Welcome to Monday’s edition of Washington Secrets. Today, we take a look at the return of Amy Kremer, longtime booster of Donald Trump, who is emerging as a player in the AI wars. Her outfit, Humans First, released a letter calling for careful regulation of the technology. But could she be the witting or unwitting conservative face of a movement launched by Effective Altruists? Plus, why you should always take photos of Pete Hegseth if you see him out and about around town!
Dozens of New Yorkers gathered in a church hall in March, setting aside their political differences to unite against the way big tech and its wealthy owners were trying to foist artificial intelligence on Americans.
MAGA conservatives were represented by Joe Allen, a sidekick of Steve Bannon. One of the organizers was Jeremy Ornstein, who rose to prominence with the anti-Trump Sunrise Movement.
The meeting of Humans First was meant to show that AI was too important to be left to narrow party politics.
Yet exactly a month later, the experiment was over. Humans First announced it was rebranding as an organization of “grassroots conservatives committed to fighting for an America First AI policy,” helmed by Amy Kremer, a Tea Party alumna who became notorious for her role in organizing the January 6 rally beside the White House in 2021.
“The same Big Tech billionaires who deplatformed President Trump and who silenced anyone who questioned the COVID narrative, now want the unfettered ability to develop dangerous Artificial Intelligence technology,” she said in the press release.
So what happened?
“In theory, it was a great idea, but in reality, it just wasn’t going to work,” Kremer told Secrets in an interview.
“The left and the right operate in completely different ways. I mean, our lexicon is different, the way we operate, the way we work, it’s completely different.”
Not everyone is convinced it was as simple as that.
Humans First grew out of a project set up by the Center for AI Safety. Its early funding came from Open Philanthropy, financed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.
He is part of the Effective Altruism movement. Its adherents mix progressive goals with libertarian instincts to maximize their positive impact on society (while, it seems, retaining the right to make pots and pots of cash). Their voices are often the loudest in debates about AI safety, and they are particularly associated with Anthropic, an AI company that puts those concerns about risk at the heart of its business.
The movement has poured billions of dollars into trying to shape the debate about the future of AI.
The Bull Moose Project, an America First advocacy group, found the total added up to $5.9 billion during the past six years, funding left-of-center political causes, nonprofit grantmaking, lobbying, and dark money operations.
But it also claimed that the movement had retained half a dozen Republican-connected lobbyists and firms “to provide them cover.”
“The pattern is consistent: hire enough Republicans to claim bipartisanship while the operational staff, donors, and policy agenda remain overwhelmingly Democratic,” it concluded.
The idea is simple. In a Washington where the MAGA movement lives at the White House and where Republicans hold both chambers of Congress, conservative groups are the best way to ensure your message is heard.
On Monday, Humans First made a fresh push. More than 60 figures loyal to Trump, including Bannon, signed its letter calling on Trump to examine and approve the most powerful new AI models before they are released.
The role of Effective Altruists in Humans First’s origin story has some Trump allies wondering if it is an “astroturf” outfit, a way for big-money interests to hide their role behind a grassroots campaign.
For example, Jordan Schachtel, publisher of The Dossier, claimed the group had been packaged to sell a regulatory program to conservatives.
“You cannot change the ideology of an authentic movement, but you can change the wrapper on a product,” he wrote.
Kremer rejected the idea, saying Moskovitz had not donated money to CAIS for several years and that Humans First had been spun out by the time she joined.
“We have not taken any money from him. I don’t know who he is. I don’t know him,” she said. “And actually, I mean, I’m out there raising money right now. Which we feel good about because the polling shows the American people are with us.”
Kremer said she was excited to be working on what would likely be the most important issue of her lifetime. She was horrified to learn about how big AI was pouring money into lobbying groups trying to shape the debate.
“I’m not for sale,” she said. “When I do something, I pour my whole heart and soul into it.”
She said she had become involved out of concern at the growing number of stories about children manipulated by chatbots, or adults getting help to commit crimes or take their own lives from AI engines.
It is a family-first agenda, she said, that chimed neatly with Trump’s own positions. No political gymnastics were needed to develop a MAGA case for regulating the technology.
“The people that are writing the grifter stories, they are the ones that are the grifters,” she said. “What I have learned over the past couple of months is the number of people that have taken money from big AI and won’t dare speak out because they’ve been bought and paid for.”
Hegseth says ‘cheese’
A Secrets source is in touch to describe the scene at Frager’s, Capitol Hill’s best-loved hardware and garden store, over the weekend. While they were shopping for plants on Sunday, a small motorcade of black SUVs pulled up, disgorging Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and family onto the sidewalk.
Onlookers were quick to pull out phones to document the moment, as Hegseth picked up a canister of butane, no doubt lining up an afternoon of grilling.
The snappers included an older gent, who asked Secret Service whether there was any problem with taking pictures of a VIP.
“No, he loves it,” came the reply.
So good he read it twice
Thousands of people gathered on the National Mall on Sunday for an evangelical-style day of worship, including readings from prominent Trump administration figures.
“Trump, who is not known for quoting the Bible,” reported the Washington Post slightly sniffily, “read a passage from Scripture in which God promises to heal the ancient Israelites if they agree to pray and humble themselves before God.”
If that sounds rather familiar, that’s because it is rather familiar. The passage was from 2 Chronicles, Chapter 7, when God responds to King Solomon after the completion of the Temple.
It includes the verse: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
It was the exact same passage that Trump delivered in a video made for a marathon Bible-reading event last month. And in fact, it was the exact same footage with Trump seated at his desk in the Oval Office.
Lunchtime reading
How Nicki Minaj became Trump’s ‘No. 1 fan’: The alternative headline might be how a 29-year-old former campaign staffer named Alex Bruesewitz scouts stars and influencers to back the president… and how she weighed in with thoughts on ending the government shutdown.
MAGA Women are leading a #Me2.0 in Washington: Last time around, it was Democratic women. This time, think Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Nancy Mace (R-SC), and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), who drove the resignations of two of their colleagues last month.
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