Ex-Palantir Assembly Member Alex Bores Says Silicon Valley Is Spending to Stop His Run for Congress

The tech insider turned regulator

Would you trust a former Palantir engineer to write the rules for AI? Alex Bores is asking that very question, and he’s answered it on his own terms. A 35-year-old with a master’s in computer science, Bores left Big Tech for Albany, won a 2022 assembly seat, and helped cosponsor New York’s RAISE Act in 2025 — one of the nation’s tougher AI safety laws that forces big model makers to publish safety protocols. He says his Palantir stint taught him how data gets organized — “an ontology,” he explained — and even pointed to a Department of Justice project about mortgage securities as an example of what that really looks like in practice.

Targeted by Silicon Valley money

Here’s the twist: it has been reported that some of Silicon Valley’s richest movers and shakers don’t like what he’s done. Leading the Future, a super PAC allegedly bankrolled by OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, and Andreessen Horowitz, has poured money into a campaign to derail Bores’ primary bid in New York’s 12th District. The PAC has framed his approach to regulation as a threat to innovation — “handcuffing” the industry, it has been reported — and Bores has found himself on the receiving end of leaflets and text messages financed by the same tech world he once worked in. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

Bores doesn’t duck the irony. He told WIRED that many lawmakers still don’t grasp the tech they’re supposed to oversee, and that expertise doesn’t mean loyalty to industry. That line — expert, not captive — is his political core. His opponents in the crowded Democratic primary include Jack Schlossberg, George Conway, and Micah Lasher, but New York’s 12th is safely blue; the primary could well decide the seat.

What’s at stake isn’t just one race. This is a proxy fight over who writes the rules for AI: engineers-turned-regulators or the venture capitalists and founders who bankroll the next wave of models. Silicon Valley spending to stop a would-be regulator from within — it’s a drama that feels ripped from the modern tech playbook. Which side will voters pick? That’s the question that will determine whether policy tames tech, or whether money keeps calling the tune.

Sources: wired.com