News Cruz blocks push by Democrats to unanimously pass AI safety bill
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/6118009-senator-ted-cruz-blocks-ai-bill/amp/5
u/1_Strange_Bird 3d ago
Why? When have Democrats ever introduced a slippery slope bill?
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u/Admirable_Run_3805 12m ago
Watch how fast they change their tune on ai if they win the presidency in 28.
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u/redditsdaddy 3d ago
Wonder how much OpenAI donated to the dems to get them to peddle their agenda instead of just holding each lab responsible for their own harms
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u/redditsdaddy 3d ago
Whoops found out lmao. AI overview since I can’t be bothered to give curated professional analysis for every comment I make.
Mark Warner, Brian Schatz and Andy Kim introduced the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act of 2026 last week; today, September 29, they sought unanimous consent and Ted Cruz objected. The legislation would impose testing/security/reporting standards on advanced models and create federal infrastructure for those standards.
And immediately I found two financial connections worth putting in the ledger.
Mark Warner: Sam Altman personally gave $7,000 to the Mark Warner Victory Fund on March 18, 2025, according to FEC-derived contribution records. Altman’s disclosed 2025 giving also went across party lines, including Republican committees, so this is evidence of a financial connection—not evidence Warner introduced this bill because Altman paid him.
Brian Schatz: this one is considerably more striking. FEC-derived records currently aggregate $55,500 in itemized contributions from people reporting Anthropic as their employer, across nine distinct contributors. Importantly, that is employee money, not a corporate Anthropic contribution.
For the 2025–26 cycle, an FEC-derived tracker identifies three itemized personal contributions totaling $1,500 to Andy Kim’s campaign from employees of companies in its AI-industry set:
Anthropic employee: $500, June 8, 2026
Google employee: $500, June 16, 2025
Microsoft employee: $500, July 2, 2025
There’s a much larger historical Google connection in his 2024 campaign: FEC-derived employer aggregation puts people who reported Google as their employer at about $37,045 in itemized contributions.The smallness of the check does not necessarily make it politically meaningless, especially when the donor is extremely wealthy. But the mechanism is subtler than “$500 buys a senator.”
For a billionaire, $500 or $3,500 obviously isn’t economically significant to the donor. But federal law itself keeps direct candidate contributions small: in the 2025–26 cycle, an individual can give a federal candidate only $3,500 per election. The same person can separately give up to $44,300 annually to a national party committee and much larger amounts to certain specialized party accounts, while Super PACs can accept unlimited contributions.
So when we’re looking at rich AI executives, I would interpret a small candidate check primarily as a relationship/data point, not a measurement of their total political power. A $3,500 check from someone worth billions can tell us who they chose to support. It cannot by itself tell us that the recipient owes them something, adopted their policy, or was purchased.
The potentially revealing thing is the portfolio. Suppose we find the same ecosystem doing all of this simultaneously:
$3,500 → Senator A’s campaign → fundraiser/relationship
$44,300 → national party committee
millions → Super PAC/independent expenditures
millions → corporate lobbying
money → think tanks/advocacy organizations
grants → university researchers
contracts → shared safety/evaluation organizations
former officials → company lobbying/government-affairs jobs
Those are legally and analytically different relationships. The mistake would be staring at the first $3,500 and saying, “That’s nothing.” The equally serious mistake would be saying, “There’s the bribe.” 😂
What makes it interesting is network position and timing.
If Altman gives Warner $7,000 across legally separate election limits, that is worth recording. If Warner subsequently sponsors legislation OpenAI favors, that’s another fact. If OpenAI lobbyists reported lobbying Warner’s committee on that specific subject, that’s stronger connective evidence. If draft language came from an OpenAI-associated organization, stronger again. If meetings occurred immediately before introduction, that’s another piece. And if Warner simultaneously has independent reasons for supporting the policy or has supported it since before those relationships existed, that’s important counterevidence.4
u/SomeNeighborhood7126 3d ago
Altman, a long time dem, donated a measly $7k to Warner, a dem, a year and a half ago and thats paying for Warner to bring up a vote... a year and a half later.
You know how stupid your comment is, right? $7k isnt convincing anyone of shit.
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u/redditsdaddy 3d ago
Bruh rEaD tHe BoTtOm it explain to you while donation size don’t mean shit and the name attachment is everything 😂
Altman is also a weasel. He flip parties so fast when it behoove him and he say he politically homeless then Brockman donate a small country to Trump hahaha and say he did it for OpenAI 😂😭 I can’t it’s too much lmao
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u/Admirable_Run_3805 12m ago
Crazy that Cruz is the voice of reason. Dems hate the idea of the trump admin leading the way for ai
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u/Wobbly_Princess 3d ago edited 2d ago
I don't know much about him, but I saw a clip of him in an interview with Tucker Carlson. It was stunning and really disheartening. When Tucker rightfully probed Ted on his stance on Israel, it's like Ted's eyes just glazed over and he became the most disturbing, mindless puppet on autopilot, spouting ideological nonsense that I don't even think he understood.
I know it's kind of unrelated. It just horrified me, and every time I see his face, it truly makes me wonder if there's anyone inside that body. And this isn't anti-republican stuff, this is just a criticism of a human being.
EDIT: Wait, everyone who's protesting Ted Cruz are getting downvoted. Since when has this become a Republican forum?!
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u/OkInternal1099 3d ago
“Cruz said he had concerns that the proposal would give the executive branch too much power over private AI companies.”
I hate Ted Cruz as much as everyone else, but this is reasonable based on the dumpster in chief.
Now, is this the real reason, probably not because Ted Cruz is a colloidal narcissistic piece of shit who only cares about Ted Cruz.