A.I. can be scary stuff, but the good news is that, if we are proactive, we can maintain control over how A.I. advances instead of being vulnerable to forces beyond our control. Let’s break these issues down:

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AMERICAN JOBS
You can find 1787's Plan of Action for jobs here.

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​There is a striking discrepancy in the level of popularity of A.I. around the world. People in poorer countries tend to regard A.I. as a lifesaver… a way to level the playing field, allowing them to build a bridge from poverty to far better life outcomes and economic opportunities. When it comes to A.I., people in poorer countries don’t have a lot to lose and a tremendous amount to gain.​ On the other hand, those in richer countries – who are far more likely to enjoy secure and consistent employment and income – have potentially A LOT to lose, with not much upside. Far from being a lifesaver, for people in these countries, A.I. often looks like a threat to their current stability and future opportunities.

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In America, for example, – where health care coverage is linked to employment more than anywhere in the world, and the safety nets aren’t nearly as extensive – losing your job hits far and wide. The consequences snowball quickly from a loss of income and cancelled health coverage to not being able to pay your rent/mortgage, car payment, insurance, childcare… and on and on and on.

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In a May 2025 report from Axios subtly called A White-Collar Bloodbath, CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei said that half of all entry-level jobs could disappear in one to five years and that executives and government officials should stop “sugarcoating” that reality.​ Amodei told Axios that he was speaking out now because, “We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming. I don’t think this is on people’s radar.” He further warned, “You can’t just step in front of the train and stop it. The only move that’s going to work is steering the train – steer it 10 degrees in a different direction from where it was going. That can be done. That’s possible, but we have to do it now.”

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Others are also speaking up. The Chief Executive of Ford Motor Company said that A.I. could likely replace half of white-collar workers and will “leave a lot of white-collar people behind.” An executive with JPMorgan Chase said the bank anticipates a 10 percent workforce reduction thanks to AI. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon warned his employees that A.I. is set “to change literally every job” and that workers will need to adapt.​ The CEO of Fiverr, a marketplace for freelancers, said this all in a little more direct and ominous way: “This is a wake-up call. It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, product manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person – A.I. is coming for you.”

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On the other hand, an October 2025 report from the Budget Lab at Yale University said that “while the occupational mix is changing more quickly than it has in the past, it is not a large difference and predates the widespread introduction of A.I. in the workforce… measures of exposure, automation, and augmentation show no sign of being related to changes in employment or unemployment.”​ Daron Acemoglu, a Nobel laureate and economist from MIT, thinks A.I. will only be able to perform 5 percent of jobs within the next decade: “A lot of money is going to get wasted,” he has said. “You’re not going to get an economic revolution out of that 5 percent. You need highly reliable information or the ability of these models to faithfully implement certain steps that previously workers were doing. They can do that in a few places with some human supervisory oversight…but in most places they cannot.”

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1787 comes down more on Mr. Acemoglu’s side. Of course, A.I. is going to have an impact on the U.S. job market and, of course, we must prepare for that in every way possible. But we look at it more like a shift than a total disruption (and this was already happening thanks to technological advancements like automation).​ Even Dario Amodei later softened the words he said to Axios, saying that he was simply trying to give companies a heads-up, not be the “prophet of doom.” Companies that use A.I., he clarified, “can do the same thing with less resources, and that leads to things like layoffs, or they can do more with the same amount of resources. But that requires creativity.”

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One of the main reasons we are bullish on this is the power of HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. Yes, the things A.I. can do are mind-blowing. One of the most remarkable things about DeepSeek’s 2025 model was the advancements it made in “reasoning,” a major factor in how close A.I. can come to achieving human-level intelligence. The breakthrough was not if the chatbot can “reason,” but how it “reasons.” Instead of just regurgitating information, it seemed to have an actual thought-process. Think about it like this: One tech columnist asked the chatbot if a hot dog is a sandwich. She reported that it spent “28 seconds contemplating the philosophical meaning of processed meat between bread” then said, “First, I need to understand what defines a sandwich.” That’s crazy!

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Even thirty years ago, the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion for eleven years in a row. Kasparov was impressed: “It attacks, you know? It finds the shortest cut to any weakness in your position. It doesn’t hesitate, it doesn’t have any doubts, it’s not scared by your illusionary threats. And that’s why, you know, it was the absolute worst, and, you know, it was a massacre, which was well-deserved.”

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But HUMAN INTELLIGENCE is way more impressive – and in so many ways, irreplaceable. Humans have lived experience and can forge personal connections. We can build trust and community. We have wisdom, discernment and intuition. We have consciousness, can make moral judgments, weigh ethical dilemmas, and understand right from wrong. We can experience feelings and emotions and understand one another on a cellular level. We have regrets, compassion and empathy. We can laugh. We can cry. We can love. We have motor skills and can walk around without a joystick. We can create and innovate and have vision and purpose. We can make real-time adjustments based on new information. We can link unrelated ideas and invent completely new concepts. We can imagine the impossible.​

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DATA CENTERS​​​

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The United States has over 3,000 operational data centers, with more than 1,500 in development. This seems inevitable given the A.I. boom, but it’s causing major problems for many communities. Americans are quickly realizing that these data centers greatly impact their existing infrastructure, utility rates, air and water quality… basically, their overall quality of life and well-being. The worst part may be the noise pollution, which is intense. Imagine a constant low-frequency vibration that feels like you’re standing in a nightclub right between the band’s subwoofer and bass drum. People unfortunate enough to experience this nightmare report chronic sleep deprivation, headaches, internal ear pressure, and increased anxiety.

 

The public backlash against data centers has gotten so intense that, in 2025, local opposition blocked and/or delayed 48 data-center projects valued at $156 billion, with 20 more canceled in the first quarter of 2026.

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ENERGY & WATER CONSUMPTION

 

A.I.’s massive use of water and electricity is another major problem for these communities. A.I. requires thousands of servers plus the cooling equipment that helps them run, all housed in thousands of these data centers that require enormous amounts of electricity to meet the demand. To put it in perspective, the U.S. Department of Energy says one data center can require 50 times the electricity of a traditional office building. Complexes with multiple buildings can use up to 20 times that amount.

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Jesse Dodge, a former senior research analyst at the Allen Institute for A.I. – a nonprofit research institute founded by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen – once said that “one query to ChatGPT uses approximately as much electricity as could light one light bulb for about 20 minutes…so, you can imagine with millions of people using something like that every day, that adds up to a really large amount of electricity.” Put another way, research from financial services company Goldman Sachs says that, on average, a “ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search.”

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This is causing enormous challenges. Northern Virginia – known as the world’s internet hub, processing almost 70 percent of global digital traffic – uses electricity at a staggering rate. In fact, PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator for the area, says the usage is unsustainable without hundreds of miles of new transmission lines and continued energy output from the old-school coal-powered electricity plants that had previously been ordered to shut down because of environmental concerns. Dominion Energy has repeatedly warned they may not be able to keep up with the energy demand sparked by A.I. The utility estimates the A.I. energy demand in Virginia will likely quadruple by 2035 – roughly the same amount of electricity used to power 8.8 million homes. Already, the 50+ data centers Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative serves account for 59 percent of its entire energy demand. By mid-2028, the number of data centers is expected to expand to over 110.

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Likewise, data centers are causing a rapid increase in water consumption, with one analysis finding their indirect water consumption to be as much as twelve times more than their direct use. Many of the new facilities are being built in areas that already experience water shortages, with one study projecting centers could demand over 20 percent of Phoenix, Arizona’s yearly use by 2031 (up from just three percent today). Read more about America's Water Scarcity Crisis here.

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The real-world consequences of this new reality are enormous. In Google’s 2024 Environmental Report, the company said its greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 48 percent over the past five years, due to a surge in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions. Google’s report warns, “As we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging.” < Google’s 2025 Environmental Report says it has since reduced data center energy emissions by 12 percent. >

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In its 2024 Environmental Sustainability Report, Microsoft revealed its emissions increased by 29 percent over the past four years because of new data centers “designed and optimized to support AI workloads.” The company also warned that “the infrastructure and electricity needed for these technologies create new challenges for meeting sustainability commitments across the tech sector.” < Microsoft’s 2025 Environmental Sustainability Report revealed its total emissions had increased by 23.4 percent compared to the 2020 baseline. >​​​

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A.I. AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

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The Trump/Vance administration is taking unprecedented steps to block A.I. developers from releasing certain A.I. models under the pretense of “security risks.” The most hard-core example is the way the administration has treated Anthropic – a company that the leaders of the United States of America should be immensely proud of.

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The official story from Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth is that their administration, using its export-control power, demanded that Anthropic restrict access to its powerful Mythos model over concerns adversaries could exploit it for cyber warfare. To help assuage the administration’s concerns, Anthropic then released Fable 5, a version that has most of the capabilities of its Mythos model (i.e., advanced coding, research, analytic, and agentic features) but also includes safeguards to prevent its use for cyber.

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But that still didn’t seem to be good enough for the brain trust of Trump, Vance, Rubio and Hegseth (who we’re guessing know next to nothing about the inner workings of A.I.). While it’s true that Amazon researchers found a way to bypass Fable’s guardrails soon after its release, it’s very likely that concerns about the adequacy of safeguards are not the real reason these guys have beef with Anthropic.

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The real reason Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and the rest of the gang are ticked off at Anthropic is that its CEO Dario Amodei had the audacity to demand restrictions on how the Pentagon can deploy Anthropic’s tech for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. In other words, Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and the rest of the gang are ticked off at Anthropic for having a conscience.

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For years, Anthropic has been, by far, the most vocal advocate from the A.I. world for guardrails to ensure the technology is used safely and responsibly. In a statement made amid heated discussions with administration officials, Mr. Amodei made Anthropic’s position clear: “I believe deeply in the existential importance of using A.I. to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries.”

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“However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe A.I. can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values. Some uses are also simply outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely and reliably do. Two such use cases have never been included in our contracts with the Department of War, and we believe they should not be included now: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.”

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Outraged, this led to Pete Hegseth designating Anthropic a “supply-chain risk,” removing its models from military systems, and President Trump directing federal agencies to stop working with the A.I. giant, accusing the company’s executives of being “leftwing nutjobs.” Amodei responded: “These threats do not change our position: We cannot in good conscience accede to their request.” (BRAVO and THANK YOU, Dario!)

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The Trump/Vance administration setting the precedent that the government can arbitrarily order an A.I. model off the market – which is moving dangerously close to the nationalization of A.I. – is breathtaking. This not only potentially undermines our lead in A.I., but it also pushes companies around the world into the arms of the Chinese and their open-weight and open-source A.I. models.

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< Open-weight means you are given pre-trained parameters to fine-tune the A.I. model, but the source code, architecture details, and datasets remain confidential. Open-source goes further, providing total transparency by including the source code, training methodologies, and training data so the public can audit and rebuild it. These models work great for users who want unconstrained access to systems they control because they are free to download, modify, and adapt them. By advancing these types of models, China can bypass U.S. hardware sanctions and restrictions; learn and implement best practices; rapidly integrate A.I. across its vast manufacturing base; and build global soft power through A.I. influence and dominance. >

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The Trump/Vance administration’s inconsistent approach to A.I. is confounding, but it looks even more schizophrenic and careless when you consider the Nvidia deal.​ In January 2026, the Trump/Vance administration reversed some export control restrictions imposed by the Biden administration, allowing Nvidia – the dominant American computational chip dealer for the A.I. boom – to sell advanced chips to China. They did this in exchange for a 25 percent cut of all those sales. Five months earlier, the administration brokered a deal requiring Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to pay a 15 percent fee on revenue from the sales of their AI chips to China in exchange for export licenses.

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This is quite possibly the most stupefying idea we have ever heard. Setting aside the national security concerns (which are huge) and the fact that the deal violates the Export Control Reform Act – which says no fee can be imposed in connection with license applications – and the U.S. Constitution – which prohibits the federal government from imposing taxes or duties on items exported from the United States – why in the name of all that is holy would our leaders give our biggest economic competitor the chance to catch up with us in artificial intelligence?

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…especially when experts say that Huawei, China’s closest competitor to Nvidia, is still at least two years behind them? Basically, we are gifting China our computing power so they can buy time while their companies improve their own supply and performance.

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Donald Trump and JD Vance just handed Xi Jinping U.S. technological superiority on a silver platter… for what? 25 percent? This is insanity. Whose side are these guys on?

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The Institute for Progress, a think tank, estimates the American advantage over China in A.I. compute will shrink from around ten times to five times within a year of the Chinese having H200 chips (the H200 – a high-speed graphics processing units (GPUs) used for AI applications and high-performance computing – is Nvidia’s second-most-powerful chip). Well, that’s just great, isn’t it?

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In a most ironic twist, literally hours before the Trump/Vance administration’s announcement of their A.I. sabotage, the U.S. Justice Department announced that our federal government had “exposed a sophisticated smuggling network that threatens our nation’s security by funneling cutting-edge A.I. technology to those who would use it against American interests.” This “criminal network” – their words – tried to smuggle over $160 million worth of Nvidia chips to China (irony is not a strong enough word for this).

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The reasoning behind the bust, according to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Nicholas J. Ganjei, is that the H100 and H200 chips are “designed to process massive amounts of data, advancing generative AI and large language models and accelerating scientific computing. These GPUs are used for both civilian and military applications.”

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“These chips are the building blocks of A.I. superiority and are integral to modern military applications. The country that controls these chips will control AI technology; the country that controls A.I. technology will control the future.”