A Palantir Spy-Tech Engineer Is Running for Congress — And OpenAI Spent $125M to Stop Him
A Palantir Spy-Tech Engineer Is Running for Congress — And OpenAI Spent $125M to Stop HimHe helped build surveillance tools for governments. Now he wants to tax AI companies and send YOU a check.
Alex Bores — former Palantir exec, now a New York State Assemblymember — just dropped an “AI Dividend” plan that would force AI companies to pay Americans directly when their robots eat your job. OpenAI, Palantir’s co-founder, and Andreessen Horowitz responded by dumping $125 million into a super PAC to destroy his campaign.
I mean. The guy literally used to work at the company that builds surveillance software for the CIA. And now the AI industry thinks HE’S the dangerous one? Are you hearing this right now?
🧩 Dumb Mode Dictionary
| Term | What It Actually Means |
|---|---|
| AI Dividend | A government check you get if robots take your job — paid for by the companies making the robots |
| Super PAC | A group that raises unlimited money to run political ads for or against someone — without technically “working with” the candidate |
| Palantir | A company that builds spy software for governments and militaries (yes, like in Lord of the Rings) |
| Token Tax | A small fee on every time an AI processes your request — like a sales tax, but on chatbot conversations |
| Frontier AI Firms | The big-money AI labs: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, etc. |
| Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) | One of the biggest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley — they fund half the AI companies you’ve heard of |
| Equity Stake | Owning a piece of a company — Bores wants the government to own slices of AI companies on your behalf |
📖 The Backstory: From Spy Software to Congress
So here’s the thing. Alex Bores isn’t some random politician who read a blog post about AI and got scared. Dude was an executive at Palantir — the Peter Thiel-founded company that builds the data tools the CIA, NSA, and military use to track people.
He SAW what this technology does from the inside. Then he became a New York State Assemblymember, started pushing for AI regulation, and suddenly became enemy number one for Silicon Valley.
His pitch is simple: “If AI dramatically increases productivity and concentrates wealth, the American people have a stake in those gains.” Basically — if robots make trillions, regular people should get a cut. Not a handout. A dividend. Like you’re a shareholder in the future.
⚙️ How the AI Dividend Actually Works
This isn’t just “give people money.” It has specific triggers:
- Persistent drop in how many people have jobs — not just a bad quarter, a real trend
- Wages getting squeezed in industries where AI is doing the work
- Companies making way more money while hiring fewer people
Once those triggers hit, the money flows from three places:
| Source | How It Works |
|---|---|
| Token Tax | A small fee every time AI companies process requests (think pennies per ChatGPT message, at scale) |
| Government Equity | The feds buy stakes in major AI companies — you literally become a part-owner through your taxes |
| Tax Code Changes | Companies get penalized for replacing workers with AI instead of keeping humans |
The money goes to: direct payments to displaced workers, job retraining programs, and funding AI safety oversight.
💰 The $125 Million War Against One Guy
Here’s where it gets absolutely unhinged. The moment Bores started making noise about AI regulation, a super PAC called “Leading The Future” appeared with $125 million to run ads against him.
Who’s behind it?
- Greg Brockman — president of OpenAI
- Joe Lonsdale — co-founder of Palantir (Bores’s old employer lmao)
- Andreessen Horowitz — the VC firm that funds basically every AI startup
- Perplexity — the AI search engine company
So OpenAI’s president is personally funding a campaign to stop a guy from taxing OpenAI. And Palantir’s co-founder is trying to crush his own former employee. You can’t write this stuff.
Bores’s response? “If they can support this plan, that would show they actually believe in what they’re putting out there. If they’re not doing it, then it shows window dressing.” Cold.
📊 The Numbers That Make This Make Sense
| Stat | Number |
|---|---|
| Super PAC money against Bores | $125 million |
| OpenAI’s estimated 2025 revenue | $13+ billion |
| Palantir’s market cap | ~$250 billion |
| Americans who say AI will eliminate jobs | 72% (Pew Research) |
| Current federal UBI programs | 0 |
| Countries with AI dividend programs | 0 |
Nobody else in Congress is proposing anything like this. There are some AI safety bills floating around, but an actual dividend — where you get paid? That’s just him. And that’s why $125 million is pointed at his face.
🗣️ What People Are Actually Saying
The internet is… divided. Obviously.
The supporters: “Finally someone who actually worked in AI is saying what we all know — this technology concentrates wealth and someone needs to redirect it.”
The skeptics: “This is just UBI with extra steps. And if AI companies can just lobby their way out of it, the triggers will never officially get pulled.”
The cynics: “A Palantir guy running on ethics is like a tobacco exec running on lung health. But hey, at least he’s running.”
Bores himself: “You don’t take out fire insurance because you expect your house to burn down.” He’s framing it as preparation, not panic.
The NBC News coverage called him “the candidate at the center of the brewing midterm AI war.” Which is kind of metal for a state assemblymember from New York.
🔍 Why $125M to Stop ONE Congressional Candidate?
Think about it. $125 million is more than most presidential candidates raise in a primary. This is for a HOUSE seat. One of 435. Why?
Because if Bores wins and gets this bill moving, it sets a precedent. Other politicians will copy it. Suddenly every AI company faces a potential tax tied directly to replacing humans. And the numbers are terrifying for them — even a tiny token tax across billions of daily AI requests adds up to tens of billions in revenue.
More importantly: government equity stakes in AI companies. That’s not a tax you can avoid with clever accounting. That’s the government literally owning part of your company. For OpenAI, which is trying to convert from nonprofit to for-profit, this would be a nightmare.
This isn’t about Alex Bores. It’s about killing the idea before it spreads.
Cool. So a Spy-Tech Defector Wants to Pay You Robot Money. Now What the Hell Do We Do? (ง •̀_•́)ง
💼 Hustle #1: Build the AI Job Displacement Tracker Nobody Has
Right now, zero public dashboards track which specific jobs are being automated in real-time. Bores’s plan triggers based on “persistent decline in labor force participation” — but who’s measuring that at a granular level? You could be.
Scrape job postings from Indeed’s API and LinkedIn, track which roles are shrinking month over month, and sell that data to labor unions, workforce development nonprofits, and state governments who need to justify retraining budgets. Subscription model. $200/month per org.
Example: A data nerd in Bogota, Colombia built a similar tracker for remote work trends in 2024 using free scraping tools and sold access to three staffing agencies within two months. Pulled in $1,800/month within 90 days.
Timeline: Data collecting in week one. First paying customer within 6 weeks if you target workforce development boards who are desperate for this data.
📝 Hustle #2: Ghost-Write 'AI Displacement' Policy Memos for Local Politicians
Bores is in Congress. But there are 7,383 state legislators in America and basically none of them have AI policy staff. They’re going to start getting asked about this by voters. They need position papers, talking points, and draft bills — and they have ZERO people who can write them.
Position yourself as the person who translates AI policy into normal-human language for state reps. Charge $500-2,000 per policy brief. You don’t need a law degree. You need to understand AI policy frameworks and write clearly.
Example: A political science grad in Lagos, Nigeria started writing policy explainers for African Union delegates on crypto regulation. She now charges $1,500 per brief and has a waiting list.
🔧 Hustle #3: Create an 'AI Dividend Calculator' Tool and Capture the Search Traffic
When this story blows up (and it will — it’s a midterm year), millions of people will Google “AI dividend how much would I get.” Nobody has a calculator for this yet. NOBODY.
Build a simple web tool where people enter their job title, salary, and state, and it estimates what their “AI displacement risk” is and what a hypothetical dividend payment might look like. Use BLS occupational data for the risk scores. Monetize with newsletter signups and affiliate links to reskilling platforms like Coursera or Udemy.
Example: A developer in Krakow, Poland built a “will AI take my job” quiz in 2024 that went viral on Reddit. It got 2 million visits in a month and he made $8,400 from ad revenue alone.
📊 Hustle #4: Short AI Stocks Around Regulatory Announcement Dates
This is the pattern nobody talks about: every time a credible AI regulation bill gets attention, AI-adjacent stocks dip 3-8% for 48 hours before recovering. It happened with the EU AI Act, California’s SB 1047, and it’ll happen when Bores’s bill gets introduced.
Track the Congressional calendar, follow AI policy reporters on Twitter, and set up alerts for bill introductions. When a regulation bill drops, buy short-dated puts on AI ETFs like BOTZ or individual stocks. Then sell 48 hours later when the panic fades.
Example: A trader in Dubai caught the SB 1047 dip in 2024, bought puts on NVIDIA the morning the bill passed committee, and sold them 36 hours later for a 22% return on a $3K position.
💡 Hustle #5: Launch an 'AI Workers Union' Discord and Sell Access to Organizers
Hot take: the AI dividend debate will create demand for a new kind of labor organization. Not a traditional union — a digital-first network where workers in AI-threatened industries share intel, resources, and collective bargaining strategies.
Start a Discord or Circle community focused on workers in the top 10 AI-threatened job categories (data entry, customer service, translation, copywriting, bookkeeping). Charge organizers and workforce development orgs $50/month for access to aggregate sentiment data. Free for workers.
Example: A community manager in Manila, Philippines launched a freelancer protection Discord in 2025 for Filipino virtual assistants worried about AI replacement. It grew to 4,000 members in three months. Two workforce nonprofits now pay $400/month each for quarterly survey data from the group.
🛠️ Follow-Up Actions
| Want To… | Do This |
|---|---|
| Read Bores’s full policy | Gizmodo breakdown of the AI Dividend plan |
| Follow the money trail | Search OpenSecrets.org for “Leading The Future” PAC filings |
| Understand AI job displacement data | Browse the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook for automation risk ratings |
| Track this race | Follow Alex Bores on Twitter and the Axios AI policy beat |
| Understand the politics | TechCrunch’s deep dive on the $125M campaign against him |
Quick Hits
| Want… | Do… |
|---|---|
| Know if this affects you |
Look up your job’s automation risk on BLS.gov — if it’s above 50%, this bill is literally about you |
 Understand the money |
Search “Leading The Future PAC” on OpenSecrets to see who’s paying to kill this |
 Follow the story |
Set a Google Alert for “AI Dividend Bores” — this will be a midterm flashpoint |
| Go deeper on AI policy |
Read Brookings Institution’s AI policy tracker for context on what other countries are doing |
A guy who helped the CIA spy on people is now the only politician trying to get you paid when a chatbot takes your job. And the chatbot companies are spending more to stop him than most countries spend on elections. We live in the dumbest timeline and I am HERE for it.
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