OpenAI has partnered with a new AI initiative led by a group co-founded with outgoing Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry that has pushed left-wing causes and has several board members aligned with Democrats.
OpenAI, led by CEO Sam Altman, is backing an initiative known as AI 2030, which is aimed at shaping “public dialogue about U.S. competition against China on AI,” Politico reported in October.
The initiative is led by the “non-partisan” think tank American Security Project (ASP), where Kerry was a founding member and served two stints on the board of directors.
ASP has promoted the idea that climate change is a national security threat, and argued on its website that pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal was a bad idea that “harms national security.” The group previously received a $500,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation “for use by its World War Zero initiative, an effort to achieve action and mobilization through awareness and public education to halt the increase of global carbon emissions.” The Rockefeller Foundation has dished out tens of millions of dollars to left-wing causes.
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Kerry’s former chief of staff David Wade, who gave Hunter Biden rapid response help as the Burisma scandal swirled, currently sits on the board of directors and recently authored an op-ed in The Hill explaining how AI in the U.S. has reached its “Sputnik moment,” outlining the need to compete with China on AI.
Former Obama Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who called then-President Trump an “embarrassment” in 2018, also sits on the board of ASP.
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Rep, Don Beyer, D-Va., who is also on the board at ASP, has publicly opposed Trump’s tariff policies, calling them “idiotic” and “illegal” in a 2023 press release.
In 2018, ASP promoted an op-ed by Board Member Matthew Wallin in which he criticized Trump’s diplomatic tactics against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In 2017, Wallin amplified the debunked media narrative in a post on X, then Twitter, that Trump called White supremacists at the deadly Charlottesville rally “good people.”
Chris Lehane, who serves as OpenAI’s Head of Global Policy, is the author of the infamous and controversial “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” memo promoted by then-first lady Hillary Clinton dismissing the Monica Lewinsky scandal as part of a right-wing media conspiracy.
Along with being a longtime Democratic Party consultant, Lehane has recently contributed money to help former Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
Altman recently followed other tech titans and made a substantial $1 million gift to Trump’s inauguration in his personal capacity, but has faced scrutiny for previous high-dollar donations to left-wing efforts, including a $250,000 donation to a Democratic super PAC and opposition research firm American Bridge during the 2020 election.
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Altman has donated to hundreds of Democrats in recent years compared to just one Republican, Newsweek reported this past summer. He was also recently tapped to be a co-chair for the incoming Democratic mayor of San Francisco’s transition team.
In addition to hosting a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang at his San Francisco home in late 2019, Altman has donated over $1 million to Democrats and Democratic groups, including $600,000 to the Sen. Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, $100,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and over $150,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He also gave thousands to state Democratic parties and top Democrats in the House and Senate.
In 2014, Altman co-hosted a fundraiser for the DNC at Y Combinator’s offices in Mountain View, California, which was headlined by then-President Obama.
Following Trump’s victory in November, Altman posted on X, “congrats to President Trump. i wish for his huge success in the job.”
“It is critically important that the US maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values,” he added.
During Altman’s tenure from 2014 to 2019 as the CEO of Y Combinator, an incubator startup that launched Airbnb, DoorDash and DropBox, he talked about China in multiple blog posts and interviews. In 2017, Altman said that he “felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco” and that he felt like an expansion into China was “important” because “some of the most talented entrepreneurs” that he has met have been operating there.
Altman’s résumé and AI efforts have drawn the ire of Trump ally Elon Musk in recent years. Musk said last year, “I don’t trust OpenAI. I don’t trust Sam Altman. And I don’t think we ought to have the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy.”
Musk, who has been involved with a highly publicized legal tussle with Altman, has also said that OpenAI’s ChatGPT function is infected with the “woke virus.”
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot whose core function is to mimic a human in conversation. Users across the world have used ChatGPT to write emails, debug computer programs, answer homework questions, play games, write stories and song lyrics, and much more.
“It is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, that’s true. We can make much better ones. The reason to develop AI at all, in terms of impact on our lives and improving our lives and upside, this will be the greatest technology humanity has yet developed,” Altman said in a 2023 interview with ABC News. “The promise of this technology, one of the ones that I’m most excited about, is the ability to provide individual learning — great individual learning for each student.”
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In recent months, OpenAI has reportedly been quietly pitching its products to the U.S. military and pursuing defense contracts, Forbes reported.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for OpenAI said, “America has to win the AI race, and that is why Americans from both sides of the aisle are united in supporting policies that help the US maintain its competitive edge against China.”
“ASP is a nearly twenty-year-old bipartisan organization that works with legislators, retired flag officers, subject matter experts, and groups from across the political spectrum to produce high quality research and forge bipartisan consensus on emerging threats to our national security,” an ASP spokesperson told Fox News Digital in a statement.
“While OpenAI is one of many donors for AI Imperative 2030, we ensure an equal balance of opinions informed by independent experts and Consensus for American Security members, including Julia Nesheiwat, Ph.D., former Trump Homeland Security Advisor, and Neil Chatterjee, former Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under Trump. We also recently hosted a roundtable featuring Nazak Nikakhtar, another former Trump official.”
The statement continued, “The primary objective of AI Imperative 2030 is to ensure that the U.S., not China, wins the race for AI supremacy. China aims to surpass the U.S. and lead the world in AI by 2030. We can’t let that happen. President Trump has been a leader in creating bipartisan consensus that the U.S. needs to compete more vigorously with China, and we look forward to working with his administration and the Republican Congress to design effective and cost-efficient policies towards this goal.”
Fox News Digital’s Nikolas Lanum, Cameron Cawthorne and Joe Schoffstall contributed to this report.
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