The artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency industries spent big and lost often in this week’s Illinois primaries, an early setback for technology firms that are trying to reshape the midterm elections and establish themselves as power players in American politics.
The companies flooded the state’s Democratic primaries with millions of dollars to promote candidates they believed would have a light touch when it came to regulating technologies that have begun to upend how people do their jobs and manage their finances.
Using super PACs that are allowed to spend unlimited sums of money, they ran television advertising and distributed campaign fliers that only occasionally alluded to their industries. Instead, the…
