{"id":282268,"date":"2026-06-26T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/26\/column-how-fearmongering-sets-policy-from-marihuana-to-solar-to-a-i\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T06:15:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:15:28","slug":"column-how-fearmongering-sets-policy-from-marihuana-to-solar-to-a-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/26\/column-how-fearmongering-sets-policy-from-marihuana-to-solar-to-a-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: How fearmongering sets policy, from ‘marihuana’ to solar to A.I."},"content":{"rendered":"

Column: How fearmongering sets policy, from ‘marihuana’ to solar to A.I.<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/opinion\/story\/2026-06-26\/united-states-investment-artificial-intelligence-china-clean-energy<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-26 06:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.latimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

In the race to build \u2014 or stop the construction of \u2014 data centers across the country, it\u2019s important to remember no government is spending more on artificial intelligence than America. In fact, according to the Brookings Institute, the number of AI contracts within the federal government has risen from 472 in 2022 to more than 1,700 in 2026.<\/p>\n

Most of the spending \u2014 $90 billion \u2014 is by the Department of Defense, however other departments \u2014 Commerce, Health and Human Services, NASA \u2014 are spending tens of millions. So regardless of how one may feel about AI, we are all tied to its use.<\/p>\n

Site locations and the economic benefits of data centers can be debated, but there\u2019s no getting around the fact that they are the physical embodiment of what AI does. The more computational power a model needs, the more square footage needs to be built.<\/p>\n

What makes me most uneasy isn\u2019t the size of the buildings or the energy usage. It\u2019s not knowing whether we\u2019re looking at disruptive technology that will ultimately help all of society, or a disruption that exists mainly to make the richest people on the planet even more money? I wrestle with that question because our history is peppered with examples of the latter.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s first trillionaire, for example, became a household name in part because the demand for electric cars skyrocketed a short time after electric cars all but left the market. Confused? Yeah, me too. General Motors spent years developing its EV1, then abruptly discontinued the model, citing production costs. Was it really that or the oil industry, through lobbyist and campaign donations, undermining the car\u2019s success to protect its own interest? Or was it us, the public, who did not want to change? Who knows for sure?<\/p>\n

One thing I do know is that Larry Burns, the former vice president for research and development for General Motors who killed the automaker\u2019s electric car, said if he could turn back time, they would not have stopped investing in…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Column: How fearmongering sets policy, from ‘marihuana’ to solar to A.I. https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/opinion\/story\/2026-06-26\/united-states-investment-artificial-intelligence-china-clean-energy Publish Date: 2026-06-26…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":282269,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/94c954e\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2994x1572+0+201\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe5%2Fe4%2F062193ed43ebb3b62c59ab4d0b15%2Fap7906211128.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282271,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282268\/revisions\/282271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}