The United States must rapidly expand its energy sources to beat China and lead the AI race, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.
“[AI is] the most profound change in our lifetimes. I think it might be the most profound change in human history, which is a big thing to say. But think about the Industrial Revolution — what’s happening now is bigger and moving faster than that, and it’s going to change the way we fight wars. It’s going to change the nature of work, productivity, society,” McCormick told host and Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle.
“And my view on this is it’s like most big change: you can’t stop it. So, you have to guide it. You have to put the guardrails on it. You have to make sure that America remains at the lead, because we’re in an existential battle with China,” he continued. “If China wins that battle, they’re going to set the rules for the global economy and the world. And so we have to win. We have to be in the lead, but we have to do that in a way that helps every citizen be prosperous.”
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McCormick said “the key” for AI is “leadership,” which also equates to leading on energy production. He specifically pointed to a piece of legislation he introduced in Congress on Friday called the “Unlock America’s Energy and Jobs Act,” which he said would streamline the permitting process to enable faster creation of energy infrastructure for things like data centers.
“Then while we’re doing that, there’s a bunch of different pieces of this, but the really important thing that’s happening in Pennsylvania [and] around the country is there’s lots of debate going on about these data centers. [Like] how do we make sure that they don’t hurt communities and so forth?”
“So, the data centers, the hyperscalers, the technology investors need to make sure they bring more energy than they use. They need to protect the water. They need to invest significantly in the tax space,” he continued.
McCormick said the data centers stand to create thousands of jobs, which is a potential upside as many worry about losing their livelihoods to artificial intelligence.
WATCH — Senator McCormick Addresses “Disruptive” Nature of AI Revolution:
“So, communities like mine, where I grew up in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, a little town of 10,000 people, are beneficiaries of this, that it creates thousands of jobs, building the data centers, running the data centers. So, that’s one big piece of it, to make sure that communities are the beneficiaries of it,” he said.
“When we talk about AI, there’s so much change in the workforce, so there’s going to be a lot of disruption. There’s going to be a lot of jobs that are going to go away — ironically, a lot of white-collar jobs, at least in Pennsylvania. And I think for the foreseeable future, we’re growing skilled labor: welders, pipe fitters, steam fitters, electricians, because we need an enormous workforce, a skilled workforce, to build this energy infrastructure, to build these data centers,” he said.
“So, ironically, in Pennsylvania we can’t get enough skilled labor to meet the demand for all this investment. So that’s exciting because those are great jobs for decades to come,” he said. “But it also creates anxiety and with good reason, so we have to manage it well.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.