cedar Innovation Foundation, Fairshake, and Fairshake’s related PACs from their inception until this past July. He did not respond to requests to clarify whether he planned to maintain his positions at Fairshake while working for LTF.
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All signs point to LTF attempting to replicate the strategy of the Fairshake model. By bringing hundreds of millions of dollars to bear on a select few cryptocurrency skeptics, Fairshake was able to not only help dislodge some of the industry’s foes, but scare crypto-apprehensive legislators into backing the industry’s agenda — lest they become the next target of the blockchain-funded campaign machine. In the year since, the cryptocurrency industry has secured massive legislative wins that protect cryptocurrency stablecoin issuers from state consumer protection laws, allow big tech firms to issue their own stablecoin currencies, and more. Further legislation that would permanently exempt most cryptocurrencies from Securities and Exchange Commission oversight seems poised to pass sometime soon.
Come January 2027, Leading The Future might secure similar regulatory exemptions for the AI industry. This would mean relief from potentially bothersome consumer protections being floated by state legislators concerned about privacy, chatbot-driven suicides, and rising utility bills.
The PAC has already announced its intention to target one such state legislator, Alex Bores, in an attempt to block him from securing the Democratic nomination in the crowded primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District. Bores was a co-sponsor of New York’s RAISE Act, an AI regulatory bill that would require companies to publish safety reports and disclose the occurrence of any “safety incident.” Leading The Future views the bill as an affront to the industry, stating “bills like the RAISE Act threaten American competitiveness, limit economic growth, leave users exposed to foreign influence and manipulation, and undermine our national security.” By targeting Bores, Leading The Future hopes to send a clear message to ambitious legislators: support for AI regulations might jeopardize any chance of career advancement.
Fairshake’s process began with the same kind of target selection. While it often chose to boost crypto proponents in relatively safe races, offering relatively paltry funds so they could rack up easy wins, it was more selective in its choice of crypto opponents to oust. Fairshake targeted lawmakers who seemed particularly vulnerable to a primary or general election challenge. Many of these candidates were also targets of the pro-Israel group AIPAC, effectively engendering a joint blitz by the endowed newcomer and longtime D.C. heavyweight.
The strategy allowed Fairshake to not only concentrate its strength on pivotal races, but avoid any costly — and humiliating — defeats, burnishing its image as an electoral juggernaut. In the few swing races Fairshake chose to partake in, it devoted tens of millions of dollars to help ensure a win. Despite a combined outside spending budget of $132 million, Fairshake and its affiliated PACs devoted $70 million to just four races out of the 58 it claimed to be involved with. With cryptocurrency and AI skepticism often going hand in hand, it wouldn’t be surprising to see LTF’s efforts overlap with those of Fairshake come 2026, bringing even more financial power to bear on a few critical races.
Once immersed in a contest, Fairshake took every effort to avoid mentioning cryptocurrency, focusing instead on issues with the greatest salience in that particular race. In their efforts to topple Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Fairshake ads focused on the southern border and China, while efforts to block California progressive Katie Porter from winning the Democratic Senate primary attempted to tar her as a hypocrite who accepted money from big business and lobbyists. In promoting crypto-favorite Randy Fine in Florida, ads highlighted his connection to Trump and the high cost of health insurance, without mention of why a Fairshake-affiliated group might be supporting him. With voters unlikely to see AI innovation or data center construction as motivating campaign issues, it would be no surprise to see LFT adopt this same chameleon-like approach.
Despite the lack of mention of cryptocurrency in the ads Fairshake and its affiliated PACs ran, Fairshake made it clear to lawmakers why the crypto industry was lined up to spend money against them. This all-in approach allowed Fairshake to change the behavior of lawmakers fearful of ending up in the group’s crosshairs. When Montana Senator Jon Tester was floated as an early potential target of Fairshake, he had a sudden change of heart regarding crypto. He lost his reelection bid to pro-crypto Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), nevertheless.
Cryptocurrency expert Mark Hays of Americans for Financial Reform says that attempts to split the difference rarely work. “Some policymakers seem to think that they can have it both ways by conceding to industry interests in return for political support, while saying they also want to protect the public interest. … It’s a shaky bet at best, selling out principles for uncertain return.”
These compromises may fail lawmakers, but they’re the exact behavior PACs like Fairshake and Leading The Future appear designed to foster. Each time lawmakers attempt to appease these PACs, the debate shifts one step closer to the industry’s preferred outcome.
Though the crypto industry first mobilized against the perceived threat of the Biden administration, the AI industry faces a markedly different political environment. AI has an ally in Trump, and some of its most prominent leaders have his ear, largely thanks to crypto’s campaign for power. Andreessen reportedly helped advise Trump on White House staffing, and David Sacks, a billionaire venture capitalist and crypto investor, is serving as both the White House’s crypto and AI czar.
These relationships have no doubt been bolstered by the president’s newly minted cryptocurrency fortune, which could be related to the White House’s support of AI. Andreesen and Horowitz’s a16z has been pushing the idea that any regulation of AI at a state level would be a violation of the federal government’s ability to regulate interstate commerce, and Trump seems to be listening. The White House is reportedly preparing an executive order that would preempt state regulation of the industry, ensuring that blue states like California and New York aren’t able to fill the void left by a lack of federal regulation. The White House has also unveiled an executive order that would functionally exempt data centers from environmental reviews and allow for their construction on federal land. OpenAI has called for even bolder executive action, demanding (and later recanting) a federal government backstop for data center construction, and AI’s inclusion in CHIPS Act tax credits.
As Sacha Haworth, executive director of The Tech Oversight Project puts it, “The Big Tech AI industry is only interested in one thing: zero laws, zero accountability. The American people do not agree with their agenda, and that’s why Big Tech CEOs are putting big money behind efforts to repeal and neuter laws at the federal, state, and international levels.”
Other AI priorities have been spearheaded by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who introduced legislation to create an AI “sandbox” that would grant the White House wide discretion to waive existing federal regulations that the industry claims hampers their innovation. But Cruz has been isolated by even his own party on his outspoken support of the AI industry, leading some to think that legislative momentum may be stalled. LTF hopes their spending blitz will be enough to change that.
After getting used to having the proverbial boot removed from his throat, Andreessen is now eager to place it upon the throat of anyone who dares regulate one of his investments.
From Rolling Stone US
