The Campaign Against a Former Employee
In the race for New York's 12th Congressional District, political ads have been running for weeks accusing Assembly member Alex Bores of hypocrisy. The charge: that Bores, who has called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, previously worked at Palantir -- the data analytics firm whose contracts with ICE have made it a perennial target of activist criticism. The ads, produced by a group called Think Big, warn voters that "ICE is powered by Bores's tech" and declare that "he should never, ever be in Congress."
The funding trail, however, tells a more complicated story. Think Big is backed by Leading the Future, a Super PAC whose founding supporters include Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and the AI search company Perplexity. Federal Election Commission filings show that Lonsdale Enterprises is the sole donor, aside from Leading the Future itself, listed on filings for American Mission, a separate PAC affiliated with the same political network.
AI Regulation as the Real Battleground
Inside Palantir, the ad campaign has generated frustration. Two current employees and three former staffers told Fast Company they view the effort as opportunistic and largely unrelated to immigration enforcement. Their assessment: the true motivation is Bores's legislative record on artificial intelligence regulation. As a New York Assembly member, Bores cosponsored the Raise Act, a state law signed by Governor Kathy Hochul that imposes safety requirements on frontier AI developers. He has stated publicly that he intends to pursue similar federal legislation if elected to Congress.
A former Biden administration official, speaking anonymously, agreed that the campaign was "almost certainly" a response to Bores's role as a lead sponsor of AI safety legislation. Bores himself has been direct about the connection, telling Fast Company: "The cofounder of Palantir started a Super PAC that is lying to New Yorkers about my work and the fact that I quit seven years ago over the ICE contract they continue to profit off of to this day."
Internal Tensions at Palantir
The ads have exposed existing fault lines within the company itself. Wired reported that Palantir employees have spent weeks pressing company leadership for answers about its ongoing work with ICE, prompting CEO Alex Karp to address the issue in a prerecorded internal video. A Slack channel has emerged where employees share the campaign materials they have received, expressing discomfort that a company cofounder is effectively weaponizing criticism of the firm's own federal contracts against a former colleague.
One former employee characterized the irony bluntly: "Nothing says 'principled stance' like a founder denouncing their own company's employees for their own company's choices." The tension highlights a broader dynamic in the technology industry, where founders and investors increasingly deploy political spending to shape regulatory outcomes while simultaneously distancing themselves from the controversial applications of their own products.
Why It Matters
The Bores campaign is a preview of what promises to be an expensive and contentious fight over AI regulation in American politics. Leading the Future has stated it will "aggressively oppose" candidates who pursue what it considers restrictive AI policies. With tech billionaires pouring money into Super PACs and the policy stakes around AI safety legislation growing with each passing month, the intersection of technology industry money and democratic politics is entering a new phase. The outcome in New York's 12th District -- one of the most liberal constituencies in the country -- will signal whether AI industry spending can effectively shape primary elections, and whether voters are willing to reward or punish candidates based on their stance toward regulating the technology sector.
