Trump faces AI backlash from unions and data-center critics: Analysis

The emerging coalition of religious leaders, labor unions and local activists that worries about artificial intelligence and the broader economic upheaval it portends poses a political problem for anyone who gets on the wrong side of that issue. And President Donald Trump is the person most at risk.

AI is positioned right in his blind political spot. The industry and its rapidly developing technology threaten to overwhelm Trump’s often-uncanny ability to sense changes in the political winds and could damage his party’s fortunes in the midterm election and the longer-term legacy he values. 

Trump seems aware of the danger, yet can’t help himself from hurtling toward it.

On Thursday, he touted commitments by data center developers and utilities not to raise electricity prices, nodding to fears across the country that a surge in data center construction will spike Americans’ energy bills. The pledge is a no-brainer for the likes of OpenAI and Oracle, giving them political cover as the complex economics of making changes to aging U.S. grids plays out over years and decades. 

But Trump couldn’t help but align himself with the companies, even at an event at the Environmental Protection Agency on the pledge that was designed to show he’s looking out for the little guy. He exhorted the assembled governors and other local officials to sell their constituents on data centers. “You can’t fight it. You have to go with it,” he said. 

Someone is going to get rich on data-center development, and it might as well be you, he told the audience. “If you don’t take all that money, somebody else is going to take it. You might as well do it yourself.”

Here’s the thing about getting rich. If Americans sniff a chance it could happen to them, they don’t need to be told twice to get behind it. That’s why crypto and prediction markets are ideas that can’t be killed, no matter how unlikely it is that you, personally, will really get rich off them. 

When it comes to artificial intelligence, however, rank and file Americans just aren’t buying the idea that Big Tech is handing them a golden lottery ticket. Trump can tout the stock market boom all he likes — the Nasdaq composite has had 20 record closes this year — but too few Americans have enough of a stake in the market for rising share prices of a select few tech companies and the indexes that contain them to overcome their worries about job instability and the continuing concentration of wealth.

To wit, Elon Musk‘s SpaceX looked like a great opportunity for those who were able to invest early. For those Regular Joes fortunate enough to have a few bucks in a brokerage account during its IPO last month, shares are down 30%.

And now add to the class-and-wealth problems of AI a heavyweight political coalition that has…