Democrats should drag Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk before the world and make them explain just what it is they’re trying to do and why

The Democrats’ sweeping midterms victory is a rebuke of Donald Trump, the industry’s most powerful champion.

Almost everywhere they could, voters rejected datacenters: moratoriums and other restrictions passed in more than 30 localities across nine states. And, with wins in places such as Texas, Ohio and Georgia, an estimated 41% of planned datacenter capacity is in states with governors-elect backing moratoriums.

To be sure, the election results were not primarily about AI. In 2024, Trump ran on lowering prices and starting no new wars, then began a war that raised prices. While corruption, the cost of living, Iran and immigration were seen as more important to people’s votes in NBC exit polls, AI and datacenters were cited by 23% of voters as “crucial” in their decision, and Democrats won these voters 67% to 30%.

AI will become the defining political fight of the 2028 cycle. The future of US politics will belong to whoever voters believe will bring the industry to heel.

AI industrialists, in their telling, are racing to build job-destroying machines that might also destroy us. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, writes that “AI isn’t a substitute for specific human jobs but rather a general labor substitute for humans”.

” They built their machines on “the largest theft of labor in human history”, as one Microsoft executive put it .

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