Elites Influencing Democrats on AI Policy: Jay Carney

Title: General Partner and Head of Policy and Communications, SV Angel
Former White House Press Secretary, Obama Administration
Former Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Affairs, Amazon

Industry Affiliation

• Carney is a General Partner and the Head of Policy and Communications at SV Angel, a venture capital firm invested in artificial intelligence, crypto, and defense tech founded by Ron Conway. 
  • SV Angel is invested in over 60 AI companies, including major AI companies like OpenAI, Anduril, and Anthropic.
  • SV Angel signed on to an open letter calling “everyone to build, broadly deploy, and use AI to improve people’s lives and unlock a better future.” The letter has over 700 signatories including major companies like OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Microsoft, and hundreds of tech industry executives and leaders. 
    
• At Amazon, Carney dismissed concerns of poor working conditions and undermined union-organizing efforts.
  • Carney directly attacked Amazon employees who were quoted in a 2015 New York Times article that alleged poor working conditions and unreasonable expectations at Amazon’s corporate offices.
  • Leaked notes from an Amazon leadership meeting reveal that company executives, including Carney, planned to smear a fired warehouse employee and make him the face of the Amazon worker’s union movement. 
    • The employee was fired after he led a walkout in protest of working conditions at Amazon warehouses during the COVID-219 pandemic.
    • Amazon claimed the employee was fired for violating a 14-day quarantine after he came in contact with another employee who tested positive for COVID. Carney defended the firing on social media after criticism from Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). 
  • Carney defended Amazon’s treatment of employees in response to a post Senator Sanders made on social media in support of union organizing efforts of Amazon workers in Alabama.

Revolver/Government Experience

• Carney was President Obama’s Press Secretary from February 2011 to June 2014. Carney worked for Vice President Joe Biden as Communications Director from January 2009 to January 2011

Government Affairs

• Carney’s role at SV Angel is to “connect portfolio companies and their founders with policymakers in both Washington, DC, and key state capitals.”
  • Carney’s major focus is Project Blueprint, a “comprehensive plan to partner with tech founders and lawmakers to shape policy around artificial intelligence.”
  • Project Blueprint calls for building more data centers and winning the AI race against China, while also positioning AI as a solution for climate change, cheaper energy, medical breakthroughs, and childhood education.
    • The International Energy Agency predicts that AI data centers will increasingly fuel climate change as 40% of the additional energy demand for data centers will be met by using gas and coal fuels. 
      
• Carney was Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Affairs from 2015 to 2022. During his tenure, Carney grew Amazon’s lobbying and public policy team from two dozen to 250, and tripled the number of registered lobbyists to 180 in 44 states.
  • Amazon’s lobbying “killed or undermined  privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 states.” 
  • A 2018 Amazon document reviewing executives’ goals identified Carney as the primary owner of changing or blocking US and European Union regulations and legislation impeding the growth of Amazon’s Alexa devices, which included “defeating restrictions on artificial intelligence […].”
  • Amazon increased yearly federal lobbying spending from $9 million in 2015 to nearly $22 million in 2022. In total, Amazon spent $122 million lobbying the federal government while Carney headed its lobbying arm.
    
• Carney is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Urban Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on economic and social policy. The Urban Institute conducts AI research to provide community leaders and policy makers with “evidence, policy expertise, and practical tools”.
  • The Urban Institute partnered with the American Enterprise Institute to form the Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Future of the American Workforce . Its mission is to “inform presidential platforms, federal and state policy agendas, boardroom decisions, and workers’ choices while they are still taking shape” on artificial intelligence. 
    • The American Enterprise Institute is a center-right think tank that has worked to undermine the credibility of climate science and maintains longstanding financial ties to the billionaire Koch family.
  • The Urban Institute received funding from Amazon and Google in 2024.
    

State Level Action

• In September 2026, Carney joined the Board of Directors of Tech:NYC, a trade association that advocates for a “positive climate” for tech businesses in New York.
  • Membership of Tech:NYC includes major AI companies: Google, Meta, Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI
  • Tech:NYC said it helped shape New York state regulations on the development and deployment of AI, and supported government adoption of AI. 
  • Tech:NYC supports Empire AI, a $400 million public-private partnership created to “secure New York’s place at the forefront of the artificial intelligence transformation.” 
    • In August 2026, Empire AI launched its new AI supercomputer housed on the SUNY Buffalo campus.
  • In June 2026, Julie Samuels, Tech:NYC’s CEO, urged New York Governor Kathy Hochul to veto legislation that would place a one-year moratorium on data centers in the state. Gov. Hochul did not sign the bill into law, but signed a July 2026 executive order placing a statewide moratorium on large-scale data centers.

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Photo: “New White House Press Secretary Jay Carney’s first briefing” by TALK MEDIA NEWS PHOTO ARCHIVES, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0