US Republicans revolt against Flock AI surveillance as tech backlash intensifies

Republicans across the US are clamping down on an AI-powered surveillance network bankrolled by their own party’s Silicon Valley mega-donors, in the latest act of defiance against the industry ahead of the midterm elections.

Florida and Texas have in recent days severed some of their ties to Flock Safety, an $8bn tech firm that collates information from tens of thousands of cameras and licence plate readers for US law enforcement agencies, and which has come under fire for numerous privacy breaches.

“If you want to get in your car and you want to go down to Buc-ee’s . . . it is really none of the government’s damn business,” said Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who is seen as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028.

He claimed Flock was being used for “criminal surveillance”, and ordered the cameras’ removal from highways to prevent “a digital AI surveillance state”. The move followed a similar declaration from Texas’s Greg Abbott, who cut off state funds for Flock. Republican lawmakers in Washington this week also introduced legislation to cut off federal funding for Flock-style cameras.

The governors’ interventions come as Republicans rush to support a growing public backlash against the AI industry that puts them at odds with some of Donald Trump’s biggest Silicon Valley backers.

The move from Abbott and DeSantis provoked an angry reaction from venture capital group Andreessen Horowitz, the lead investor in Flock, whose founders are among the largest Trump donors.

The company this week posted a video montage of urban crime incidents in America, captioned with the slogan: “Flock eliminates crime. Decline is a choice.”

Politicians are increasingly willing to defy even big party donors as voters sour on AI. Candidates in tight races have begun calling for bans or restrictions on AI data centre construction — which Republican strategists warn has become politically toxic — despite Trump’s labelling those critics “backwards and poor”.

Both DeSantis and Abbott cited abuse of the Flock surveillance network by officers who used it to track innocent people, including ex-lovers, among broader civil liberties concerns.

Several Republican lawmakers, from Utah to Pennsylvania, have also moved to ban or restrict Flock. Their actions come after dozens of cities deactivated or rejected the start-up’s cameras in the wake of an earlier backlash from progressive activists over the technology’s use in aiding Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Flock has since cut ties with federal agencies and has stopped its software from being directly used for immigration enforcement. In a statement, the company said its technology was “an important public safety tool . . . helping officers solve serious crimes and find missing people”.

Silicon Valley figures have defended the company. David Ulevitch, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, called DeSantis’ decree a “knee-jerk move” and said Flock was fighting crime. He urged officials not to “rip a working tool off state roads just to look tough based on hysteria”.

Maga donor and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale went further, claiming in a TV interview that turning Flock off was “anti-civilisation” and was “going to help the criminals”.

The president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump also came out in support of the technology on Fox News, even as she advocated for tougher punishments for those who abuse information gathered by Flock.

Marc Andreessen himself championed the technology on Joe Rogan’s podcast in May. He said Flock’s network, which uses cameras to identify vehicles based on features including their licence plate and bumper stickers, “solves crimes every day”, even as he conceded there were some mass-surveillance concerns.

Florida’s governor DeSantis blamed the uproar on the failure to regulate AI. He said a bill that he had proposed last year — which was opposed by tech billionaires and quashed by the White House — could have prevented the misuse of Flock.

Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who until recently was a staunch Trump ally and who claims to speak for much of his Maga base, suggested that voters saw the cameras as part of a broader AI over-reach.

“Good luck winning the midterms now that Maga means mass data centres, flock cameras and the surveillance state,” she wrote on X.