🌻 my week with the AI populists

a Washington DC scene report

This post originally appeared in Jasmine’s Substack.

“Silicon Valley loves to design for success cases… But the distribution has a downside, and we can’t ignore it.”

The SFO-DCA flight was not supposed to exist. Per the DCA Perimeter Rule, established in 1966, nonstop flights are generally limited to 1,250 miles from Washington. Meanwhile, San Francisco is 2,442 miles away, nearly twice the permitted boundary. But Nancy Pelosi—our lord and savior—lobbied then-DOT-head Pete Buttigieg for an exemption via the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. The Airport Authority balked: citing noise, pollution, congestion, and other decel concerns. But their cries fell on deaf ears. Rep. Pelosi, reclining peacefully in first class in a cocoon of bodyguards, was aboard my flight in last Monday morning.

It’s a good thing, too, because the SF-DC axis is more important than ever. This, everyone can agree upon. Palantir is hiring like crazy for their DC offices, Tim Cook is clapping for Melania, and David Sacks and co.—in spite of it all—have remained in the president’s good graces, fending off chip controls and woke regulations.

I’m officially in town for the kickoff of the Omidyar Network’s Reporters In Residence program. But my greater goal is to understand how AI is being politicized out east—shifting from the exclusive remit of natsec wonks to a broader bipartisan group monitoring the technology’s societal effects. For five days straight, from 8am to 10pm, I pack my calendar with a battery of coffees, happy hours, and dinners with figures across the AI policy and media landscape. I sought to find out: Who are the tribes? Where are the fault lines? What risks and opportunities get people fired up?

I was especially keen to speak with the growing faction of “AI populists,” the group ideologically furthest from my technocratic SF scene. And my reductive two-line summary is as follows: All the money is on one side and all the people are on the other. We aren’t ready for how much people hate AI.