Obama administration alum Jay Carney is tapped to mend Silicon Valley’s relationship with Team Blue as Dems seem poised to win big in the midterms, and possibly start to hold Big Tech accountable
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We’re quickly approaching the midterms, and that means there’s polling on everything. While the major story is the potential for a Blue Wave, polls also show that Big Tech is in a bit of hot water. One of the animating forces of the midterms is a backlash to the AI industry and its rapacious demand for energy. Americans overwhelmingly do not want AI data centers built in their communities, citing environmental and quality-of-life concerns; Americans are also worried about the speed at which AI technology is developing, and want the government to ensure that AI won’t go rogue (or destroy jobs; really, people are concerned that change they didn’t vote for is coming whether or not it is wise). Reading the political winds, Congressional hopefuls are campaigning on addressing these concerns, promising to rein in data center construction and putting the brakes on AI development.
The Democratic party base soured on Silicon Valley after tech leaders aligned themselves with the Trump administration. Feeling unduly burdened by Biden administration policies, Big Tech went all in on Trump in the 2024 campaign and have welcomed the proximity to the White House that their support won them. Tech executives lined up to stroke Trump’s ego and gifted cash to fund his personal vanity projects. In return, they’ve achieved significant policy victories and access to the White House. The relationship between Trump and Silicon Valley reeks of corruption, a stench Democrats should surely investigate if they win back either houses of Congress.
With Trump’s grip on government likely to loosen, tech’s strategy is to reingratiate themselves with the Democratic Party. Enter Project Blueprint, the Obama-endorsed initiative launched by venture capital firm SV Angel. Ostensibly billed as an effort to bring tech founders and policymakers together to shape AI policy, it reads more like a Big Tech wishlist. Project Blueprint advocates for a bigger data center build out in order to win a supposed AI “race against China,” and positions AI as a solution for climate change and cheaper energy, echoing Silicon Valley arguments for unrestrained AI development(most of us experience the data center buildout as something exacerbating climate change and electricity prices, of course).
To make their case, SV Angel hired former Obama press secretary Jay Carney to lead Project Blueprint. If the job is to sell Silicon Valley back to Democrats, then perhaps there’s no better salesman than Carney. Carney was the public face of Obama’s tech-friendly administration that brought “Silicon Valley to Washington”. Big Tech grew into the behemoth we now know under the Obama presidency. Elon Musk benefited greatly from Obama’s tech-forward policies: a $465 million loan to Tesla and a multibillion dollar contract to SpaceX set the foundations for Musk’s trajectory towards becoming the world’s first trillionaire. Even as the Democratic Party’s skepticism of Silicon Valley grew, Obama maintained his optimism in the industry.
Carney’s career itself illustrated the alignment between Obama officials and Big Tech. After Obama left the White House, Carney revolved into the private sector, landing at Amazon as Bezo’s hired gun as vice president of corporate global affairs, i.e. its lobbying arm. Carney grew Amazon’s lobbying and public policy teams while increasing lobbying spending by more than double during his tenure. Amongst his other responsibilities at Amazon, Carney went about undermining consumer privacy protections, killing regulations on AI, threatening whistleblowers, and supported Amazon’s anti-union efforts. He also expanded an Amazon program called “watering the flowers”: a program to create a well-tended “garden” of pro-Amazon policymakers.
Now Carney is at SV Angel where he can apply his green thumb to Project Blueprint and tend to a garden of policymakers to benefit the firm’s 60-plus AI investments. His credentials as Democratic party-insider and corporate lobbyist could prove useful in repairing relationships between SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway and polite Democratic society. Conway founded the pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future and donated $500,000 to the crypto PAC Fairshake. By his own words Conway has come to regret those decisions, but Democrats shouldn’t let him off the hook. Conway’s PACs largely benefited Republicans (e.g., bragging about defeating widely beloved (among Democrats, at least) Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown in 2024) and attacked AI-safety Democrats like Alex Bores. Hiring Carney is a shrewd move to distance himself from the cash he handed to pro-industry elements–the thing about opportunism is that it pays to move along.
Bringing Silicon Valley executives back as a friendly constituency in the Democratic Party isn’t the answer to tech’s outsized influence and the dangers it presents. In the last week Meta suspended the No Kings accounts in the midst of millions of protestors marching in streets across the U.S., while TikTok suspended pages promoting a not-so-flattering documentary about Musk. Trump’s attacks on democracy and the American people have rubbed off on them, and made clear that they have no moral bottom. If you lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
If Democrats win a majority in the House, they must investigate tech’s complicity in the Trump administration’s corruption. Some Democrats have defended Big Tech bending the knee to Trump, equating the wealthiest people on Earth to hostages with guns held to their heads. They’re the Democrats who likely welcome Carney’s Project Blueprint to squash calls for corporate accountability from the more fervent members of the party. But, as our colleague Max Moran wrote in The Nation, tech CEOs made a choice, a choice others have made across history to ally with fascist regimes. The tech oligarchy chose corruption, and Democrats must choose to investigate, to issue subpoenas, to haul them before Congress to justify why those choices were made. But that will be more difficult if Democrats follow Carney’s Blueprint and tie their politics to people aligned with the most corrupt administration in history.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
Rep. Becca Balint Eyes Top Position on the House Antitrust Subcommittee
Khanna Says Trump’s Letting Wall Street Jack Up Gas Prices
The Greenwich Billionaire Couple Spending Big to Reinvent the Democratic Party
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Photo: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney answers questions from reporters. Photo by Janie Amaya, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0