Silicon Valley's capture of our political institutions is all but complete

Greetings all,

Well it’s officially fall here in LA. You can tell because we have experienced our annual day of rain and the city’s infrastructure nearly collapsed in on itself as a result. Always a good time. This week, we tally up the AI law scorecard in California and consider Silicon Valley’s era of total political dominance. For paying subscribers, a roundup of critical AI stories, including how Sam Altman rolled Hollywood with Sora, the rise of a youth movement to mass delete social media apps, and more.

A bit back, I wrote about the various California AI and tech policy bills that were sitting on governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, awaiting his signature or veto. As my headline *provocatively* insisted, we were about to find out whether Silicon Valley owned Newsom. The verdict is in, and, surprise, it (mostly) does. With two exceptions, things broke just the way I expected them to: Newsom signed the toothless bills and vetoed those the tech industry took issue with.

In fact, especially given that California’s size and economy makes it a crucial arena for piloting laws that impact the whole nation, there’s a case to be made that this legislative session has left us all *worse off* when it comes to AI than if nothing had been passed at all. I’m not exaggerating, and I’ll explain in a minute. It’s also a reminder that even in liberal states, Silicon Valley’s institutional political power has, for now, become all but insurmountable.

Quickly, a reminder that this issue of BITM is made possible 100% by paid subscribers, who chip in a few bucks each month to help me keep the lights on and do things like report on state-level AI policy, which most mainstream tech pubs won’t bother to do. But people need, and do want to hear this stuff! I was invited onto Ed Zitron’s Better Offline show to discuss the piece, Silicon Valley’s lobbying power, and AI governance (or lack thereof). And then I got word1 that Natasha Lyonne had used the story to help prepare for a speech at a TIME AI event, in which she called on leaders to get serious about regulating AI, and about passing California’s AB 1064, one of the only AI laws that Silicon Valley was really afraid of. (I’ll post the full thing below.) Anyway, the only reason I can get the word out about ...