OPINION:
The artificial intelligence fight isn’t about cost or electricity. It’s about who controls the future.
I recently listened to a podcast in which David Sacks, President Trump’s point man on artificial intelligence (and, consequently, data centers), noted that the administration had taken several steps to ensure that data centers would not wind up increasing the electricity costs of other ratepayers.
Mr. Sacks noted with some pride that the administration had created and encouraged companies to sign the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which commits signatories to various actions to ensure that data centers carry their weight in terms of electricity rates.
That approach has a handful of problems, but let’s focus on two.
First, as shown by the exemplary work of my friends at the American Energy Alliance, higher electricity rates in states are more a function of those states’ policy choices than anything to do with data centers.
The American Energy Alliance’s analysis was clear: “Data center heavy states do not have higher electricity prices. The 10 states with the most data centers, including Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois and Ohio, averaged 14.46 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025. All other states averaged 14.39 cents.
“Price increases show no clear pattern regarding the presence of data centers. There is no significant difference in the rate of electricity price increases between states with high concentrations of data centers and those without.”
Finally, the American Energy Alliance offered, “Increasing electricity sales are negatively correlated with electricity price increases. States that have growing electricity demand saw lower increases in electricity rates.”
In the absence of any countervailing analysis, that seems to close the question of electricity rates and data centers.
That is good news, largely because the question of electricity costs associated with data centers is a chimera. It is used by those who oppose AI — and, more pointedly, those who oppose American dominance in this field — to complicate and retard its development.
The presence of such people is the second and far more important problem facing the development of AI in the United States.
More disconcerting is that team AI doesn’t seem to completely grasp that it is the next target of the unhappy cocktail of socialists, communists, neo-Luddites and adversaries of the republic who now constitute the leadership of the American left.
Team AI still seems to think that this contest is about electricity costs, turbines, interconnection rules and the rest of the quotidian nonsense.
It is not.
There are those, such as Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, who worry that AI might make more Americans wealthier and migrate away from his angry, grasping brand of collectivism. There are those who genuinely believe that America is in decline and the best we can do is manage that decline. There is no space in that philosophy for a transformational technology.
Finally, there are the honest citizens who think, right or wrong, that the AI craze is likely to lead to the same place that the computer era has led us: more billionaires and (seemingly) less of that prosperity filtering down to the citizenry.
The AI industry has allowed itself to be focused on the relatively small beer of electricity rates rather than on the awesome economic gains that will attach to whoever (or whichever nation) masters artificial intelligence. They also have made no accommodation to those who worry about the dispersion of affluence that must be an essential component of the effort.
These are not irreversible problems. The industry can still make the argument for prosperity and abundance and for the next generation to inherit a world in which the United States is economically, socially and militarily dominant, but it is getting late in the day, and this moment will not last indefinitely.
Those who believe in the promise of AI need to refocus and rededicate themselves to the task of selling the promise of the technology. They need to set aside their hard-won arrogance, reframe the conversation toward the positive and do the necessary and muddy business of persuading people that a world with AI can and will be a better place for us all, especially Americans. Or, they can cede the field to Mr. Sanders and hope for the best.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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