Today’s debate over artificial intelligence (AI) is shaping up to be the Left’s newest vehicle for midterm-season hysteria, and unfortunately, incumbent tech companies perhaps are colluding to shut out new competitors.
Americans are smart to avoid taking the bait. Washington is gripped by anxiety over how to manage the risks of AI heading into November, with some leaders worried the issue could become a liability.
Some anxiety is understandable. And some is manufactured by foreigners—a textbook case of political actors exploiting a fast-moving technology to stoke fear rather than build sound policy.
President Trump’s posture on AI is measured and rational: support innovation, keep America ahead of China, and add guardrails without smothering the industry in red tape.
A news report from Trump’s trip to Ireland captures this balance well. The president acknowledged needed regulation but pushed back on doom-laden warnings driving the current panic, telling reporters that “whoever wins with AI wins” and attributing the loudest alarm-ringing to “negative forces” pushing narratives about things that “won’t happen.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson struck the same note to CNN, acknowledging the need for guardrails and safety measures balanced with innovation and competition. Crucially, Johnson called for “steady hands at the wheel,” saying: “We don’t need everybody to panic right now.”
This is common sense, and exactly the kind of steady leadership that gets drowned out when hysteria dominates.
Unpacking the AI Doomer Narrative
AI panic isn’t just coming from politicians—it’s fueled by AI executives themselves, and Trump’s advisers aren’t buying it. When Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and others called for the industry to slam the brakes on development, White House science and technology adviser David Sacks fired back on X, pointing out the loudest voices demanding a superintelligence pause are also those with the direct power to simply stop building it themselves—no new law required. It’s a sharp rebuttal to an industry wanting Washington to regulate away its own competitors while continuing to race ahead.
That said, dismissing every concern isn’t the answer either. Voters raise legitimate questions about AI water use, electricity costs, and where their data ends up. Those questions deserve substantive answers, not gaslighting.
The good news is that we can respond with facts rather than fear: Rainey Center polling on data centers finds voters are highly persuadable once they hear the truth about water recycling, jobs, and binding commitments like the Ratepayer Protection Pledge—support swings by as much as 31 points. The lesson for policymakers isn’t to avoid the subject; it’s to meet people’s legitimate concerns with robust answers instead of ceding ground to fearmongers.
Humans are wired for loss aversion; we fear losing something far more than we value an equivalent gain. That instinct is exactly what activist groups and opportunistic politicians exploit when they whip up fear about data centers, jobs, or “AI harms,” while ignoring the far greater cost of falling behind.
America made this mistake with nuclear power after Three Mile Island, and we’re still paying for it in higher electricity costs and dependence on foreign energy. We cannot afford to repeat that overcorrection with AI while China races ahead.
That race is real, and it’s not rhetorical. Beijing fast-tracked a nearly $295 billion national computing buildout while U.S. states bicker over permitting. Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, now covering roughly 80% of U.S. electricity delivery and backed by more than 200 signatories, shows there’s a workable alternative to reflexive bans: Build fast, but make the people who benefit from the buildout pay for it.
Panicking or Governing?
Meanwhile, the same hysteria is producing bad policy on the left. Independent Women’s Voice documented how Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and New York’s Kathy Hochul flip-flopped from courting data centers to punishing them by executive fiat the moment polling turned against the industry. This is pure posturing and political mood swings. These are not principled people. True accountability—enforceable community benefits and water and power standards set in writing before construction—is far more effective than panicked moratoriums.
Trump’s approach, building infrastructure responsibly while resisting outright bans, reflects exactly that discipline. AI isn’t just an infrastructure story; it’s a good-governance story too. Vice President JD Vance used AI to root out government fraud, already tied to an estimated $250 billion in identified fraud across federal programs. That’s AI protecting taxpayers, not threatening them—a use case election-season fearmongers conveniently leave out of the conversation.
We’ve Seen This Movie Before
This playbook is familiar to Independent Women. Very recently, the Left manufactured a wave of gender-ideology hysteria pushing men into women’s sports, prisons, and shelters under the banner of “progress.”
Independent Women didn’t panic or fall silent—we stayed grounded in facts and helped swing public opinion back toward reality and fairness for women. Cooler heads prevailed because we cut through the noise instead of feeding it.
AI deserves the same treatment. It’s a complicated technology with tradeoffs, developing during an election cycle where fear is currency. Trump’s instinct—build, compete, add sensible guardrails, and don’t let China win by default—is the responsible path. It’s time, again, to let cooler heads prevail.