The Doom Report is John Teufel’s new column that chronicles America’s slide into oligarchy and techno-fascism.  

On August 7, 2025, Gavin Newsom stood on a sunny, windy rooftop at Google’s San Francisco office for a press conference. Flanking him were a few state education officials, and four executives from AI powerhouses: Google, Adobe, IBM, and Microsoft. They were gathered to announce that California was going all-in on AI. Google would provide free AI training to state residents, and deploy AI programs for use in state government. Adobe promised to develop AI programs designed for California schools. Microsoft was setting up AI boot camps throughout the state. IBM would grant “cost efficient access” to its AI technology. In his own remarks, Newsom left no doubt where he stood: “No other state is doing more on gen AI than California.”

Americans are deeply skeptical of the unchecked growth of generative artificial intelligence. 57% of registered voters think the costs of AI outweigh the benefits. By a margin of 50% to 5%, Americans believe AI will worsen people’s ability to form meaningful relationships, and by 53% to 16%, that it will worsen the ability to think creatively, as per Pew. 71% are concerned about AI putting people out of work permanently, finds IPSOS. Distrust of AI turns out to be that rare issue, as Politico noted, that crosses not only party lines, but even intra-party ones, with AI skeptics hailing from both the centrist and socialist wings of the Democratic party.

It all adds up to a risky bet for Gavin Newsom, who has quite possibly tied himself to the AI industry more closely than any politician in America. And if, as is widely believed, Newsom intends to run for president in 2028, AI could be the issue that determines his success or failure.

From Newsom’s perspective, he has led the way in regulating AI. In December of 2025, he signed into law SB 53, the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act (TFAIA), and the final product of lengthy negotiations to pass a large-scale AI regulation bill in California. Newsom clearly intends for TFAIA to be his shield against allegations of cronyism—in his statement released after signing, he hailed California’s status “as a national leader … enacting the first-in-the-national frontier AI safety legislation.”

But Newsom’s preferred narrative is a partial truth at best. SB 53 is a weak bill that does nothing to slow AI’s astounding growth, and little to make it safer. California’s chance to do just that—to throw some real reins over AI—was quashed by Newsom himself, in September 2024, when he vetoed the state’s first attempt at regulation, SB 1047.

The differences between the bills are stark. Where the vetoed SB 1047 mandated safety features in AI models, SB 53 simply requires AI companies to publish self-created “frameworks” for safety. Where SB 1047 created a new AI oversight body, SB 53 has an existing California agency publish “recommendations” for updates to the law. Where SB 1047 required pre-deployment testing of AI models, SB 53 …doesn’t.

SB 1047 wasn’t the only AI legislation Newsom vetoed—and it wasn’t the only time he then sought a symbolic political win to cover his tracks. Newsom also shot down AB 93, a fairly mild attempt to curb data center construction, or at least mandate that data center owners provide public water usage estimates before construction. Instead, Newsom signed SB 57, which merely directed California’s public utility regulator to publish a study on the issue by 2027.

Newsom vetoed the No Robo Bosses Act (passed by votes of 28-9 in the CA Senate and 45-17 in the Assembly), which would have barred employers from relying solely on AI to determine employee punishment. He vetoed SB 892, which sought to prohibit state government from relying on AI to make procurement decisions. He vetoed SB 1220, an attempt to block the state from hiring call centers that used AI. He shot down two bills intended to slow the adoption of self-driving vehicles. And he vetoed AB 1064, which required AI chatbot makers to prohibit access to kids in a wide variety of contexts, in favor of SB 243, which only requires notices and disclosures. Each one of these bills were passed primarily or exclusively by Democrats—Newsom’s ostensible ideological allies—in the California Legislature.

In one underreported move, in 2024, Newsom also managed to turn an attempt to force tech companies to share ad revenue with local newspapers into a win for AI. Two proposed bills sought, through different means, to take some of the massive revenue tech companies receive for online advertising and redirect it via taxes to the struggling local news industry. Newsom stepped in to reach a “deal” with Google and OpenAI in which $250 million will be funneled to newsrooms over five years, while a “National AI Innovation Accelerator” would help newsrooms expand the use of AI in their reporting. It is hard to imagine anyone clamoring for such a bill other than the AI industry.

A theme emerges from Newsom’s vetoes and signings: he favors “after the fact” reporting requirements, and opposes regulating the actual construction, creation, and use of AI products. Such regulation would also, of course, have the effect of slowing down AI development and growth, which Newsom strongly does not want to do. That’s not supposition: in his own veto message on the data center bill, Newsom boasted that California was “well positioned to support” the “critically important digital infrastructure” needed for artificial intelligence. The man really likes AI.

For many reasons, this is not surprising. Newsom’s orbit is filled with AI employees and boosters, according to a Politico deep dive. He is “close friends” with Chris Lehane, currently OpenAI’s head of global policy. At OpenAI, Lehane hired Peter Ragone, who helped Newsom weather the first scandal of his career: an affair with the wife of his campaign manager when he was mayor of San Francisco. Also advising OpenAI is Laphonza Butler, chosen by Newsom to fill Dianne Feinstein’s former Senate seat. And Newsom’s first chief of staff, Ann O’Leary, is part of OpenAI’s legal team at the law firm Jenner & Block, where she runs point for—wait for it—an investigation into OpenAI by California’s Attorney General. 

Lehane, in particular, was vocal about California’s attempts at AI regulation. In August of 2025—weeks before SB 53 passed the CA Legislature—Lehane released an open letter (on OpenAI letterhead) addressed to Newsom, urging him not to get in front of the federal government’s own ostensible AI regulation. Specifically, Lehane pointed to OpenAI’s “commitment to working with” the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), which is the Trump-rebranded successor to the Biden-era AI Safety Institute. As part of the rebrand, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick declared that the US government would no longer limit “innovators” by favoring “censorship and regulations” for AI, and would instead “evaluate and enhance U.S. innovation” for commercial AI products. As NBC News put it, “the move appears to reflect the Trump administration’s ‘pro-innovation’ approach to deregulating AI technology.” Lehane was telling Newsom, in effect, that any regulation California imposes should align with Donald Trump’s vision for AI.

Lehane’s letter appears to have motivated Newsom. As per reporting from Politico, the letter angered members of the Legislature then negotiating SB 53, but it spurred Newsom to get more involved in those negotiations. A few weeks later, it was announced that third-party auditing requirements for AI firms would no longer be in the bill, “a priority for industry,” and the bill passed shortly thereafter.

Newsom’s affinity for Big Tech has been a consistent part of his public image. Look anywhere in Newsom’s career, and tech is not far out of view. In 2009, he launched his first, failed run for governor at Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters. In 2013, he authored a book, Citizenville (with such cringe chapter titles as “There’s an App for That” and “Angry Birds for Democracy”), arguing that tech innovations, including particularly social media, should drive democratic engagement going forward. (For many reasons, Citizenville has not aged well. To take one example, Newsom spends a few paragraphs praising then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who he describes as “the man to watch” in the digital space, for his “YouCut” website, where visitors could vote on what government funding to eliminate. YouCut was a transparent stunt that never went anywhere, and Cantor was defeated in his primary in 2014.) 

At times, Newsom’s relationship with the tech industry has veered close to corruption. During the pandemic, Newsom lavished no-bid contracts for California’s COVID-19 response on Big Tech companies like Google and Salesforce. (Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, is the godfather of Newsom’s daughter Montana.) At the same time, Big Tech was lavishing right back, with companies like Facebook and Google donating tens of millions of dollars to causes favored by Newsom at his request, donations known in California as “behested payments” and less regulated than direct campaign contributions.

Perhaps most importantly, Newsom owes a real debt to Big Tech. In 2021, as Newsom faced down a campaign to recall him from office, Silicon Valley donors including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and Mark Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla Chan, banded together to raise more than $5 million to keep Newsom in office. 

It all adds up to AI having its tentacles deep in California, which has gone so far as to create an entire website dedicated to generative AI, with this slogan plastered at the top: “California is the home of GenAI.”

The state’s AI partnerships are running into their own struggles, as CalMatters has documented. In 2024, California community colleges entered into an agreement with NVIDIA to provide the same sort of AI training Newsom said Google would provide in 2025. The state is currently refusing to share information about how the NVIDIA program is going. California schools are using AI programs to detect plagiarism, but the software is giving false positives. The LA county school system paid $3 million for a chatbot for students and parents, then shut it down three months later and refused to answer questions about it. And in San Diego, school board members were surprised to learn that teachers were using AI software to grade papers, even though the software produced “occasional grading inaccuracies.”

Now, judges in Los Angeles County will be using an AI program to assist them in writing judicial rulings. We can only imagine how this will play out.

How Newsom’s presidential campaign fares will no doubt be influenced by his AI record. In the New York Times, former Obama campaign titan and Kamala Harris advisor David Plouffe warned that AI “could be the dominant issue of the 2028 campaign,” and given how rapidly the technology is already changing our jobs and our society, it’s hard to disagree. If, as many experts believe will happen, AI causes massive job losses, or even if it simply becomes utterly dehumanizing and annoying for most folks, Newsom will have to outrun his well-deserved reputation as AI’s leading Democratic cheerleader. 

To follow John Teufel on Twitter: @JohnTeufelNYC.

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