Co-founder,@GuardrailsNow + @UltraViolet ; board member @WeBuildProgress Tweets are all mine.
Washington, DC
Joined May 2008
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NEW- follow @GuardrailsNow for how we're going to toxify AI pac $ in elections funded by Trump donors and make it possible to regulate AI
less than a week before the Dem primary in New York’s 12th congressional district, a new Super PAC emerges to support Alex Bores’ pro-regulation approach to AI:
Guardrails Alliance, a populist answer to corporate money in politics
w/ @teddyschleifer
nytimes.com/2026/06/18/techn…
That’s why Guardrails is going big against corporate AI super PAC Leading the Future, spending over $3m across 4 key races. We’re showing that corporate AI money is a liability and there’s a playbook to beat big tech
We’re taking on Republicans in 3 districts that are crucial for control of the House, and one LTF backed Democrat who’s facing a progressive challenger. Our ads are talking about AI issues because we know voters don’t want candidates who are in bed with the AI industry
AI might not be the number one thing people care about, but it’s on everyone’s minds and people don’t know who to trust or what we should do about it. You have to be living in a DC bubble to think it’s not going to have an impact on the election
DC consultants and tech industry operatives keep saying AI isn’t top of mind for voters and that Democrats should just focus on affordability. This isn’t just incorrect, it’s a tactic to distract from the intense anger and anxiety voters are feeling about AI [Thread]
Polling shows voters are less likely to support a candidate backed by a corporate AI super PAC than a candidate who voted to cut billions from Medicaid or who supports an abortion ban. Even if AI isn't people's number 1 issue, it still has an impact in different ways
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
I think the fact that Marissa Mayer would voluntarily disclose this to a reporter is a pretty good demonstration of how deeply the culture of Silicon Valley has diverged from the rest of humanity
As Republicans brace for election losses, Musk prepares for war
“A host of Democrats have said they are eager to wield the power of their office to investigate the tech titan and his ventures should they win either chamber in the midterms.”
washingtonpost.com/technolog…
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
As AI firms recklessly unleash hacking agents across the internet, longstanding cybersecurity vulnerabilities are being exploited with even greater ease and frequency.
Hackers who compromise accounts or expose sensitive data can upend people’s lives.
This is not happening in a legal vacuum, and businesses across sectors face real legal duties.
At @FTC we routinely brought lawsuits against firms whose lax data security practices led to major hacks, exposing people to identify theft, stalking, and serious data misuse.
1. AI firms that are unleashing hacking agents could be held liable for engaging in “unfair or deceptive” practices under the FTC act and state UDAP laws, as well as other statutes.
2. Businesses whose systems get hacked because they’ve failed to follow basic security protocols may also be liable for failing to implement reasonable safeguards. Bad actors may be the ones exploiting these vulnerabilities, but that doesn't absolve businesses from having allowed the vulnerabilities to persist in the first place.
Here is a list we published of some basic security vulnerabilities businesses have a legal obligation to patch up: ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-rese…
3. CEOs can also be personally liable for presiding over lax data security practices, as we held in our case against Drizly: ftc.gov/news-events/news/pre…
4. Lastly, businesses that suffer hacks or breaches must alert any affected parties with clear disclosures that are timely, accurate, and actionable. Failing to disclose security breaches can also violate the law: ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-rese…
This is a must-read thread by civil rights leaders @rashadrobinson and links to a letter he and others wrote to the CBC re corporate contributions, starting with Palantir, and the need for Congressional leaders to be firmly on their voters side in this crucial moment.
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
The obvious answer is that we do neither of these things. There’s actually a tremendous amount of consensus within the Democratic Party on a trade policy that empowers workers, strengthens our industrial base, protects the planet, and reins in abuses from multinational corps.
Dems face a post-midterms clash over trade.
Follow Trump’s lead or shift into free-market mode?
“There’s going to be a lot of debates about this as we move forward,” says one Biden-era trade official. “It’s really messy right now.”
@drdesrochers
politico.com/news/2026/10/23…
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
Uh, what happens in 18 months? Is Anthropic's view that one way or another, we aren't going to be worrying about cybersecurity anymore 😅
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
Wow. Per this reporting:
- OpenAI investigators decided that Ryan Greenblatt had been the source for The Information story on a new technique improving capabilities at the expense of monitorability (recurrent depth i.e. quasi-neuralese)
- OpenAI then fired three safety researchers for having disappearing messages on Signal chats on their personal phone with Greenblatt.
Greenblatt denies that he was the source for the story, telling the Journal “I take confidentiality very seriously and never share such information with reporters." FWIW, I think there are number of reasons to believe him:
- Safety researchers are often the most skittish about leaking to journos fearing that getting caught would blow back on safety writ large. This dynamic is even more pronounced for safety researchers at third parties, whose access is wholly determined by the company.
- If he wanted to sound the alarm about this technique, he wouldn't have leaked to a publication with a famously expensive and insurmountable paywall (which, btw, has probably the best sourcing at AI cos).
- I've interviewed him and separately chatted with him a few times over the years, and IMO he's too rationalist to lie directly.
- OpenAI provided no evidence to the WSJ that Greenblatt was involved.
OpenAI tells the Journal that the firings were for more than just the Signal chats, but doesn't substantiate. Disappearing messages on Signal, as the piece mentions, are indeed a common practice in Silicon Valley.
Regardless of the underlying facts of the case, it's clear that the way OpenAI has handled this has had a chilling effect on employee conduct. Each of the three fired researchers publicly criticized the company in the weeks leading up to the firings. I haven't seen that kind of public criticism from employees since (though I'm told there's pushback happening internally in Slack). People have understandably gotten more skittish about talking to me as well. If OpenAI were actually trying to avoid chilling employee speech, the company would share a lot more information than they have.
Gift link:
wsj.com/tech/ai/the-signal-c…
New: The three researchers OpenAI fired last month spent the summer fighting to keep AI's chain-of-thought process visible.
Then, OpenAI asked to see their Signal chats. A week later, they were let go.
More below from @keachhagey, @berber_jin1, and me.
wsj.com/tech/ai/the-signal-c…
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
Since last Saturday, Meta executives have given vague & shifting answers for why the No Kings Instagram was taken down at the height of the protests.
Today, I'm calling on Meta to come clean.
Is Meta intentionally censoring speech? Americans deserve answers.
newrepublic.com/post/216973/…
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
The Congressional Black Caucus is under attack in two ways. From the outside, racist gerrymandering is trying to wipe out its seats. From the inside, corporations are working to neutralize what it was built to do.
Banks sure have a lot of leverage…
SCOOP: Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents inside customer accounts, including some attempting to take actions that appear to be independent of user instructions, sources told Axios.
The findings have alarmed banking executives, who are racing to restrict access to their systems as AI moves at a velocity faster than financial institutions can respond, multiple industry and bank executives told Axios.
Several banks are now preparing for worst-case and even “day after” scenarios, including how to rapidly secure or restore customer accounts if things go wrong, the people said.
Several bank executives told Axios they're struggling to distinguish between human users and AI agents. One executive said banks also struggle to determine whether agents are authorized by customers or potentially operating without their permission, more akin to rogue agent behavior.
Read my latest for Axios here: axios.com/2026/10/22/ai-agen…
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
Guardrails Alliance PAC, which pushes AI regulations, hits Republican Laurie Buckhout in #NC01:
"Buckout's got the backing of ... tech execs who want data centers in our backyards to build tech that'll take our jobs, and that researchers are saying might even take everything."
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
Guardrails Alliance is going big in AZ-1 to take on Jay Feely, who received over $500,000 in support from corporate AI super PAC Leading the Future. We know what a liability corporate AI money is and that's why we're letting voters know just who's behind Jay Feely.
Shaunna Thomas retweeted
@BernieSanders and I are standing for a 5% tax on 250 California billionaires so 3.5 million Californians and poor kids don’t lose their healthcare.
Gavin Newsom is standing with the billionaires and supporting Proposition 42 to stop a billionaire tax from ever happening.