AI and crypto money is flooding the midterms to punish politicians who back regulation, a bad sign for candidates who want rules on the technology.

• A super PAC network funded mainly by Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman spent $8 million against New York assembly member Alex Bor, who narrowly lost his congressional race.
• The spending was announced eight months early, a deliberate warning shot to scare other candidates off the issue.
• It is working on consultants: Democratic advisers are now telling candidates to avoid talking about AI.
• Crypto money is doing the same thing, targeting Sherrod Brown and Katie Porter over industry regulation.
• OpenAI's public talk about slowing down clashes with its executives' money, which is still funding groups fighting any rules.

Outlook: States remain the only level of government actually regulating AI, and the industry's next push is to get Congress to strip that power away.