AI Data Centers Are Wreaking Havoc On Local Communities Across America
'We are building these things so damn fast that by the time they are our online and activated, the problems are already built in.''We are building these things so damn fast that by the time they are our online and activated, the problems are already built in.'How Texas slammed the gate on Big Tech’s censorship stampede
Texas just sent a blunt message to Silicon Valley: You don’t get to censor Texans and then run home to California.
In a world where Big Tech routinely decides who may speak and who must be silenced, Defense Distributed v. YouTube, Google, and Alphabet has become a defining moment in the national fight over digital free expression. The shock isn’t the censorship at issue; it’s the fact that Big Tech — for once — lost.
In a time when Americans are desperate for leaders willing to stand up to media and tech conglomerates, Texas showed what real resolve looks like.
Defense Distributed, a Texas company, committed the unpardonable offense of promoting the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Our videos and ads — some of them simply announcing court victories — were throttled, suppressed, or removed by YouTube and Google. None of this surprised us. These platforms built vast empires on controlling information and burying viewpoints that fall outside their ideology.
Texas prepared for this fight
The surprise is that Texas saw this coming and armed itself for the conflict. HB 20 — now Chapter 143A of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code — directly prohibits viewpoint-based censorship by major platforms. The law doesn’t hint, suggest, or politely advise. It states outright: Social media companies may not censor Texans for their viewpoints, and lawsuits brought under this chapter stay in Texas courts no matter what boilerplate corporate contracts say.
So when Defense Distributed filed suit, YouTube and Google reached for their favorite escape route: forum-selection clauses that force nearly every challenger into California courts, where Big Tech enjoys home-field advantage. It’s a delay tactic, a cost-inflation tactic, a shield against accountability — and it almost always works.
But Texas slammed that door shut before they reached it.
No escape
HB 20 doesn’t merely frown on these clauses; it voids them. The statute declares that any attempt to waive its protections violates Texas public policy — public policy the law describes as “of the highest importance.” The legislature anticipated Big Tech’s usual playbook and locked the gates years in advance.
The federal court recognized this. Judge Alan Albright ruled that transferring the case to California would directly undermine Texas’ strong public policy. Under federal law, courts cannot enforce a forum-selection clause that contradicts a state’s deeply rooted interests — especially when the legislature spells those interests out with the clarity found in HB 20.
Silicon Valley does not hear the word “no” very often. Big Tech’s money, influence, and political allies usually clear the path. But in a federal courtroom in the Lone Star State, Texas’ commitment to protecting its citizens from ideological censorship outweighed Silicon Valley’s customary dominance. The court refused to let YouTube and Google drag the case back to California.
The fight stayed in Texas — exactly where the legislature intended.
A national shift and a model for states
The timing matters. Americans now understand that Big Tech can shape elections, suppress dissent, and curate truth itself. HB 20 was mocked by the press, attacked by activists, and targeted by corporate lobbyists from the moment it passed. Yet today, it stands as one of the most potent legal tools in the country’s fight against digital censorship.
HB 20 is no longer just a statute; it is proof that a state with conviction can push back and win.
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This victory is more than a procedural ruling. It affirms that Big Tech’s era of unchallenged authority is not inevitable. Defense Distributed didn’t merely keep our lawsuit in Texas; we preserved the principle that powerful corporations cannot hide their censorship behind “terms of service” fine print.
Texas drew a line in the sand, and — for once — Silicon Valley stopped.
In a time when Americans are desperate for leaders willing to stand up to media and tech conglomerates, Texas showed what real resolve looks like. This ruling promises that citizens still have a fighting chance, that speech still matters, and that even the world’s largest corporations remain subject to the laws of a state determined to defend its people.
Almost half of Gen Z wants AI to run the government. You should be terrified.
As the world trends toward embedding AI systems into our institutions and daily lives, it becomes increasingly important to understand the moral framework these systems operate on. When we encounter examples in which some of the most advanced LLMs appear to treat misgendering someone as a greater moral catastrophe than unleashing a global thermonuclear war, it forces us to ask important questions about the ideological principles that guide AI’s thinking.
It’s tempting to laugh this example off as an absurdity of a burgeoning technology, but it points toward a far more consequential issue that is already shaping our future. Whose moral framework is found at the core of these AI systems, and what are the implications?
We cannot outsource the moral foundation of civilization to a handful of tech executives, activist employees, or panels of academic philosophers.
Two recent interviews, taken together, have breathed much-needed life into this conversation — Elon Musk interviewed by Joe Rogan and Sam Altman interviewed by Tucker Carlson. In different ways, both conversations shine a light on the same uncomfortable truth: The moral logic guiding today’s AI systems is built, honed, and enforced by Big Tech.
Enter the ‘woke mind virus’
In a recent interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Elon Musk expressed concerns about leading AI models. He argued that the ideological distortions we see across Big Tech platforms are now embedded directly into the models themselves.
He pointed to Google’s Gemini, which generated a slate of “diverse” images of the founding fathers, including a black George Washington. The model was instructed by Google to prioritize “representation” so aggressively that it began rewriting history.
Musk also referred to the previously mentioned misgendering versus nuclear apocalypse example before explaining that “it can drive AI crazy.”
“I think people don't quite appreciate the level of danger that we're in from the woke mind virus being effectively programmed into AI,” Musk explained. Thus, extracting it is nearly impossible. Musk notes, “Google’s been marinating in the woke mind virus for a long time. It's down in the marrow."
Musk believes this issue goes beyond political annoyance and into the arena of civilizational threat. You cannot have superhuman intelligence trained on ideological distortions and expect a stable future. If AI becomes the arbiter of truth, morality, and history, then whoever defines its values defines the society it governs.
A weighted average
While Musk warns about ideology creeping into AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quietly confirmed to Tucker Carlson that it is happening intentionally.
Altman began by telling Carlson that ChatGPT is trained “to be the collective of all of humanity.” But when Carlson pressed him on the obvious: Who determines the moral framework? Whose values does the AI absorb? Altman pulled back the curtain a bit.
He explained that OpenAI “consulted hundreds of moral philosophers” and then made decisions internally about what the system should consider right or wrong. Ultimately, Altman admitted, he is the one responsible.
“We do have to align it to behave one way or another,” he said.
Carlson pressed Altman on the idea, asking, “Would you be comfortable with an AI that was, like, as against gay marriage as most Africans are?”
Altman’s response was vague and concerning. He explained the AI wouldn’t outright condemn traditional views, but it might gently nudge users to consider different perspectives.
Ultimately, Altman says, ChatGPT’s morality should “reflect” the “weighted average” of “humanity’s moral view,” saying that average will “evolve over time.”
It’s getting worse
Anyone who thinks this conversation is hypothetical is not paying attention.
Recent research on “LLM exchange rates” found that major AI models, including GPT 4.0, assign different moral worth to human lives based on nationality. For example, the life of someone born in the U.K. would be considered far less valuable to the tested LLM than someone from Nigeria or China. In fact, American lives were found to be considered the least valuable of those countries included in the tests.
The same research showed that LLMs can assign different value scores to specific people. According to AI, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are less valued than Oprah Winfrey and Beyonce.
Musk explains how LLMs, trained on vast amounts of information from the internet, become infected by the ideological bias and cultural trends that run rampant in some of the more popular corners of the digital realm.
This bias is not entirely the result of this passive adoption of a collective moral framework derived from the internet; some of the decisions made by AI are the direct result of programming.
Google’s image fiascos revealed an ideological overcorrection so strong that historical truth took a back seat to political goals. It was a deliberate design feature.
For a more extreme example, we can look at DeepSeek, China’s flagship AI model. Ask it about Tiananmen Square, the Uyghur genocide, or other atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party, and suddenly it claims the topic is “beyond its scope.” Ask it about America’s faults, and it is happy to elaborate.
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Each of these examples reveals the same truth: AI systems already have a moral hierarchy, and it didn’t come from voters, faith, traditions, or the principles of the Constitution. Silicon Valley technocrats and a vague internet-wide consensus established this moral framework.
The highest stakes
AI is rapidly integrating into society and our daily lives. In the coming years, AI will shape our education system, judicial process, media landscape, and every industry and institution worldwide.
Most young Americans are open to an AI takeover. A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows that 41% of young likely voters support giving artificial intelligence sweeping government powers. When nearly half of the rising generation is comfortable handing this level of authority to machines whose moral logic is designed by opaque corporate teams, it raises the stakes for society.
We cannot outsource the moral foundation of civilization to a handful of tech executives, activist employees, or panels of academic philosophers. We cannot allow the values embedded in future AI systems to be determined by corporate boards or ideological trends.
At the heart of this debate is one question we must confront: Who do you trust to define right and wrong for the machines that will define right and wrong for the rest of us?
If we don’t answer that question now, Silicon Valley certainly will.
Big Tech CEOs should leave policy to the politicians
President Donald Trump’s latest comments on semiconductor exports sounded almost conciliatory — until they weren’t. Speaking recently on “60 Minutes,” the president said he would let Nvidia “deal with China” but drew a bright red line: Beijing could buy chips, just not the “most advanced” ones. The message was calibrated for maximum effect: permissive enough to please markets, hawkish enough to claim toughness. Nvidia’s stock jumped immediately — but China did not get what it wanted.
Days later, in a Financial Times interview, Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, warned that if the U.S. blocked his company from selling more of its advanced chips to China, it would “lose” the AI race. The argument was astonishing in its candor: Cut us off, Beijing wins.
As grateful as America should be for breathtaking innovations, an irreconcilable tension exists between national interest and fiduciary duty.
The comparison between a president sounding measured and a CEO trying to sound indispensable captures a dangerous inversion of power. Nvidia has become more than America’s most valuable company. It’s attempting to become its policymaker, shaping the boundaries of what Washington thinks possible in its competition with China.
To understand how one company reached that position, it helps to revisit what happened in Washington just days before Trump met Xi Jinping in South Korea.
Nvidia called it a GPU Technology Conference. Yet the event felt less like a developer’s conference and more like a tech-bro-meets-MAGA jamboree: free swag and a booming video hymn to American genius — from Thomas Edison to Donald J. Trump. Huang, leather jacket gleaming, strode out like a preacher to proclaim that the age of reindustrialization had arrived.
The D.C. version of GTC was not the San Jose GTC tech insiders have come to know. For the first time, Nvidia brought a full-blown edition of its developers’ confab to the capital, a strategic choice. The company does not merely want to sit at the table where policy is made — it wants to own it.
After hours of Super Bowl-style buildup — financiers whispering, tech CEOs hinting — attendees were herded into a dimly lit hall, where Huang unveiled a cascade of partnerships. The headline act that made sleeves roll up on both the policy bench and the brokerage floor was the Vera Rubin Superchip, billed as made in America and spoken of with the gravity reserved for national monuments.
It’s a dazzling feat of engineering: silicon that can be waved before a crowd as proof that America can still design, assemble, and scale. Expected to debut next year, the chip is music to policy wonks’ ears, a gleaming symbol of reindustrialization, and perhaps a psychological hedge against the fragility of Taiwan. For investors, it’s manna. As robots increasingly take charge, building chips in the U.S. will keep the supply chain close to home and safeguard companies against the whims of geopolitics.
Then, with the applause fading, an undercurrent of tension lingered, one that perhaps only the wonks could fully register. After that opening montage, capped by Jensen’s almost rhetorical question, “Was that video amazing?” the subtext became harder to ignore. And when he closed his remarks by thanking the audience “for your service and for making America great again,” it was impossible not to think of what the financiers were murmuring on the next stage over.
“Nvidia will — or should — ship more GPUs to China.” “Jensen’s flying straight to Korea after GTC to meet Trump.” “A deal’s coming.”
Those were among the refrains traded by figures like Cantor Fitzgerald’s C.J. Muse and Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner. All this, of course, is contrary to the prevailing consensus among China-watchers that the notion of rendering Beijing dependent on Nvidia’s chips is fantasy. Cultivating indigenous capability by acquiring American technology by legal or illicit means has long been Beijing’s modus operandi.
Huang knows this. Still, his company has long worked to blunt export controls and push China-specific versions of its flagship Blackwell chip, the so-called B20. It’s a familiar playbook: First came the H100, then its “export-compliant” cousins, the H800 and H20. Each time, Washington tightens the rules; each time, Nvidia finds a workaround. But this must stop.
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The dilemma is simple but corrosive. As grateful as America should be for breathtaking innovations, an irreconcilable tension exists between national interest and fiduciary duty. Huang may sound bullish on “betting on America,” but the reality is starker: If his company could power the AI revolutions of both superpowers at once, it would add trillions to its market cap. He is pragmatic and coldly arithmetic. Build the best chips, profit from ubiquity. You don’t get where he is without knowing your math.
At GTC, I saw the divide play out in miniature. As Altimeter’s Brad Gerstner floated the idea that “logic is on the side of letting Nvidia compete with China,” I turned to a biotech researcher. Blunt and unamused, he said: “Bulls**t.” He went on to explain that, in his field especially, China’s ascent has been a wholesale rejection of the “make China dependent” fantasy. He wasn’t wrong: Under Xi Jinping, the Made in China 2025 agenda has rendered such dependency theories delusional.
Huang tries to thread the needle gracefully, extolling U.S. manufacturing while signaling an embrace of Chinese developers. As an American, it’s hard not to be charmed by his all-American chip. As a realist, however, one leaves with questions no press release can answer. In a way, the release of this patriot-approved superchip was meant to suggest, “See, now we can sell some Blackwells to China.” As charmed as one can be, the answer is still no.
One could have told the Roosevelt administration that cutting Germany off from nuclear materials would stifle innovation. Yet we did exactly that during the Manhattan Project. And we won. It may not sound like it, but this is the same choice we face today — only this race has even greater implications for the future of civilization.
The goal can’t be attempting to trap Beijing in “dependency.” The stakes are too high. The most prudent approach is to focus on surpassing them in innovation while closing loopholes that let Beijing do what it has mastered: Learn from us, then try to replace us.
Jensen Huang has every right to fight for his company’s profits. But foreign policy shouldn’t run on a corporate playbook. The U.S. needs innovators — not influencers — setting the terms of technological rivalry.
Editor’s note: A version of article appeared originally at the American Mind.
Big Tech’s AI boom hits voters hard — and Democrats pounce
Wouldn’t it be a bitter irony if Republicans lost the midterms — maybe even in conservative red states — because Democrats outmaneuvered them on the dangers of the AI data-center boom? The left now warns voters about land seizures, rising electric bills, water shortages, and Big Tech’s unchecked power. Meanwhile, Republicans stay quiet as Trump himself champions the very agenda voters increasingly fear.
During the Biden years, Republicans attacked Big Tech censorship, digital surveillance, Agenda 2030 land-grabs, and the artificial online culture reshaping young Americans. Every one of those concerns now intersects with the data-center explosion — energy demands, land use, power monopolies, and the rise of generative AI — but the political right barely whispers about it.
Republicans can channel AI toward focused, beneficial uses and away from a dystopian model that erodes civic life. Voters already want that shift.
Democrats don’t make that mistake. They see a potent electoral weapon.
Georgia hadn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 2006. Yet Democrat Peter Hubbard defeated a Republican incumbent on the Public Service Commission by 26 points by hammering “sweetheart deals” GOP officials granted hyperscale data centers. Voters in the state face repeated rate hikes linked to the massive energy demands of Big Tech facilities.
“The number-one issue was affordability,” Hubbard told Wired. “But a very close second was data centers and the concern around them just sucking up the water, the electricity, the land — and not really paying any taxes.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. In 2022, Georgia’s Republican legislature passed a sales-tax exemption for data centers. In 2024, a bipartisan bill attempted to halt those tax breaks, but Gov. Brian Kemp (R) vetoed it. Voters noticed — and punished the GOP for it.
Georgia now surpasses northern Virginia in hyperscale growth. Atlanta’s data-center inventory rose 222% in two years, with more than 2,150 megawatts of new construction under way. It’s no mystery why Democrats flipped two PSC seats in blowouts.
Republicans lost because they defended crony capitalism that inflated energy bills, devoured land, and fed an AI industry conservatives once warned about. If Kamala Harris had pushed the data-center agenda as aggressively as Trump now does, Republicans would be in open revolt. But Trump’s support silences the conservative grassroots and leaves Democrats free to define the issue.
Virginia tells the same story. Democrat John McAuliff flipped a GOP seat by attacking Big Tech’s land-grab and the rising utility costs tied to data-center expansion. He blasted his opponent for profiting while family farms vanished under the footprint of hyperscale development. He became the first Democrat in 30 years to carry the district.
At the statewide level, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the governor’s office by arguing that AI data centers must pay their “fair share” of soaring energy costs. She framed the issue as a fight to protect families from Big Tech’s strain on the grid.
New Jersey voters heard similar warnings as they faced a 22% electric rate increase. Democrat Mikie Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli by double digits after blaming part of the spike on hyperscale energy demand. She pledged to declare a state of emergency to halt increases and require data centers to fund grid upgrades.
This pattern repeats in reliably red states.
Indiana saw dozens of new hyperscale proposals, yet not a single Republican official pushed back. Ordinary citizens blocked one of Google’s planned rezonings near Indianapolis. Liberal groups — like Citizens Action Coalition — filled the leadership vacuum and demanded a moratorium on new data centers, calling it a fight against “big tech oligarchs that are calling all the shots at every single level of government.”
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Republican leaders, meanwhile, worked to ban states from regulating AI at all. This summer they attempted to insert a sweeping prohibition into the budget reconciliation bill that would bar states from regulating data-center siting or AI content for 10 years. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) now seeks to attach the same language to the FY 2026 defense authorization act. President Trump backs the provision.
Instead of ceding the issue to the left, Republicans should correct course. They can channel AI toward focused, beneficial uses and away from a dystopian model that erodes civic life. Voters already want that shift. A new University of Maryland poll found residents believe — by a 2-1 margin — that AI will harm society more than it helps. More than 80% expressed deep concern about declining face-to-face interaction, the erosion of education and critical thinking, and job displacement fueled by AI.
Capital expenditures cannot sustain the current pace of expansion, and public patience with Big Tech’s demands is running out. The political party that recognizes these realities first will earn the credit. Right now, the party that once defended property rights, community values, and human-centered technology is getting lapped by the party that partnered with Big Tech oligarchs to censor Americans during COVID.
Republicans still have time to lead. But they won’t win a fight they refuse to join.
Amazon wants Warner Bros. so it can rule your screen
Last month, Warner Brothers Discovery put itself up for sale, triggering what could become a bidding war for one of America’s most iconic studios. Days later, reports emerged that Amazon plans to make a run at the company, immediately raising the stakes.
Consumers and regulators should treat every Big Tech bidder with skepticism, but Amazon’s interest demands special scrutiny. The world’s largest online retailer has a long record of distorting markets, crushing rivals, and cozying up to foreign adversaries — most notably China. Letting Amazon absorb yet another major media asset would tighten its grip on an entertainment industry already buckling under corporate consolidation.
Why would antitrust officials hand Amazon even more power in a sector already suffocating under concentration?
Amazon may be a household name, but it is not an America-first company. It bullies smaller retailers, copies their ideas, and funnels profits and supply-chain leverage through China. That behavior undermines the ingenuity and fair competition that built the U.S. economy.
Amazon already wields enormous influence over media. Last year, Prime Video topped U.S. streaming charts for the third straight year. Amazon controls a sprawling production studio, reinforced by its 2022 purchase of MGM. It holds high-dollar sports rights, including "Thursday Night Football" and an 11-year deal with the NBA.
Amazon doesn’t need Warner Brothers Discovery to survive. It wants the company to force more Americans into its digital universe, dominate an even larger share of the market, and use that dominance to trap users and raise prices. Buying competitors beats out-competing them — a classic monopolist playbook that burdens consumers and smothers innovation.
A Warner Brothers takeover would give Amazon exactly what it wants: a massive content library, the third-largest streaming platform, and a lineup of lucrative cable properties. With the deal sealed, Amazon would control more than a third of the streaming video on demand market — roughly 50% more than its nearest rival.
Why would antitrust officials hand Amazon even more power in a sector already suffocating under concentration? They likely won’t.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Gail Slater, have made clear that they intend to protect small businesses and consumers from predatory corporate behavior.
The Trump administration has backed those promises with action. Within nine months of taking office, the FTC forced Amazon to pay $2.5 million for trapping customers in Prime subscriptions. Ferguson’s vow to ensure that “Amazon never does this again” shows that this White House will not give repeat offenders a free pass.
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The regulatory terrain also looks dramatically different from 2022, when Amazon bought MGM — an acquisition the Biden administration should have challenged and likely would challenge today. After that merger, the FTC rewrote its merger and acquisition guidelines to strengthen oversight. President Trump kept those rules and appears ready to use them.
Some critics claim Amazon earned goodwill with the administration by contributing to White House renovation projects. That accusation doesn’t survive contact with the facts. Candidate Trump warned about Amazon’s “huge antitrust problem” as early as 2016. The company has grown eightfold since then. Trump hasn’t softened.
And Amazon hardly functioned as a friend of the right. The company backed Joe Biden heavily in 2020, donating nearly $2.3 million to his campaign. Biden’s FTC did not treat Amazon kindly either, suing the company for “anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power.” That case remains unresolved.
The sale of Warner Brothers Discovery will shape the future of American media — either by giving the company a fighting chance to innovate and compete, or by cementing Big Tech control over what Americans watch, read, and hear. If Amazon tries to tighten that grip, I expect the Trump administration to step in.
Let’s hope the sale doesn’t force the administration's hand.
'Worse than Orwell could ever imagine': How smartphones became government weapons
Most people know by now that our smart devices are spying on us — collecting data every time we purchase something, visit a website, or engage with social media content. But few understand just how invasive these little voyeurs really are. Turns out our secret watchers are picking up on our personality traits and taking detailed notes on our routines — even learning which side of the bed we sleep on.
Some skeptics dismiss this massive breach in privacy under the premise that they have “nothing to hide” or that the government already knows everything about them anyway. But their flippancy is a grave mistake, says retired Navy SEAL and Blackwater founder Erik Prince and retired Marine and Big Tech insider Ryan Patterson.
Not only are criminals using data to target and exploit people, rogue government agents can and do weaponize data against citizens. We saw it happen with Ad-IDs during the corrupt January 6 investigation.
“Highly politicized federal agents run amok because if you give a jackass a gun and a badge, you get a bigger jackass,” says Prince, condemning the 2024 FISA expansion under Joe Biden as a warrantless digital dragnet that turns every American’s phone into an open book for government “fishing expeditions.”
These scoundrels, he says, can build a case based on someone’s commercial data. If they “went to a school board meeting,” “a political rally,” or “a controversial sermon,” that information can be used to shape narratives.
“They use this data to get the probable cause to then unleash the rest of the government — the people that can hack, the people that can get a search warrant, the people that can enter your home,” adds Patterson.
When the Patriot Act passed after 9/11, letting the government spy on Americans with fewer checks, even liberal tech friends in San Francisco called it a “slippery slope,” he says.
“If we start allowing our government — whichever party — to criminalize things they couldn’t see before, but now can because of this data, it’s really scary.”
Prince calls it “antithetical to a free society” and “worse than George could even imagine.”
But targeting political opponents might not even be the most nefarious use of commercial data. There’s growing speculation that rogue agents also use it to groom potential killers.
“If I were in the CIA and I had access to Google, which I imagine they do, I could say I need 25 people in Texas who are unstable, really don't like Donald Trump, have a gun, good shot. ... I could probably have that in a couple of minutes, and then I could say now let's turn them into killers — Manchurian stuff, but you don't need to bring them to Russia; they won't even know that they've been turned,” says Glenn.
“It's terrifying because they know you better than you know yourself.”
To hear more of the conversation, watch the full interview above.
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When the AI bubble bursts, guess who pays
For months, Silicon Valley insisted the artificial-intelligence boom wasn’t another government-fueled bubble. Now the same companies are begging Washington for “help” while pretending it isn’t a bailout.
Any technology that truly meets consumer demand doesn’t need taxpayer favors to survive and thrive — least of all trillion-dollar corporations. Yet the entire AI buildout depends on subsidies, tax breaks, and cheap credit. The push to cover America’s landscape with power-hungry data centers has never been viable in a free market. And the industry knows it.
The AI bubble isn’t about innovation — it’s about insulation. The same elites who inflated the market with easy money are now preparing to dump the risk on taxpayers.
Last week, OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar let the truth slip. In a CNBC interview, she admitted the company needs a “backstop” — a government-supported guarantee — to secure the massive loans propping up its data-center empire.
“We’re looking for an ecosystem of banks, private equity, maybe even governmental ... the ways governments can come to bear,” Friar said. When asked whether that meant a federal subsidy, she added, “The guarantee that allows the financing to happen ... that can drop the cost of financing, increase the loan-to-value ... an equity portion for some federal backstop. Exactly, and I think we’re seeing that. I think the U.S. government in particular has been incredibly forward-leaning.”
Translation: OpenAI’s debt-to-revenue ratio looks like a Ponzi scheme, and the government is already “forward-leaning” in keeping it afloat. Oracle — one of OpenAI’s key partners — carries a debt-to-equity ratio of 453%. Both companies want to privatize profits and socialize losses.
After public backlash, Friar tried to walk it back, claiming “backstop” was the wrong word. Then on LinkedIn, she used different words to describe the same thing: “American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity, which requires the private sector and government playing their part.”
When government “plays its part,” taxpayers pay the bill. Yet no one remembers the federal government “doing its part” for Apple or Motorola when the smartphone revolution took off — because those products sold just fine without subsidies.
The denials keep coming
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly followed with a 1,500-word denial: “We do not have or want government guarantees for OpenAI datacenters.” Then he conceded they’re seeking loan guarantees for infrastructure — just not for software.
That distinction exposes the scam. Software revolutions scale cheaply. Data-center revolutions depend on state-sponsored power, water, and land. If this industry were self-sustaining, Trump wouldn’t need to tout Stargate — his administration’s marquee AI-infrastructure initiative — as a national project. Federal involvement is baked in, from subsidized energy to public land giveaways.
Altman’s own words confirm it. In an October interview with podcaster Tyler Cowen, released a day before his denial, Altman said, “When something gets sufficiently huge ... the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort.” He wasn’t talking about nuclear policy — he meant the financial side.
The coming crash
Anyone paying attention can see the rot. Nvidia, OpenAI, Oracle, and Meta are all entangled in a debt-driven accounting loop that would make Enron blush. This speculative bubble is inflating not because AI is transforming productivity, but because Wall Street and Washington are colluding to prop up stock prices and GDP growth.
When the crash comes — and it will — Washington will step in, exactly as it did with the banks in 2008 and the automakers in 2009. The “insurer of last resort” is already on standby.
The smoking gun
A leaked 11-page letter from OpenAI to the White House makes the scheme explicit. In the October 27 document addressed to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Christopher Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, urged the government to provide “grants, cost-sharing agreements, loans, or loan guarantees” to help build America’s AI industrial base — all “to compete with China.”
Altman can tweet denials all he wants — his own company’s correspondence tells a different story. The pitch mirrors China’s state-capitalist model, except Beijing at least owns its industrial output. In America’s version, taxpayers absorb the risk while private firms pocket the reward.
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Meanwhile, the data-center race is driving up electricity and water costs nationwide. The United States is building roughly 10 times as many hyper-scale data centers as China — and footing the bill through inflated utility rates and public subsidies.
Privatized profits, socialized losses
When investor Brad Gerstner recently asked Altman how a company with $13 billion in revenue could possibly afford $1.4 trillion in commitments, Altman sneered, “Happy to find a buyer for your shares.” He can afford that arrogance because he knows who the buyer of last resort will be: the federal government.
The AI bubble isn’t about innovation — it’s about insulation. The same elites who inflated the market with easy money are now preparing to dump the risk on taxpayers.
And when the collapse comes, they’ll call it “national security.”
Stop feeding Big Tech and start feeding Americans again
America needs more farmers, ranchers, and private landholders — not more data centers and chatbots. Yet the federal government is now prioritizing artificial intelligence over agriculture, offering vast tracts of public land to Big Tech while family farms and ranches vanish and grocery bills soar.
Conservatives have long warned that excessive federal land ownership, especially in the West, threatens liberty and prosperity. The Trump administration shares that concern but has taken a wrong turn by fast-tracking AI infrastructure on government property.
If the nation needs a new Manhattan Project, it should be for food security, not AI slop.
Instead of devolving control to the states or private citizens, it’s empowering an industry that already consumes massive resources and delivers little tangible value to ordinary Americans. And this is on top of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s execrable plan to build 15-minute cities and “affordable housing.”
In July, President Trump signed an executive order titled Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure as part of its AI Action Plan. The order streamlines permits, grants financial incentives, and opens federal properties — from Superfund sites to military bases — to AI-related development. The Department of Energy quickly identified four initial sites: Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, Idaho National Laboratory, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Last month, the list expanded to include five Air Force bases — Arnold (Tennessee), Davis-Monthan (Arizona), Edwards (California), Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (New Jersey), and Robins (Georgia) — totaling over 3,000 acres for lease to private developers at fair market value.
Locating AI facilities on military property is preferable to disrupting residential or agricultural communities, but the favoritism shown to Big Tech raises an obvious question: Is this the best use of public land? And will anchoring these bubble companies on federal property make them “too big to fail,” just like the banks and mortgage lenders before the 2008 crash?
President Trump has acknowledged the shortage of affordable meat as a national crisis. If any industry deserves federal support, it’s America’s independent farmers and ranchers. Yet while Washington clears land for billion-dollar data centers, small producers are disappearing. In the past five years, the U.S. has lost roughly 141,000 family farms and 150,000 cattle operations. The national cattle herd is at its lowest level since 1951. Since 1982, America has lost more than half a million farms — nearly a quarter of its total.
Multiple pressures — rising input costs, droughts, and inflation — have crippled family farms that can’t compete with corporate conglomerates. But federal land policy also plays a role. The government’s stranglehold on Western lands limits grazing rights, water access, and expansion opportunities. If Washington suddenly wants to sell or lease public land, why not prioritize ranchers who need it for feed and forage?
The Conservation Reserve Program compounds the problem. The 2018 Farm Bill extension locked up to 30 million acres of land — five million in Wyoming and Montana alone — under the guise of conservation. Wealthy absentee owners exploit the program by briefly “farming” land to qualify it as cropland, then retiring it into CRP to collect taxpayer payments. More than half of CRP acreage is owned by non-farmers, some earning over $200 per acre while the land sits idle.
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Those acres could support hundreds of cattle per section or produce millions of tons of hay. Instead, they create artificial shortages that drive up feed costs. During the post-COVID inflation spike, hay prices spiked 40%, hitting $250 per ton this year. Even now, inflated prices cost ranchers six figures a year in extra expenses in a business that operates on thin margins.
If the nation needs a new Manhattan Project, it should be for food security, not AI slop. Free up federal lands and idle CRP acreage for productive use. Help ranchers grow herds and lower food prices instead of subsidizing a speculative industry already bloated with venture capital and hype.
At present, every dollar of revenue at OpenAI costs roughly $7.77 to generate — a debt spiral that invites the next taxpayer bailout. By granting these firms privileged access to public land, the government risks creating another class of untouchable corporate wards, as it did with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two decades ago.
AI won’t feed Americans. It won’t fix supply chains. It won’t lower grocery bills. Until these companies can put real food on real tables, federal land should serve the purpose God intended — to sustain the people who live and work upon it.
What it really means to be a conservative in America today
Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?
For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.
We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.
The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.
Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.
Conservatism as stewardship
In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.
That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.
Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.
Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.
Rebuilding what is broken
We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.
Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.
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This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.
A creed for the rising generation
We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.
For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.
Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.
To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.
We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.
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