I strongly agree. SBF and Future Fund don’t seem to have any track record in party politics. Given the massive reputational risks to EA that might not be easily fixable, I think their political advocacy should be closely scrutinized and possibly slowed to build up more capacity before engaging.
My perception is informed by the Flynn campaign, which seemed to have important failures. Local political leaders criticized the campaign for failing engage with local media and elected officials. They spent more an $800,000 on an attack ad calling the eventual winner of the race a “lobbyist for a corporation accused of driving up drug prices”, but many EAs now believe that claim was “very misleading”. They received plenty of negative local media coverage. They did manage to secure a $1M donation from a PAC aligned with Nancy Pelosi, and building relationships with mainstream Democrats seems to be part of the strategy in supporting Foushee. This could be a useful strategy, but also risks associating EA with corrupt big money party politics.
I’ve signed up for fundraising emails from the EA Donor Network organized following the Flynn campaign. They’ve recommended two candidates so far, Victoria Gu and Seth Magaziner in Rhode Island, both with single paragraph explanations of why the candidates are worth supporting. When I emailed back looking for more information about why we should donate to these candidates, I received a response to my first email but not a second. To be clear, I’m not really looking for an explanation via private emails—I’d like EA political work to adopt the same standards of transparency and rigorous analysis that have powered EA success in other domains.
For onlookers, just to comment on one small piece of this, in early Oct 2022, SBF gave signals of updating/backed off on his spend (“billion dollar donation figure”).
I strongly agree. SBF and Future Fund don’t seem to have any track record in party politics. Given the massive reputational risks to EA that might not be easily fixable, I think their political advocacy should be closely scrutinized and possibly slowed to build up more capacity before engaging.
My perception is informed by the Flynn campaign, which seemed to have important failures. Local political leaders criticized the campaign for failing engage with local media and elected officials. They spent more an $800,000 on an attack ad calling the eventual winner of the race a “lobbyist for a corporation accused of driving up drug prices”, but many EAs now believe that claim was “very misleading”. They received plenty of negative local media coverage. They did manage to secure a $1M donation from a PAC aligned with Nancy Pelosi, and building relationships with mainstream Democrats seems to be part of the strategy in supporting Foushee. This could be a useful strategy, but also risks associating EA with corrupt big money party politics.
I’ve signed up for fundraising emails from the EA Donor Network organized following the Flynn campaign. They’ve recommended two candidates so far, Victoria Gu and Seth Magaziner in Rhode Island, both with single paragraph explanations of why the candidates are worth supporting. When I emailed back looking for more information about why we should donate to these candidates, I received a response to my first email but not a second. To be clear, I’m not really looking for an explanation via private emails—I’d like EA political work to adopt the same standards of transparency and rigorous analysis that have powered EA success in other domains.
For onlookers, just to comment on one small piece of this, in early Oct 2022, SBF gave signals of updating/backed off on his spend (“billion dollar donation figure”).
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2022/10/14/billion-dollar-slip-up-why-bankman-fried-is-rethinking-election-spending-00061809
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/14/sam-bankman-fried-backtracks-from-1-billion-political-donation.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/10/sam-bankman-fried-crypto-ftx-2022-midterms/671823/
This was picked up by 10-20 outlets, suggesting this was an active signal from SBF.