How tech became the villain of the US midterms

‘The public distaste for the AI industry extends to its leaders.’ Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images ‘The public distaste for the AI industry extends to its leaders.’ Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images How tech became the villain of the US midterms Datacenters, AI and distaste for the billionaires developing it has soured Americans on big tech The campaign ad begins with a clear, idyllic stream that suddenly turns sludge-brown as two concrete datacenters slam onto its banks. Another facility thuds down on a peaceful suburban park, and two more crush-green pastures as an ominous soundtrack to a disaster movie blares overtop. “They’re coming for our rivers. Our neighborhoods. Our farmland,” a deep-voiced narrator says. “Because Brent Taylor wrote the law allowing datacenters to take over Tennessee.” The attack ad, paid for by the Democrat-aligned Three Star Pac and targeting a Tennessee Republican congressional candidate, is one of more than 150 midterm election campaign commercials across the US focused on datacenters or the artificial intelligence industry. At debates and at rallies, in mailers and online ads, the burgeoning AI industry has taken center stage, as both Republican and Democratic candidates try to convince voters that their opponents will put the unpopular facilities in voters’ backyards. And it’s not only datacenters – the public anxiety over AI and distaste for the billionaires developing it, as well as backlash over encroaching tech like surveillance cameras, has turned the tech industry into a ubiquitous villain this election cycle. As with big pharma before it, candidates are straining to distance themselves from big tech. The stigma of the tech industry has even forced prominent Republicans to break with Donald Trump’s pro-AI party line, with candidates like Ken Paxton, campaigning for US Senate in Texas, calling for a slowdown. In Tennessee, Taylor’s campaign ran its own television spot that claimed he was tough on tech and datacenters. The campaign ads focused on tech have sprung up alongside an ecosystem of pro- and anti-AI political action committees, which have collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence elections and back candidates. The breathtaking amount of spending has pushed tech into the forefront of the midterms, even as polls show issues like the economy, democracy and healthcare still rate as more important among voters. Super Pacs funded by tech billionaires are among the top spenders in this election cycle. Leading the Future, formed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, has raised more than $75m to back tech-friendly candidates. Elon Musk has sunk $366m into Republican causes, more than he spent on the 2024 presidential election. AI money has also been funneled into pro-regulation Pacs seeking to counteract the influence of deregulation groups. Including Musk’s contribution to various Republican-aligned Pacs, the tech industry and its leaders have spent more than half a billion dollars to influence elections and ballot proposals in 2026. The cumulative effect of such vast spending, lobbying and advertising is that tech issues and the tech industry have become far more pervasive in the midterms than previously seen in US elections, marking the first major test of how American voters will react to the AI boom. Datacenters and Flock Concern over AI’s potential effect on society has grown over the last year, and the backlash has been most intense where there is a physical target for voters’ ire. None of those targets have loomed larger than the sprawling datacenter facilities that are part of the tech industry’s multitrillion-dollar infrastructure build-out. Although campaigns have nodded to AI regulation and fears over the technology’s risks, it is datacenters that candidates have repeatedly and specifically called out as a real, tangible threat to constituents. “Datacenters are now a campaign question in nearly every race in the nation,” said Brad Carson, the head of a pro-AI-regulation group Public First Action and a former congressman. The growing animosity toward datacenters has also been reflected in nationwide protests and polling. A Pew Research poll from last month showed that the percentage of US adults who believe that datacenters are bad for the environment, energy costs and quality of life has spiked upwards across demographics since January. Only 4% of respondents believe the facilities will be good for the environment or home energy costs. Datacenters have become toxic enough that some candidates have even begun using the facilities as an epithet to tar their rivals. “Data Center Derek gave the billionaires and greedy corporations a $2bn tax break. Driving up our electric bills, destroying Ohio farms,” declared a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attack ad against Ohio Republican candidate Derek Merrin. At least 20 candidates for governor across the US are calling for moratoriums on datacenters, according to policy tracking firm MultiState, while fewer than 10 candidates across 36 gubernatorial races are backing the projects without any calls for increased regulations. Along with datacenters, the public backlash against AI-enabled Flock surveillance cameras that automatically scan license plates has also bled into campaigns, including in key battleground races. In Michigan, Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed ran a Flock-focused ad that accused his Republican opponent Mike Rogers of pushing a surveillance state by backing the cameras. In Texas, Democrat James Talarico has similarly spoken out against the company and its data collection. “Flock cameras have no place in Texas,” Talarico said last month at a rally. The state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, surprisingly agrees with him, blocking state agencies from spending on Flock cameras in August. Elsewhere, legislation has targeted not just tech infrastructure but the billionaires behind it. In California, voters are considering a ballot measure that would levy a one-time 5% wealth tax on any resident of the state worth more than $1bn. The state’s ultra-rich have feverishly mobilized against it, raising more than $340m and spending more than $1m a day to fight the measure. Google co-founder Sergey Brin alone has contributed at least $102m to oppose the tax. The collective backlash against the tech industry has put its leaders in a bind. Companies are facing internal and external criticism of their products and politics, but accepting more intense government regulation or halting datacenter construction would threaten their growth. The pushback has caused a shift in at least one company’s calculus – OpenAI has distanced itself from Leading the Future in recent months, and Brockman backed out of a planned $25m donation to the Pac. Musk, Brin and other tech moguls, however, have doubled down on their efforts to swing votes their way. “They have never met a problem that they didn’t think they could solve by throwing more money at it,” said Charles Blaettler, political director of pro-AI-regulation Pac Guardrails Alliance. “They’re realizing there’s an intense backlash to their ideas.” AI spending boom and backlash The political landscape of the tech industry is vastly different from the last time the US held midterm elections. Anthropic, now potentially set to go public at a more than $2tn valuation, was just one year old in 2022. OpenAI had not publicly released ChatGPT. Musk had not yet allied himself with Donald Trump’s campaign. The tech industry has become increasingly entrenched in government and determined to shape regulation in the period since. Tech leaders have simultaneously built up immense campaign finance and lobbying arms that have come into full force in this year’s midterms. Meanwhile, Americans feel negatively about how AI will affect a range of issues from personal relationships to the economy to elections, multiple polls show, as well as broadly opposing datacenters in their communities. More Americans oppose a datacenter being built in their area than oppose a nuclear power plant, according to a Gallup poll from earlier this year. The public distaste for the AI industry also extends to its leaders, with polls showing that the US generally views executives such as Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei as untrustworthy and unlikeable. “There’s this very deep-seated sense of anxiety people have about the direction this technology is taking and who’s in control of it,” Blaettler said. “People just feel like they don’t have any agency in their lives anymore.” The enormous spending from the tech industry has largely flowed to Republicans, but it has also inspired a new category of pro-AI-regulation Pacs that have formed to counter groups like Leading the Future. Some of these pro-regulation Pacs have received money, counterintuitively, from AI companies and workers with different views on how government should oversee the technology. Anthropic contributed more than $40m to Carson’s Public First Action, while the Guardrails Alliance and its associated non-profit have raised more than $11.5m. One of the early tests for this type of battle was in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th congressional district in June, where pro- and anti-AI groups, including Carson’s, cumulatively spent $24m on the race – largely targeting candidate Alex Bores, who was running on a pro-regulation platform. The result of all the spending was hard to determine, with Bores coming second in a crowded field and losing to similarly pro-regulation candidate Micah Lasher. After the vote, Lasher sought to distance himself from both Anthropic and OpenAI’s spending. “I have some news for the two big AI companies who’ve taken such an unusual interest in who won this congressional seat,” Lasher said in June. “I won’t be taking my cues from either of you when it comes to protecting our kids, our jobs, our environment.” While the spending frenzy on pro- and anti-AI campaigns has helped fund some of the fights over tech in the midterms, leaders of pro-regulation Pacs say these are issues that voters already organically care about and are mobilizing around. The message from the AI industry has for years been that their products will usher in a utopian era of abundance and affluence, but this election cycle has shown there is deep skepticism from everyday voters that they will benefit from the boom. “It’s now a world where most people on the street have a view about AI,” Carson said. “And it’s mostly negative.” Explore more on these topics US midterm elections 2026 AI (artificial intelligence) Datacenters – US US politics Share Most viewed Most viewed