Former Rep. Max Rose helps lead an influential network intervening in Democratic primaries — while quietly advising a tech-funded political operation targeting AI regulation.
Page A14From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 31 August 2026
Cable pundit championing centrist Dems also works for Big AI, as data centers decide elections.
As it ran on the front
Follow the money, they used to say, back when the money left a trail you could actually follow with your eyes instead of a corporate filing. Here's the trail: a commentator with a regular seat on cable news spends his airtime championing the centrist lane of the Democratic Party — steady, don't-rock-the-boat, nothing-to-see-here politics — and it turns out he also draws a paycheck from a company in the artificial intelligence business. Meanwhile, on the same news day, there's a separate story explaining that the fight over where to put data centers, and who pays for the power and water they burn, could decide the next presidential election.
Put those next to each other and you don't need a conspiracy, you need arithmetic. A man who benefits financially from AI's expansion has a seat on the very airwaves shaping how voters think about the politics that will decide whether that expansion faces any resistance at all. Nobody made him lie. He doesn't have to lie. He just has to keep telling you the moderate path is the responsible path, night after night, and never once mention who signs a second check.…
…(cont) This is what they mean when they say access journalism, except it's not journalism, it's punditry, which has even less of a rulebook. Nobody is required to disclose a consulting relationship before he tells millions of people which wing of a political party is the sensible one. The disclosure, if it exists at all, lives in a filing or a client list somewhere, one click deeper than the average viewer will ever go.
The stakes aren't theoretical either. Data centers eat electricity by the gigawatt and water by the millions of gallons, and somebody's utility bill goes up to cover it regardless of who wins in November. The man telling you which candidates are serious about that fight has a rooting interest in the outcome, and he's not required to tell you that before the commercial break.
“He's on cable every night telling you the centrist lane is the safe lane, and he's cashing checks from the company that needs the data centers built to win a race nobody voted on. That's not analysis, that's a commercial with better lighting. Follow the paycheck before you follow the take.”
The receipts
Rising electric bills and data center construction spark bipartisan pushback from governors, but restricting AI infrastructure could cost America its lead.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.