While Silicon Valley is divided, hackers give the Harris campaign a $150,000 boost

LAS VEGAS — Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t at the world’s largest hacking conference this week, but her presidential ambitions received an unexpected boost when cybersecurity professionals and hackers — rallied by former Biden administration officials — raised over $150,000 for her campaign at a sideline event.

The “Hackers for Harris” fundraiser on Thursday afternoon drew an estimated 150 attendees to the Las Vegas Convention Center, where the DEF CON event is being held. Organizers say the amount raised climbed past their revamped target of $150,000.

“We exceeded the amount of money we hoped to earn,” Kemba Walden, the former acting White House national cyber director under President Joe Biden and one of the key organizers of the event, told POLITICO. “But more importantly, or just as important for me, was that people here understood that Vice President Harris is not new to this space.”

The sum raised by hackers on Thursday surpassed the total amount of money raised during previous presidential cyber and hacker fundraisers centered around DEF CON. Fundraisers for then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 and a virtual fundraiser for President Joe Biden in 2020 brought in around $100,000 combined.

“[Harris has] got a long track record, not only of considering safety and security and innovation at the same time but also in consulting with researchers and individuals who are in this space,” Walden said. “I wanted to make sure that everybody understood that.”

The event was organized by Walden and Jake Braun, the former acting deputy principal national cybersecurity director. Attendees in T-shirts emblazoned with “Vote for Harris” sat in a corner of the convention center listening to comments from Walden, who encouraged them to donate and ensure that a potential future Harris administration kept cybersecurity on the agenda as a key priority. Even those who did not attend the event in person contributed from afar — a symbolic gesture of the community’s support for Harris and the desire to work with a future administration on cyber policies.

“We had a lot of people who weren't even here today, but care about the issue, who donated because they want to make sure it was for this event,” Braun said, though the organizers declined to name names.

With less than 100 days until the election, the event signaled that the vice president may find a receptive audience among the tech-savvy crowd — a constituency that could prove crucial in both building up a war chest for the Harris campaign and on policy discussions about cybersecurity issues like privacy and encryption moving forward. The total funds raised by the event are still being calculated, though organizers say that the largest donation cleared the $10,000 mark.

It’s unclear if there will be a similar event to raise money for former President Donald Trump’s campaign. Trump’s vice presidential pick Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) has expressed serious concerns about Chinese-linked cyber threats and has deep connections to Silicon Valley — particularly through mega-donor Peter Thiel, a co-founder of cyber and intelligence defense giant Palantir. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has declared his support for Trump and created a political action committee aimed at collecting voter data.

In a show of support for Democrats on Thursday, a group of 1,200 tech workers under the banner Tech4Kamala pledged to support the vice president’s campaign, calling her an “archetypical innovator” and “champion of technology,” according to Bloomberg .

Harris is also well-versed on cyber issues , including making clear early on in the Biden administration that she would focus on cybersecurity following the Russian-backed SolarWinds hack that compromised at least a dozen federal agencies. Harris has led on artificial intelligence policies for the administration, and while a senator, pushed for legislation to secure elections against cyber threats. This included pushing for a key voting machine vendor to step up the cybersecurity of its products after DEF CON attendees discovered vulnerabilities.

DEF CON draws crowds of the world’s elite hackers, but in many ways is also a very casual event. T-shirts, flip-flops and brightly dyed hair are common at the event, and some attendees dress up in everything from tutus to special buttons and badges. There is even a contingent of attendees who dress up as furries.

“It’s a very diverse group of people, but it’s also a bunch of people who are almost kind of obsessed with things like transparency, freedom,” Braun said of the hacker community. “Also equality and welcoming of all … and that welcoming way of thinking about humanity I think tends to lean on the Democratic side, the progressive side, a little bit.”

Since launching her campaign after President Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, the vice president has been riding a wave of donor enthusiasm. The Biden-then-Harris ticket amassed $310 million in July alone — more than doubling the $138.7 million raised by former President Donald Trump’s campaign in the same period.

And while supporters praise President Biden’s cybersecurity investments during his tenure, some in the hacker community see Harris as uniquely qualified for the top job, particularly given her history as attorney general of California, where she backed a set of actions to protect against cyber threats and data breaches.

“She’s got a level of understanding of cyber and its nuances that I don’t think any other president to date has had,” said Braun.

The event’s success underscores the growing intersection of cybersecurity and politics. One attendee even asked if Harris might consider attending DEF CON in person next year — an idea Walden says may lead to her personalizing an invite for next summer.

“Would I write a letter inviting her? Of course,” Walden said.