The Cabal Isn’t Secret. And That’s the Part That Should Bother You.

Everybody wants a smoke-filled room. Nobody wants to read the disclosure form.

The Cabal Isn’t Secret. And That’s the Part That Should Bother You.

Everybody wants a smoke-filled room. Nobody wants to read the disclosure form.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #1,014: Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026

Let me be blunt with you because I don’t have the patience for the alternative…and the alternative is creating confusion…where clarity should exist.

Every few weeks someone gets forwarded a thread, a video, a 40-minute podcast clip, all making the same breathless claim: a secret cabal of tech billionaires is running the White House. Pulling strings. Whispering into ears. Deciding your future in a room you’ll never see.

And every time I hear about these claims…my reaction is the same.

You’re being sold a fantasy that makes you feel smart…while making you useless. Democracy can’t afford that.

Not because tech has no influence in Washington. It has enormous influence. More than at any point in modern American history. I’ll give you the receipts in about ninety seconds and they’re uglier than most conspiracy theories.

But “secret cabal” is the wrong word. It’s the wrong model. And…when you use the wrong model…you look for the wrong evidence…get mad at the wrong things…and demand the wrong fixes.

Here’s why.

Reason #1: Secrets Don’t File Quarterly Paperwork

A cabal, by definition, hides.

So explain this to me.

Issue One ran the numbers on federal lobbying filings for the second quarter of 2026. Six companies…Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Anthropic…paid for 324 lobbyists in three months.

That’s roughly one lobbyist for every one and a half members of Congress.

Combined spend: $41.8 million. Meta…alone…burned nearly $6 million between April and June. Alphabet, $5.3 million.

Those aren’t leaked documents. Those aren’t a whistleblower’s cache. Those are public filings…submitted on time…by lawyers…because the law requires it.

Now… look at the staffing.

David Sacks sits in the White House as the AI and crypto czar.

Michael Kratsios runs the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Sriram Krishnan came straight out of Andreessen Horowitz to serve as senior White House policy adviser on AI…co-authored the administration’s AI action plan…left the post at the end of June 2026…and…per Sacks himself…continues advising from the outside.

Elon Musk ran DOGE in the open, on camera, with a chainsaw as a prop.

Announced on social media. Covered by Bloomberg. Written up by The Hill.

This is not a conspiracy. This is a press release.

Reason #2: Cabals Don’t Have Public Divorces

The word “cabal” carries a second assumption underneath the secrecy: unity. One agenda. One plan. One direction.

Look at the actual behavior.

• Musk and Trump detonated their alliance in front of the entire country in 2025. Loudly. Personally.

• The H-1B fight split the tech wing from the populist base so violently that the coalition spent weeks publicly insulting each other.

• The push to preempt state AI regulation…championed by the venture-capital wing…has been fought tooth and nail by the nationalist right. Bannon on one side…a16z on the other. Hawley…writing legislation…the tech donors hate.

• Crypto interests and AI interests want different things… from the same regulators… and they know it.

A cabal that can’t agree on immigration…can’t agree on AI liability…can’t agree on antitrust…and whose two most famous members had a screaming match in public…is not a cabal.

It’s a faction. An unstable…feuding…ideologically fractured faction…with money and access.

Which is worse…in some ways…and better in others. But…it is a completely different animal…and it behaves according to completely different rules.

Reason #3: You’ve Got the Leash Pointed the Wrong Direction

The conspiracy version has tech bros as the puppeteers and the President as the puppet.

Watch what actually happens when a tech company needs something.

They need tariff carve-outs. They need antitrust cases to go quiet. They need export licenses. They need chips cleared for sale. They need enforcement actions to evaporate.

Every one of those things is a favor the White House can grant…or withhold. And… a favor that can be withheld… is leverage over the person asking.

That’s why you saw the industry’s posture flip so hard between 2017 and 2025.

In the first term…executives publicly denounced the administration. In the second… they bought front-row inauguration seats… and showed up for the dinners.

WIRED called it displays of fealty. Not because they seized power. Because they wanted things… and they knew who controlled the spigot.

Puppets don’t grovel. Supplicants grovel.

So Why Does the Conspiracy Version Keep Winning?

Because it’s comfortable.

A secret cabal is unfalsifiable. You can’t be wrong about it. No evidence disproves it… because the absence of evidence is itself the proof. It requires nothing from you but outrage…and it never asks you to read anything boring.

And here’s the part that should really irritate you:

The conspiracy framing…is a gift…to the exact people you’re angry at.

Accuse someone of a hidden shadow-government plot…and they get to laugh…wave a hand…and dismiss you as a crank; and the actual, provable, on-the-record problem walks away untouched.

The real critique doesn’t require a single hidden room.

It’s this: people with active financial stakes in an industry…are helping write the rules that govern that industry…frequently under “special government employee” status… where the disclosure and conflict-of-interest requirements are thinner than they’d be for a normal Senate-confirmed appointee.

That’s not a theory. That’s a structure. You can look it up. You can legislate against it.

Try legislating against a vibe.

What to Watch Instead

If you actually want to be dangerous on this topic instead of just loud, stop chasing shadows and start reading paperwork:

1. Financial disclosures and ethics waivers. Who recused from what…and who didn’t.

2. The special government employee designation. Who holds it…how long…and what it exempts them from.

3. The revolving door timeline. Firm → agency → firm. The dates tell the story.

4. Preemption fights. The December executive order creating a task force to challenge state AI laws…and squeeze broadband funding from states with rules deemed burdensome…that’s where the money actually lands.

5. Lobbying filings. Quarterly. Public. Searchable. Free.

The public already smells something. Morning Consult polling for the Tech Oversight Project found roughly 6 in 10 voters say tech companies have too much sway in Washington…and 54% say this administration is too close to Big Tech.

That instinct is sound. The story wrapped around it is garbage.

The Bottom Line

There is no secret cabal running the White House.

There is a well-funded… openly operating… internally warring industry faction…that has bought itself extraordinary access and is getting policy wins for it…in daylight, on the record, with a paper trail thick enough to choke a horse.

Stop looking for the smoke-filled room.

The door’s already open. Walk in…and read what’s on the table.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. If you remember nothing else…remember this: a theory that can’t be proven wrong can’t be acted on either. “Secret cabal” fails that test by design; no document disproves it…no denial dents it…no absence of evidence counts against it.

So… it sits there generating heat… and producing nothing. The lobbying filings, the ethics waivers, the recusal records? Those can be checked, contradicted, and used. Pick the version of this fight you can actually win.

P.P.S. I already know the reply coming to this one…because it always comes: “That’s exactly what someone covering for them would say.” Fine. Then don’t take my word for a single sentence of it.

Every claim above traces to a public filing…a named news outlet…or the administration’s own PDF…and I put the links at the bottom precisely so you’d go around me. Read them…and then come back and tell me I’m wrong. That’s a real argument. The other thing…isn’t.

Democracy is on the line. It’s going to take clearing out all the mind-cluttering confusion… and dealing with factual information as often as possible. With this community…I can’t imagine that being an issue. You…and everyone else in it…are as sharp as they come.

Sources

Lobbying spending and headcount

• Issue One, Lobbying Disclosures Reveal Big Tech Spends More Than $230,000 per Day to Buy Influence, July 21, 2026 — source for the 324 lobbyists, $41.8 million Q2 total, and the Meta and Alphabet figures.

White House tech personnel

• The Hill, White House AI adviser Sriram Krishnan to step down, June 2026 — Krishnan’s exit and Sacks’ confirmation that he stays on as an outside adviser.

• Bloomberg, Trump AI Policy Adviser Krishnan Is Giving Up White House Role, June 6, 2026.

• TechCrunch, Sriram Krishnan named Trump’s senior policy advisor for AI, December 22, 2024 — the a16z-to-White-House move, and Sacks’ announcement of the broader tech team including Michael Kratsios at OSTP.

• Revolving Door Project, AI Villains and the Trump Administration: Sriram Krishnan — revolving-door timeline, from a critical vantage point.

Polling

• Morning Consult / Tech Oversight Project survey, reported in 6 in 10 say Big Tech has too much influence in DC — the 60%, 54%, and 42% figures, plus the December executive order on state AI laws.

The industry’s posture shift

• PBS Amanpour and Company, interview with WIRED global editorial director Katie Drummond on the magazine’s “All Hail the Technocracy” issue, September 29, 2025 — the argument that the alignment happened in public rather than behind closed doors.

Administration’s own account

• White House OSTP, Trump Administration Science & Technology Highlights: Year One (PDF), January 2026 — the pro-innovation agenda in the administration’s own words.

Go read the paperwork yourself

• Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database — the raw quarterly filings.

• OpenSecrets — the same data, made searchable.

• U.S. Office of Government Ethics — financial disclosures, recusals, and ethics waivers.