Pennsylvania AI boondoggle summit as full of BS and unwanted garbage as expected.
I listened to Trump at the Republican data center power plant "summit" in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and read about Josh Shapiro's involvement so you don't have to. (You can thank me later.)
Scott Bessent, Dave Mccormick, Donald Trump, Blackstone president and COO Jon Gray, and Ruth Porat pictured in a White House youtube video screenshot at the Pennsylvania Energy & Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. July 15, 2025.
Donald Trump claimed he went to college "here" but I think he went to college in Philly not Pittsburgh, but I guess probably all of Pennsylvania is the same to him.
Donald Trump brought up that he saw Dave Mccormick in the audience at Butler, Pennsylvania rally where he was shot at and shuffled around the topic clumsily for what seemed like a long while even while listening at 2x speed.
Donald Trump pointed to Lee Zeldin EPA secretary present and said that the EPA would be green-lighting all fossil fuel projects in Pennsylvania within a week, adding that maybe it's 2 weeks for green-lighting nuclear projects. Donald Trump mentioned Chinese President Xi can just able to make all these decisions on his own. President Xi has consolidated power, but I also don't know if that means Xi is actually micromanaging every building project across China. So this comment was kind of silly except for that Trump used this tangent to specifically say he "probably" could, if he wanted to, micromanage all the decisions on data center power plants in Pennsylvania, but that he won't because he doesn't have to, because he said Lee Zeldin is so amazing. And when he said he could be making the decisions himself, the camera was panned out and many present seated in the risers were excited smiling and laughing in response to this.
Donald Trump specifically did shoutouts naming PA Senator Kim Ward, US Rep. Rob Bresnahan, PA Senator Joe Pittman, and a couple others.
Donald Trump said he wants to be "the number one super power in artificial intelligence" — whatever he thinks that means to him. He'd said AI isn't his thing so it's not surprising he didn't elaborate, other than to go on to mention his family member who went to MIT again. (Edit to add: I didn’t realize at the time Donald Trump was falsely claiming his family member taught Ted Kaczynski at MIT, or I would’ve mentioned this and that it’s not true. I didn’t bother to listen closely to this because he was rambling nonsense to begin with.)
Donald Trump repeated that false claim he’s made before about "no tax on Social Security" which is not actually true.
Donald Trump referred to Joe Biden as "Sleepy Joe", I guess he just had to get one of the old standard in there while crowing about getting rid of something good that Joe Biden did for the environment.
Donald Trump, in talking about coal in Pennsylvania, stated outright that "coal has equal if not greater status" than other sources of energy.
And then Trump immediately started muttering complaints about windmills, and repeated the false claim he's made before, wrongly, that wind energy supposedly doesn't exist in China, despite the fact that China produces the most wind energy.
Ruth Porat announced that "free AI training" would be provided to every business in Pennsylvania. Whatever "AI training" means. I suspect it's along the lines of the reports by Jason Koebler in 404 Media that when teachers in schools were concerned about the use of chatbots, they were given training by "explicitly pro-AI organizations and authors, and organizations backed by tech companies" brought in by state departments of education. In other words this business AI training is probably just high test PR and high pressure sales. So of course it’s free.
And so-called Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro is, for some reason, all in on this Trump corporate tech authoritarian takeover of Pennsylvania. The news outlets are reporting Josh Shapiro being in lockstep with Republican Senator Dave Mccormick and the Trump administration. Josh Shapiro is clearly up to his eyeballs in AI bubble crypto corruption fossil fuel Trump cronyism.
‘This is a competition we have to win’: 4 observations from Dave McCormick’s AI and energy summit. Top leaders in tech and politics, including President Donald Trump, traveled to Pittsburgh for the inaugural event. By Justin Sweitzer Managing editor, City & State Pennsylvania July 15, 2025 04:28 PM ET Shapiro and McCormick show united front on AI Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor and Republican officials don’t always find themselves in agreement on major issues, but they were in lockstep on making Pennsylvania an AI powerhouse at Tuesday’s event. Both Shapiro and McCormick touched on the importance that Pennsylvania’s workforce, educational institutions and energy assets could play in the AI economy. “I think this deal with Amazon is an indicator of all that we can be … we have government and the private sector working together, not at odds, and we pull in our educational institutions in a way that really helps move Pennsylvania forward,” Shapiro said during the day’s third panel. McCormick similarly said that Pennsylvania was dealt “a set of cards that are uniquely suited to the moment.” “On this, we agree that we need to be at the crossroads of the energy revolution, the AI revolution,” the senator said. “We need to be aligned at all levels.” Trump administration well represented at Pittsburgh summit. Not only did the president headline Tuesday’s summit, but members of Trump’s administration had a visible presence at the event, as well. David Sacks, the administration’s AI and crypto czar, took part in the day’s first panel, while U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick discussed the importance of selling younger generations on new trades jobs that will result from an expansion of data centers and other AI infrastructure. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright also participated in a panel examining AI and the energy demands that the evolving technology will require. Lutnick weighed in on AI’s energy demands, saying that it is vital that the U.S. take advantage of its diverse energy portfolio in order to meet the power needs of AI infrastructure. (emphasis added)
If AI is so great, why do young people have to be "sold on" these jobs? I think it's because they will have to be sold a lie because data centers don't create a lot of jobs, and anyway, this doesn't make sense because AI is being sold to businesses as a way to GET RID OF JOBS. So if it gets rid of jobs, and there's an "AI Jobs Apocalypse" so there's a net decrease in jobs, how do these politicians still get to pump this old trickle down economics "job creation" canard and crow about how we should worship the job creators? It doesn't make sense at all.
What these people want to force on us is terrifying, when you listen to the accounts from people already trying to live with these data center power plants in their neighborhoods. At this point I think we need to consider this AI bullshit to be an actual assault on humanity.
These politicians and these tycoons would have to raze Pennsylvania neighborhoods and burn coal and tires in every public park in every bucolic corner of Pennsylvania in order to try to meet the insane energy that the AI tech tycoons and the crypto magnates are demanding, and then it still won't be enough. Eric Schmidt spelled it out in no uncertain terms in an interview in August 2024 just how much the demand is. I noted this last year because I was surprised he laid it out so explicitly (though I heard that he may have not been aware it was being broadcast). Erich Schmidt, a billionaire tycoon himself, was saying that the CEOs of the big companies told him they're going to need 50 to 100 billion data centers each, and the power demands are such that Eric Schmidt said that then we need to be "best friends with Canada" so that the US could get at their hydropower. I thought back to this interview when Donald Trump got into office and immediately started talking about annexing Canada. The person interviewing Schmidt, Erik Brynjolfsson, said that with 300 billion data centers, "electricity starts becoming a scarce resource". What do you think happens with utility bills at that point? This is not going to make anyone "energy dominant" other than the people profiting off selling electricity to people at sky high rates, with data centers pricing ordinary people out. So we'll have a bunch of data centers shaking people's houses, smoke stacks everywhere with smoke from who knows what permeating neighborhoods, and ordinary people living in homes where they have to sit in the dark, rationing their electricity, just to fuel harmful crypto scams and pointless AI habituation.
This isn't the future I want to see because I'm not even satisfied with the present. It doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to power these AI data centers or burn tires to print cryptocurrency. It's simply not necessary, and I don't think most people actually want this. And I'm very sure nobody wants it next door to them.
We could have renewable energy prioritized. We could preserve the good things in life, and create an equitable future for all of us together, prioritizing public health instead.
“In developing regulations the EPA was directed to weigh only one concern: public health. The costs to industry were explicitly deemed irrelevant.” — Jane Mayer, Dark Money, 2016