Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“We here at the Prospect like to point out the ways in which economic power routinely converts into political power. We saw a particularly gruesome example of that this week. Tech executives converged on D.C. for a lunch with Donald Trump that eventually led to a toothless, completely voluntary AI safety agreement. Public Citizen did the service of tallying up all the money that these executives, their families, or the corporations they lead have given to Trump’s campaign, his super PAC MAGA Inc., his inauguration fund, legal settlements that personally enriched the president, or various vanity projects like the White House ballroom. The total came out to $227 million. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who accounts for $23 million of that total, substantially devised the ‘morally binding’ self-regulatory compact to police AI models that came out of the meeting, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang (a mere $1 million) was his key lieutenant.” (10/02/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/10/02/ai-spending-trump-openai-greg-brockman-has-become-punching-bag/