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Big Tech Has Become the 'Ubiquitous Villain' of the 2026 Midterms
"Trump and his anti-AI regulation posture is dragging the party to a politically suicidal place," said one Democratic strategist.
Oct 22, 2026
American voters' antipathy toward Big Tech companies has become a central theme of campaigns in the 2026 midterm elections, according to an analysis published by The Guardian on Thursday.
The Guardian noted that hundreds of midterm campaign ads attacking data centers have aired over the past two months, with both Republicans and Democrats accusing one another of being pawns of the artificial intelligence industry.
"And it’s not only data centers," The Guardian added. "The public anxiety over AI and distaste for the billionaires developing it, as well as backlash over encroaching tech like surveillance cameras, has turned the tech industry into a ubiquitous villain this election cycle."
Silicon Valley has become a punching bag for politicians even as Big Tech moguls have been throwing record sums of money to elect politicians sympathetic to their needs.
Super political action committees (PACs) "funded by tech billionaires are among the top spenders in this election cycle," The Guardian explained. "Leading the Future, formed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, has raised more than $75 million to back tech-friendly candidates. [SpaceX CEO] Elon Musk has sunk $366 million into Republican causes, more than he spent on the 2024 presidential election."
Much of the Big Tech money has been going toward Republican candidates this cycle, even though the industry has traditionally had close ties with elected Democrats.
Texas Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico in recent days has been trying to turn Big Tech money being spent against him into an advantage, highlighting in particular the outsize role that Musk is playing funding the campaign of his Republican rival, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
After Musk on Wednesday used his platform X to declare that "there is something deeply wrong with Talarico," the Texas Democrat quickly returned fire.
"There is something deeply wrong with a political system," Talarico wrote, "that allows one trillionaire to buy his own personal US senator."
A report published by The Atlantic on Monday examined how the tech industry's embrace of President Donald Trump during his second term has given Democrats an incentive to pummel the industry, particularly when polls show a bipartisan hostility to AI data centers.
In fact, Democratic strategists told The Atlantic that data centers have proven to be a top wedge issue capable of getting normally loyal GOP voters to think twice before voting for a Republican candidate.
"Trump and his anti-AI regulation posture is dragging the party to a politically suicidal place,” Democratic strategist Rob Flaherty told The Atlantic. "They are grabbing the wrong side of an 80–20 issue at exactly the wrong time."
Democratic strategists started pushing the party to take a more populist approach toward the tech industry when polling data "showed surprising concern about AI" even in traditionally conservative rural districts, The Atlantic reported.
Rishi Bharwani, US director of tech regulation advocacy group Reset Tech, said much has changed since Democrats under former President Barack Obama embraced the industry as a positive force for society.
“What we all experienced was a ton of growth in the tech sector, the creation of numerous new billionaires, and even the world’s first trillionaire," said Bharwani, "and a bunch of working families basically recognizing that they’re not sharing. These tech companies are actually undermining their economic security and their safety."
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How Greedy Corporations Are Weaponizing AI to 'Squeeze' Consumers and Working Class Families
"It's another attack on household budgets that add up, and which working people certainly shouldn’t be on the hook for."
Sep 23, 2026
A report released on Wednesday by Groundwork Collaborative and Reset Tech details how corporate America and assorted nefarious actors are using artificial intelligence to gouge US consumers.
The report begins by noting that while AI is "often promoted as a technology that will boost productivity, reduce costs, and improve efficiency," the reality so far is that it is "enabling new forms of fraud, expanding surveillance-based pricing, and increasing costs for essential services such as health insurance, transportation, and electricity."
As one example of how AI is hurting consumers, the report highlights AI's role in helping health insurers more rapidly deny claims, even as many physicians have expressed concerns about the technology's accuracy.
"AI adjudication tools like UnitedHealth’s nH Predict have been accused of often erroneously denying needed care, hoping that patients and providers don’t take the time to appeal," the report notes. "A recent lawsuit alleges that the 0.2% of patients who do appeal win about nine times out of ten, reversing the AI-powered tool’s denial."
On the other side of the coin, AI-powered medical scribes used by healthcare providers have been found to bill insurers for procedures more complex or expensive than the services that were actually delivered. The report points to a recent analysis conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which found that AI-powered tools are now one of the top drivers of medical inflation in the US.
Groundwork Collaborative and Reset Tech also document how AI allows companies to implement surveillance pricing systems, which use customers' personal data to determine how much they should be charged for a given product or service to maximize the amount of revenue generated per sale.
According to the report, data brokers collect and analyze data taken from internet users and then sell their findings to corporations who can use that knowledge to create detailed profiles of individual consumers.
One area where this kind of pricing is increasingly being used is in the car insurance industry, which thanks to modern technology has vastly more information about drivers' habits than ever before.
"This information—known as telematics—includes speed, braking patterns, acceleration, and location tracking," the report explains. "Insurers analyze this information with AI to assess risk and set personalized premiums. While this may reward some safe drivers, it can also lead to higher premiums and be used to deny coverage entirely."
The report finds that airlines have also been using customers' information to create a dynamic pricing system that charges different fares based on "demand, search activity, booking patterns, and other consumer data."
Rishi Bharwani, US director of Reset Tech and co-author of the report, said that elected officials need to wake up to how cutting-edge technology is being used to gouge consumers with what he described as "a hidden tax on households."
"Families feel it every day, even if they can’t see it," Bharwani explained. "Lawmakers need to act now to stop greedy corporations from using AI to squeeze consumers."
Janelle Jones, senior fellow at Groundwork Collaborative and report co-author, noted that AI pricing is becoming more popular even as families across the US are struggling to afford basics such as food and energy.
"As working people face an affordability crisis, higher prices caused by AI are the last thing they need," Jones said. "It's another attack on household budgets that add up, and which working people certainly shouldn’t be on the hook for."
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