Consider Supporting Alex Bores

Crosspost.

Alex Bores is the best politician in a generation. He has displayed extreme political courage standing up to the big AI companies. And for that, they are trying to destroy him utterly, to grind him to dust, to let everyone know that standing up for AI regulation is political suicide.

Alex Bores is running for Congress in NY-12. I’ve donated to Bores the maximum legal amount you can give a politician, upon reading a very persuasive essay making the case that money donated to him is extremely cost-effective. He’s pushed for the strongest AI safety law in the country called The RAISE Act, which requires frontier AI companies to publish detailed assessments of catastrophic risks from their products and develop a plan to mitigate those risks.

AI safety is one of the most important issues of our era. Leading experts consistently think that AI has a non-trivial chance of ushering in human extinction. I think the odds are around one in fifty; most other people who have thought carefully about the issue think risks are even higher.

And that’s just from losing control of AI—there are also big risks from AI-enabled authoritarianism, weapons development, and unprecedented societal disruption. Imagine a government using AI to analyze data at scale to screen for political dissidents, or a terrorist using AI to build a bioweapon that unleashes a disease far more infectious and lethal than any around today. These risks aren’t terribly unlikely, and we need politicians working to mitigate them.

Bores was willing to burn political capital fighting for AI safety, even when it wasn’t politically salient. Were I in NY-12, I wouldn’t hesitate to vote for Bores. He’s one of the few politicians who has a clear-eyed understanding of the risks of AI, and how big a deal it will become in the coming years.

It is for this reason that the industry is trying to crush him, utterly. They want to send a signal that anyone who stands up to big AI companies is doomed.

A Super PAC called Leading the Future was born from an unholy matrimony between big tech and the darkest corners of the DC swamp. They’ve raised 125 million dollars in the second half of 2025 alone, trying to defeat candidates who support AI regulation. Leading backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Greg Brockman (OpenAI president and co-founder, who also donated huge amounts to Trump’s PAC), Joe Lonsdale (Palantir co-founder), Ron Conway (SV Angel founder), and Perplexity (the AI search company). LTF is a highly-funded political organization designed to make sure that AI regulations don’t get implemented.

It’s the second biggest industry Super PAC ever. Its top priority: defeating Bores.

Bores is a very effective politician. He’s passed bills speeding up trials, mitigating pandemic risk, and preventing companies from requiring you to jump through many hurdles to cancel your subscriptions. See here for all the bills he’s introduced. He’s both good at getting things done and has the right priorities. When Trump created a $1.2 billion slush fund without congressional approval for January 6th insurrectionists, Bores introduced a bill taxing 100% of it, which was later copied by Gavin Newsom. He’s serious in the fight against the corrupt and lawless actions of the Trump administration.

Bores is also incredibly good on animal welfare. He’s endorsed funding plant-based and cultivated meat, banning cruel cosmetic testing, strengthening the Animal Welfare Act to end loopholes for commercial breeders, ending ag-gag laws that make it criminal to film factory farms’ abuses, and eliminating loopholes that exempt factory farms from environmental regulations. Here’s what he said about the Save Our Bacon Act:

The Save Our Bacon Act is a brazen attack on animals, independent farmers, and NY’s rights.
The Trump regime and Congressional Republicans are trying to sneak in a measure that incentivizes the most cruel and inhumane practices, and they want to block all future state regulations while they’re at it. The pattern of cruelty is undeniable.
Washington’s message is clear: the powerful corporate interests want to take away your choice and stake in animal protections.
I’m proud to have been endorsed by @humaneactfund and @theanimalvoters because I championed animal rights in Albany, and they know I’ll do the same in Washington from day one.
My position is crystal clear: in Congress, I’d vote No.

Bores is a generationally great politician. I want him in Congress, helping pass regulations that ensure AI is developed safely and stop animal torture. But this isn’t the only reason this fight matters. If the industry succeeds in crushing Bores, this will send a signal to other politicians: if you stand up against the AI companies who are building technologies that pose existential threats, your political career is over. Future politicians will be less likely to pass AI regulations if Bores is successfully defeated.

The fight against Bores has been extremely dirty.

LTF opposes Bores because he supports AI safety. But when they run attack ads on him, they don’t mention that, because their position is wildly unpopular. In fact, a PAC sponsored by Palantir attacks Bores for his having worked for Palantir. As the Bores campaign put it:

Leading the Future has pledged to spend $10 million to defeat Alex before he ever sets foot in Congress. Its founders said publicly they want to “make an example” of him so that no politician anywhere ever again tries to put guardrails on AI.

They have succeeded. Just not in the way they intended.

What followed has been, by any measure, one of the most politically inept advertising campaigns in recent memory. The super PAC has spent millions accusing Alex—a Democrat running in a Manhattan primary, who wrote the country’s strongest AI safety law over the AI industry’s furious objections—of secretly working for the AI industry. It has imported grievances from the absolute deepest crevices of tech Twitter and mailed them, on glossy paper, to people who have never heard the word “doomer” and would not like it if they had. It has paid actual American currency to test-market phrases like “effective accelerationism” on Upper East Side Democrats. It has produced ads so transparently weird that the Bores campaign’s main concern is they might be doing this on purpose, except no one is that committed to a bit.

But this isn’t the lowest they’ve stooped. The PAC created an AI-generated slop factory to churn out articles attacking AI regulations. They’ve paid TikTok influencers thousands of dollars to make videos attacking AI regulations without disclosing their funders. They even carried out a bizarre false flag operation, where they facilitated a Twitter account posing as a violent AI-safety extremist, “Jonathan Doomer.” In other words, to make AI-safety supporters look violent, they pretend to be AI-safety supporters and then spout violent rhetoric.

Posted by “Jonathan Doomer” beneath a Tweet saying “AI is an intruder in your home.”

The gratuitousness of the tactics is part of the point. The industry wants everyone who stands up to them to know: if you resist, you will be crushed. They will spend 10 million dollars pretending to be your supporters and calling for violence, sponsoring influencers without disclosure, running repeated dishonest ads, and broadly fighting as dirty as they can possibly fight.

Michael Ledeen, explaining the rationale for the Iraq War reportedly said, “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” That’s what LTF is doing. They’re trying to find some safety-conscious politician and destroy him so that every other politician knows that to stand up to them is to end your political career.

We can’t let that happen.

The polls are neck and neck. The prediction markets estimate Bores has a 41% chance of winning. This is an extremely close race. Here’s what you can do to help Bores win.

Reach out to your friends in NY-12 and encourage them to vote for Bores (and to tell their NY friends!). See here for more detailed volunteer instructions, with links to find your contacts who live in New York and sample messages you can send. Here’s an anecdote from someone I know:

I just trawled my whole contacts list, and did a big reach-out to lots of friends & acquaintances in the district (incl. a few former residents with family or roommates still there), many of whom I hadn’t talked to in a few years. I received incredibly warm reception, and a shocking number of people were willing to signal boost Alex Bores to their own networks! AI anxiety is so high and people are pumped to be able to help out, especially in such an easy way. I’d estimate that I netted ~17 votes from my immediate network (admittedly a liberal elite Manhattan-dense social graph), and maybe ~38 if the signal boosting goes reasonably well, just by spending ~90 minutes bumping:
a strong endorsement of Alex Bores on AI & Trump (and a few mentions of known pet interest issues)
a brief explanation of how close the race may be
relevant deadlines (June 13 to register, June 23 election day)

Host parties to do NY-contact outreach with your friends who care about AI getting regulated, resistance to Trump’s corruption, animal welfare, and getting ethical, effective legislators into office. Talk to people and post on social media about Bores. I know some people who wear shirts that say “ask me about Alex Bores for congress.” Let me know if you want a shirt, or to host a friend-banking party.
Canvass in support of a Bores victory. This would involve standing on street corners and knocking on doors, encouraging people to vote for Bores.
Donate to his campaign. You can give up to $3,500 in the primary. If you can, please do!

I don’t usually comment on state elections. But I’m commenting here because this is an extremely important political fight. Bores is a generationally great politician, and this election has generationally important precedent-setting effects.

Let’s win it.