{"text":[[{"start":7.25,"text":"America’s leading AI companies spent record sums on lobbying in Washington in recent months as they try to limit unfriendly regulation and shape the US rules around data centres and vetting advanced models."}],[{"start":19.85,"text":"OpenAI nearly doubled its federal lobbying expenditure to a record $2.22mn in the first half of 2026, compared to last year, while Anthropic nearly tripled its spending to $3.53mn, according to federal disclosures. Google, along with Microsoft, spent as much as in any quarter since 2020. "}],[{"start":41.6,"text":"The increase comes as the AI industry confronts political battles on multiple fronts and builds a more permanent influence operation in Washington, according to lobbyists and policy experts."}],[{"start":52.5,"text":"“The lobbying offensive has been as much about deterring regulation as making the case for an affirmative government industrial policy that supports the industry,” said Amba Kak, co-executive director of AI Now Institute and senior adviser on AI to the Federal Trade Commission during Joe Biden’s administration."}],[{"start":69.45,"text":"The top issues on the lobbying agenda include the federal rules governing the release of new models, after the US last month wielded export controls to stop the rollout of Anthropic’s Fable model over cyber security concerns."}],[{"start":null,"text":"
"}],[{"start":83.4,"text":"Companies also want to influence policy around the construction and power for massive data centres, as well as rules governing whether developers make the underlying parameters for their models publicly available, according to federal disclosures and lobbyists involved in the policy discussions."}],[{"start":100.5,"text":"Joseph Hoefer, chief AI officer at Monument Advocacy, said: “It’s an export-controlled technology like semiconductors, an infrastructure build-out like telecoms or power, a procurement relationship like defence, and a liability question like the [social media] platforms, all at the same time. No single playbook covers that.”"}],[{"start":119.9,"text":"The industry “lost loudly” an effort to get Congress to ban state-level AI regulation, something Donald Trump has tried to enforce with an executive order, said Kak. But beyond that, “very little else has moved in terms of regulation. Overall, I would say it’s been a good quarter for them.” "}],[{"start":137.25,"text":"The Trump administration, most vocally through former AI tsar David Sacks, has favoured a light-touch federal framework and warned a patchwork of state laws could stifle innovation. "}],[{"start":148.25,"text":"But rapid technical advances and competition from China have also forced officials to intervene on issues such as model releases — mostly through company-specific decisions rather than generally applicable rules."}],[{"start":161.1,"text":"Gregory Allen, founder of tech policy analysis firm Decision Tree Research and former senior AI adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: “Even when [policy is] written down, it’s like letters to one company as opposed to rules that consistently apply to everyone and that’s a real gap in the policy right now.”"}],[{"start":180.65,"text":"Kak said: “The fact that we’re seeing so much soft regulation — or, really, soft executive signals rather than hard, enforceable regulation — is an outcome of the lobbying offensive, rather than a reality the industry is trying to navigate.” "}],[{"start":194.70000000000002,"text":"Although the leading AI companies share interests on many issues, they do not always present a unified front. Companies have diverged over questions including model safeguards, open-source systems and the appropriate role of federal regulation."}],[{"start":209.25000000000003,"text":"Anthropic added the Treasury department to the list of federal agencies it lobbied for the first time during the quarter. This week, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent reiterated threats to impose sanctions on Chinese AI labs over allegations that they had used outputs from the US company’s models to train their smaller systems."}],[{"start":229.25000000000003,"text":"Other companies that increased their lobbying expenditure in recent months include Scale AI, a data-labelling and model-evaluation company in which Meta owns a 49 per cent stake, and Tencent, the Chinese group behind the WeChat messaging platform and developer of the Hunyuan family of AI models."}],[{"start":249.10000000000002,"text":"Among the firms winning Silicon Valley’s business are Ballard Partners, the top lobbyist for Anthropic and semiconductor manufacturer AMD, as well as Miller Strategies, which reported the most lobbying business from OpenAI in 2026."}],[{"start":263.65000000000003,"text":"Google said it was advocating for “federal legislation that promotes American leadership in AI, ensuring it’s developed responsibly and benefits everyone”. "}],[{"start":273.45000000000005,"text":"OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft did not respond for comment."}],[{"start":286.25000000000006,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1785133446_7744.mp3"}