Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 09/17/2026 6:24:13 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The sudden fixation on AI by Democrats — and their coincidental same approach — seems to do more with political power calculations than a general concern about AI.
Democrats’ newest existential threat has arrived and, amazingly, all of the party’s leading figures seemingly discovered it at the same time!
Over the past few days, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Hakeem Jeffries, and Ro Khanna have begun warning that AI is advancing fast, could be dangerous, and may require international treaties or regulatory oversight or a development moratorium or even a full-on government shut down.
Maybe these are all fair points that all the aforementioned Democrats coincidentally came up with on their own and just happened to reach the same conclusion as their fellow counterparts — or maybe the talking points went out.
AI is “gambling with our lives” — so said Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon pertaining to OpenAI and Anthropic. Coxen said that both are acting irresponsibly and are “racing straight to self-improving super intelligence.”
Coxon went so far as to say the people building AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
It’s a scary warning. Maybe it’s true! Maybe it’s partially true and partially false. Either way, Democrats in recent days have suddenly become extremely concerned about AI.
ABC News reported that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the Democrat caucus planned to meet and a “high priority will be action on artificial intelligence.”
The New York Times headlined a piece noting that “Obama Urges Democrats to Move A.I. Oversight to the Center of Their Agenda.”
Some Democrats and Democrat-adjacent leaders have already adopted a similar stance. California Rep. Ro Khanna told Playbook “We need to ban self-improving AI and need a federal regulatory AI agency to prevent catastrophic harm.”
Meanwhile, former Vice President Kamala Harris said on X: “The frontier of artificial intelligence is advancing at an alarming speed. Over the weekend, industry leaders voiced support for an idea that the American people and many AI researchers in their own labs have been calling for: We must responsibly slow the pace of frontier AI development. A slowdown is critical in order to ensure AI serves the public interest.”
Harris said we have to “impose common-sense safety standards” and urged President Donald Trump to pursue “a treaty with countries like China to stop dangerous uses of AI, limit the speed of its development, and adopt global standards for testing.”
Democrat puppet master and former President Barack Obama said Washington has to “get proactive in coming up with concrete proposals, laws and regulations that deal with serious safety concerns, anticipate AI’s impact on jobs and our kids, and make sure that AI’s benefits are widely spread.”
“Given what we know about technology, we can’t stuff AI back in a box,” Obama said. “But we can collectively determine how it’s developed and how it’s used, rather than sitting back and letting AI and its fallout happen to us.”
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the government needs to take AI “head on.”
“AI is moving quickly. And for Congress to just sit on its hands, for the White House to do nothing real is something that is deeply dangerous to the American people and the world,” Buttigieg said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “There need to be safeguards. There need to be rules. There need to be limits. There needs to be a kill switch on rogue AI. You can set up frameworks that can be adjusted and changed every 30 days.”
The pattern is somewhat easy to spot. Politicians — which even of the same party are rare to quickly get on the same page about anything — are all at once arguing AI is moving too fast for the government to stand idly by. While the wording may vary, the message is largely that AI presents a threat and that private entrepreneurs cannot be trusted, so instead we need federal intervention, oversight, and perhaps international treaties.
The sudden focus isn’t that much of a surprise at all, though, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed out, according to Playbook.
“Democrats could seize the issue if the GOP cedes the ground,” DeSantis warned, and it appears Democrats are doing exactly that: unifying around the message and posture that their party is the only party that is wiling or caring enough about saving Americans from AI and the billionaires supposedly plotting the destruction of the human race.
Strategist Morris Katz said if Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stick together on pushing a data-center moratorium, Democrats would pick up seats: “We’re not going to let a billionaire class tell us what’s inevitable and f**k over the American people again.”
Katz says Democrats should be “the party that lays down these tracks to stop Sam Altman and a handful of billionaires from destroying your lives to become trillionaires.”
It’s clear that Katz is making the electoral calculation that DeSantis referred to explicit.
In other words, though, Katz let the cat out of the bag. The sudden fixation on AI by Democrats — and their coincidental same approach — seems to do more with political power calculations than a general concern about AI. Artificial intelligence is giving Democrats a new villain, a new crisis, a new justification for government control all while they position themselves as our protectors.
To be clear, it doesn’t mean concerns about AI aren’t legit. There’s a lot of reason to worry about AI and question its place in our world. But it’s hard not to question whether the problems Democrats are suddenly raising are legitimate, or part of a political calculus.
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Of course it is an OP. The democRATs are masters of deception and manipulation.
This is THE issue to sow chaos before the election. It had to be something; this is convenient.
I’m in a blue district with the most data centers in the world and I receive text messages about fighting data centers.
I believe democrats want China to lead in AI. That keeps them in a position of defense against the boogie man.
They are just supporting their Chinese overlords.................
Yup. And they’ve obviously focus-grouped it to hone their message. The funny thing is that they fully intend to make bank from the AI companies if they (God forbid) get into power.
The new covid. Wear a mask.
Tech companies, political leaders, and industry messaging groups have launched an aggressive PR counter-offensive, leaning heavily on claims that the grassroots anti-data-center movement is being fueled by Chinese influence operations.
Public backlash against the unchecked construction of data centers has surged dramatically. Multiple polls, including a notable Gallup survey, reveal that roughly 70% of Americans now oppose local data center construction, citing soaring electricity bills, immense water consumption, and minimal long-term job creation. This unified opposition from both sides of the political aisle has led to massive project delays, over 180 local moratoriums, and a coordinated nationwide protest movement.
In response to this multi-billion dollar threat to the artificial intelligence boom, the tech industry and its allies have begun deploying “national security” rhetoric to reshape public opinion.
The phrase “AI War” is nebulous. It is frequently used by tech executives and political figures as a high-stakes buzzword to bypass local resistance, and is a powerful rhetorical tool often used by data center developers, tech conglomerates, and aligned policymakers to create a sense of national urgency. By framing data center expansion as a matter of national survival, proponents can bypass local opposition and fast-track approvals.
Tech companies define “winning” as raw compute capacity (more data centers, more chips, more power). This directly aligns with their business goals of corporate growth and market capitalization.
While the benefits of winning the AI war are framed as public and national, the profits remain strictly private. Tech companies use public infrastructure (water, electrical grids) and often receive massive local tax breaks under the guise of patriotic necessity.
There is no agreed-upon finish line for an “AI war.” Because tech evolves constantly, the argument creates a permanent state of emergency that justifies indefinite, rapid data center expansion.
The vast majority of data center capacity is currently being built to power commercial products—like search engines, ad-targeting, productivity software, and consumer chatbots—not state defense systems.
The left cannot tolerate anything that might provide the truth. Unless they’re able to build their biases into AI it’s very bad for them.
The climate change hoax is played out. They need to come up with something new.
It’s just more snake oil.
Taking a step back —
One of the theories is that Left-leaning people have general ideas that lead them in a particular direction (destroy Trump, attack the rich, white people/Europeans are bad, etc.) then actions occur all throughout society which take us in a preductable direction but without real planning or conspiratorial leadership. It just happens naturally by accident.
The competing theory is that The Powers That Be have actual leadership (Soros, Bilderburgers, International Bankers, etc.) and that global events are manipulated to achieve outcomes desired by men who live in the shadows and who are executing a long-term plan.
The observation that Talking Points are routinely distributed to large groups of Talking Heads seems to argue in favor of actual Men Who Live In The Shadows.
If Bernie Sanders is against it, then I know it’s a scam.
“Meanwhile, former Vice President Kamala Harris said on X: “The frontier of artificial intelligence is advancing at an alarming speed. Over the weekend, industry leaders voiced support for an idea that the American people and many AI researchers in their own labs have been calling for: We must responsibly slow the pace of frontier AI development. A slowdown is critical in order to ensure AI serves the public interest’”
In 1835 people, alarmed by the incendiary capabilities of new steam locomotives running on ubiquitous railroads, warned that those horrible machines would burn down every city, leaving the US population homeless.
Mollie Hemingway: AI Hysteria is About ‘Regulatory Capture’ and Control “They (Democrats) want to make sure they have control for a post-Trump environment, so they can engage in ongoing censorship and control, and keep anybody else out for decades to come.”
aka Another fear-porn manufactured crisis designed to coral the votes of the simple-minded. "Bad Orange Man"'s exit will leave them nothing to run on so this riles up the torch & pitchfork types, harms the country AND helps the Chinese.
LOL! And my favorite: moving faster than a horse can carry you will suck the air out of your lungs, causing death by suffocation.
What’s scarier is how so many on the right fell for it. Critical thinking is dead.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.