The super PACs reflect Meta's deepening political ambitions for its home state, as the social media giant reinvents itself around AI, and other Silicon Valley heavyweights similarly eye a bigger say in California's electoral outcomes.

In April 2022, after 76 years in existence, the Air Force Association rebranded itself as the "Air & Space Forces Association," a move that it said would better reflect its mission to advocate for 21st-century American power not just in the air, but in space as well.

The reaction to that announcement inside the Colorado Springs offices of the Space Force Association — a separate nonprofit launched in 2019, the same year the U.S. Space Force was founded as a standalone military service — landed somewhere between surprise and incredulity.

"You've got to be f——— kidding me," one source said, describing the reaction among SFA officials who learned of the AFA name change just days before it was announced.