How Silicon Valley brought its AI fight to Washington

FOR most of the last decade, Silicon Valley treated Washington as an afterthought – a place to send lobbyists when a subpoena arrived, not a location to build strategy around. 

That posture has collapsed. In 2026, the arguments happening inside artificial intelligence labs and venture firms – speed versus safety, open models versus closed ones, how much deference the industry deserves – are no longer confined to Sand Hill Road.

They are being fought, on the floor of the US Congress, in the West Wing and in state capitals across the country.