GoKawiilThe talk may be of God, but what’s really at stake—as usual— is Mammon. Tech lords’ ferocious opposition to government interference reflects a collective financial investment in AI that’s quite literally unprecedented within the private sector.
The talk may be of a literal or figurative God, but what’s really at stake—as usual—is Mammon. Tech lords’ ferocious opposition to government interference reflects a collective financial investment in AI that’s quite literally unprecedented within the private sector. In February, The Wall Street Journal reported that the $670 billion to be spent this year developing AI by Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet (Google) represents 2.1 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. That’s slightly more than what the United States spent to build the railroads in the 1850s (2 percent of GDP), and considerably more than the amount spent to build the Interstate highway system (0.4 percent) or to put a man on the moon (0.2 percent). The only national investment the Journal could identify that represented a larger slice of GDP was the Louisiana Purchase (3 percent), which nearly doubled the size of the United States. That was in 1803, when GDP was a puny $488 million, not today’s $31 trillion. And unlike these earlier infrastructure projects, this year’s $670 billion investment in AI draws entirely on private-sector funds.
The stakes have pushed Silicon Valley into the arms of the GOP. As recently as 2020, the tech industry favored Joe Biden overwhelmingly against Trump, with 98 percent of its donations going to Democrats. The biggest tech contributor that year was Netflix chair Reed Hastings, who gave more than $5 million to Democrats. But by late 2025, the nonprofit Public Citizen found, nearly three-quarters of tech political spending went to Republicans, with Musk the biggest tech contributor; he gave $351 million to elect Republicans. Granted, Musk’s impact was outsize; nearly half of tech’s political spending came from Musk alone. But after Trump won in 2024, other tech chiefs fell in line, scrambling to attend Trump’s second inauguration, with four of them (Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sundar Pichai) seated in front of Trump’s Cabinet members, a spot previously reserved for former presidents and the incoming president’s family. This digital Rushmore contributed a combined $26 million to Trump’s inauguration and planned “Golden Ballroom.” Overall, the tech industry kicked in $48.6 million. To you and me, that’s a lot of money. To tech companies, it’s pocket change.
Beneath the towering images of the past— Surrender of General Burgoyne (left) and a marble sculpture of Ulysses S. Grant—at the United States Capitol, American power players of the current era gathered at Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025. Among them, from left: Scott Bessent, Marco Rubio, Priscilla Chan and husband Mark Zuckerberg, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Lauren Sánchez, Kash Patel, Jeff Bezos, Howard Lutnick, Pete Hegseth, Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk. SHAWN THEW/POOL/GETTY
Until recently, tech showed limited enthusiasm for Washington’s lobby scene. A decade ago, it ranked fourth among lobbying industries, spending less than half as much as Big Pharma, which ranked first, according to the campaign website OpenSecrets. But by late 2025, the last year for which data is available, tech had moved up to the number two spot, spending nearly three-quarters as much on lobbying as Big Pharma (which still ranks first). The reason was AI. “AI didn’t just increase its footprint in Washington,” noted Ashley Gold in Axios. “It ate tech lobbying whole,” and it added to tech’s existing lobbying on corporate consolidation, privacy, and free speech new topics like crypto, defense procurement, and the insatiable energy needs of data centers.