A dark-money group called Build American AI is paying lifestyle influencers thousands of dollars to post pro-AI videos and, in its current phase, to frame China's AI progress as a direct threat to Americans, according to reporting by WIRED. The campaign is tied to Leading the Future, a $100 million super PAC whose backers include OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, Andreessen Horowitz, and Perplexity. Marketing agency SM4 is offering creators up to $5,000 per TikTok video to amplify the messaging.
Leading the Future says it has pulled in $140 million in total contributions and commitments, with $51 million still available to spend as of April. NOTUS has called it a political war chest for the AI industry, and the spending is landing ahead of the 2026 midterms, where AI policy is expected to be a live issue. The PAC is trying to head off rising public concern over data centers, energy use, and job displacement.
The first phase of the influence operation leaned on family and lifestyle creators. On April 1, Melissa Strahle posted an Instagram video to her 1.4 million followers saying "AI lets me focus on what matters most" and calling for investment in American-made AI. Megan Linke posted a similar video in early April, and Uche Madson told her 412,000 followers it's "important we invest in American AI." All three labeled the posts as ads, but none named Build American AI as the funder.
Key facts
- 01Build American AI is paying influencers up to $5,000 per TikTok video to push anti-China AI messaging, per an SM4 staffer running the campaign.
- 02The group is tied to Leading the Future, a $100M super PAC backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, Andreessen Horowitz, and Perplexity.
- 03Leading the Future has $140M in total contributions and commitments and $51M available to spend as of April ahead of the 2026 midterms.
- 04Influencers including Melissa Strahle (1.4M followers) and Uche Madson (412K followers) labeled posts as ads but did not disclose Build American AI as the funder.
- 05Pew Research Center finds 53% of US adults get news from social media and 38% of those aged 18 to 29 regularly consume news from influencers.
The second phase shifts the message squarely onto China. An SM4 staffer told WIRED the brief is to "push to mention China and America and why beating China is so important." Sample copy provided to creators warns that if China wins the AI race, it could harvest personal data from American families and take US jobs, ending with the line "In the AI innovation race, I'm Team USA."
“Leading the Future has pulled in $140 million in total contributions and commitments, with $51 million available to spend as of April pushing its pro-AI agenda.”— Jaeden Schafer
WIRED learned about the campaign after its own reporter was pitched by SM4 to take part. Multiple other creators confirmed the outreach. Josh Murphy, an ecologist with more than 130,000 Instagram followers, said he turned it down because pairing generic AI praise with aggressive anti-China lines felt off. He described the current AI sector as "wacky tech bros that are pursuing greed at the expense of everything else."
Jesse Hunt, a spokesperson for Leading the Future, defended the strategy as an "all-of-the-above communications strategy" against "dark money doomer groups" and said the PAC is building a coalition for a national AI regulatory framework. An OpenAI spokesperson said the company has "no corporate affiliation with Leading the Future or Build American AI" and has not funded either group. Palantir said it has not contributed either; Andreessen Horowitz did not respond, and Perplexity declined to comment.
The talking points still echo public statements from executives at those firms. Palantir CEO Alex Karp told The Axios Show in November that either the US or China would be "the dominant player" and the rules would depend on who wins. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has told reporters "I'm worried about China," and OpenAI's national security blog post argues democracies should lead AI development. Build American AI is also running ads on X with the line "AI leadership is national security. The US must lead or our adversaries will."
The reach matters because of where Americans now get their news. Pew Research Center finds 53% of US adults get at least some news from social media, and 38% of people aged 18 to 29 regularly consume news from influencers. Unlike journalists, influencers face no requirement to disclose who is paying for messaging beyond a generic "ad" tag, and Build American AI's briefing documents instruct creators to deliver the lines while "making breakfast for the kids."
Jamie Cohen, an associate professor of media studies at Queens College, CUNY, called the setup "extremely corrosive to democracy." A partnership label or hashtag ad, he said, doesn't reveal the agenda behind the post: "This is literally propaganda." The briefing document seen by WIRED says Build American AI now wants to expand from left-leaning female lifestyle creators into political commentators, business and tech voices, and male lifestyle influencers, with a partner agency recruiting on the right.
Strahle, Linke, and Madson did not respond to WIRED's requests for comment, and the FTC's disclosure rules around paid political messaging on social platforms remain loosely enforced. It is also unclear how much of the $51 million in unspent funds will flow through influencer channels versus traditional ads, and whether platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X will treat undisclosed PAC-funded content as political advertising under their own policies.
The campaign marks a shift in how the AI industry's policy fight is being waged. Lobbying and op-eds are being supplemented with paid lifestyle content engineered to look like a mom's Tuesday morning Reel, and the China frame gives that content a national-security gloss that is harder for skeptics to push back on without sounding unpatriotic. For OpenAI, Palantir, and Andreessen Horowitz, the arms-length structure of a 501(c)(4) feeding a super PAC offers plausible deniability while the message still carries their preferred policy outcome: keep regulation light, keep federal money flowing, and keep the contest framed as US versus China rather than industry versus public.
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