alt Hacker News> OpenAI nearly doubled its federal lobbying expenditure to a record $2.22mn in the first half of 2026, compared to last year, while Anthropic nearly tripled its spending to $3.53mn, according to federal disclosures.
Never ceases to amaze me how cheap lobbying is. That's pocket change for these companies.
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It seems like the empirical fact that lobbying is cheap is at odds with your apparent assumptions about the value companies gain from lobbying. Does that fact make you rethink your notion of what lobbying actually entails?
Lobbying is cheap because it’s just making powerpoint presentations to Congressional staffers. It’s helping them identify where the pre-existing political fault lines are and arming them with ammo for fights that will play out according to existing ideological positions. “K Street lobbyists” don’t even bill at the rates you see for corporate lawyers. $3 million per six months is what a company like Anthropic might burn in a single B2B lawsuit.
It's so cheap that normal people could band together and re-buy democracy. It's the banding together part that is hard.
Compared to the bailout they're going to get at some point, because they're vital to national security and whatever, I think you could easily be looking at a 1000x+ return on investment on those numbers.
Tangentially,
> "Add up all US spending on candidates, PACs, lobbying, think tanks, and advocacy organizations – liberal and conservative combined – and we’re still $2 billion short of what we spend on almonds each year."
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...
These numbers are so small that I'm doubly ashamed of all the corruption happening. If politicians at least sold out for fuck-you money, I'd understand, but no.
That's like 1 principle engineer. That's it.
The real lobbying here is the fact that key politicians own combined billions in AI and related company stock.
It's pocket change now, but they are lobbying hard now knowing well they won't be able to afford it later.
Well you don't want to push the price up any more than you have to since then each subsequent lobby will cost a minimum of that amount.
Wow - so one really good researchers salary/stock grant. I feel like they're underinvesting...
That's most definitely not the real sum.
People need to look at financial kick backs. There is a certain guy here in central Europe who left politics quite recently, but suddenly has 400 million euros wealth - out of nowhere. And nobody questions how he got that ...
The corruption happens not only via direct lobbyism. One has to look at the whole corruption bribe bubble here.
My understanding is that you can buy a US Senator for ~ $50K cash in pocket, but with inflation maybe that's gone up too.
Obligatory: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...
>Add up all US spending on candidates, PACs, lobbying, think tanks, and advocacy organizations – liberal and conservative combined – and we’re still $2 billion short of what we spend on almonds each year.
Because lobbying is essentially just the process of petitioning the government. Mostly.
It's buying dinners so you can talk with a Representative or Senator one-on-one. It's traveling to D.C. or the Congressperson's home state. It's paying for studies and etc to support your points. It's financing campaigns of politicians who already agree with your viewpoints. It's not "here's money, make law".
Alternatively, couldn't this be seen as evidence on favor of the "corporate narrative" on lobbying? Namely, that the purpose of lobbying is to ensure politicians have instant and easy access to high-quality, insider information relevant to their decision-making on corporate issues (as opposed to simply being bribed)?
I remember my poli sci teacher on college tried very hard to convince the class of this (with little success).
It always has been. Frankly, sometimes they don't even spend anything at all at lower levels, it's just a conversation, a meeting with an animatronic bureaucrat high on their own self-importance and power, in a mandatory spending jukebox of incompetence and failure. I have seen people squander millions simply because they were too incompetent to properly run an organization, plan, and budget and they needed to spend the money merely so it is not taken from them next budget cycle. I am also witness to corruption and nepotism that wildly enriches people merely because doing so is easy and does not require actual work.
The return on "lobbying" for corporations is immense, actually, it's a bit of a high cost, high return with some risks type of dynamic; but especially in the Beltway bandit den and increasingly in the silicon cartel valley they have worked out a systematic methodology for bamboozling and manipulating utterly inadequately prepared bureaucrats squandering other people's money with approaching zero consequences. No, even they not only don't face consequences, they are promoted faster the better and faster they can squander money and enrich friends and associates.
Forget the lobby, the parlor is where it's at.
Lobbying expenditures are given to lobbyists not politicians. You're primarily paying for the salary of some humanities or social science majors and their travel expenses, which isn't that much money.
This should be a basic fact. If those who spend a good portion of time being angry at lobbyists yet intelligent enough to make mid-six figures conflate bribery with lobbying, it should be no surprise the corporations have captured the government. The general public has essentially zero civic understanding while corporations are able to hire the few that do.