Ronald Reagan’s description of the GOP as “the party of new ideas ... the party of the future whose philosophy is vigorous and dynamic” rings truer today than it did in 1985.
Red states are passing universal school choice to break up government education monopolies. Elon Musk revitalized the long-dormant space industry. Vivek Ramaswamy promises to bring a lean, hungry start-up ethos to the ossified federal bureaucracy. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is ready to reshape our failing public health establishment. Donald Trump has pledged to be the most crypto-friendly president ever.
Democrats, by contrast, have become known for being reflexively cautious, censorious, and unimaginative. This worldview is more than just an electoral liability for Democrats — it’s a threat to national security.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the field of artificial intelligence.
By all accounts, AI is the future of the economy. By 2030, it is expected to increase U.S. GDP by over 20%. Yet, President Biden issued an executive order warning that AI “could exacerbate societal harms.”
An area of particular concern to the administration are businesses’ use of algorithmic AI systems, in which computers collect and analyze data to help businesses better price their products and manage demand for their companies’ services. As reflected in their legislation and lawsuits that target everyone from landlords to hotels, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and congressional Democrats have said they worry that businesses can use these AI-based systems to price-gouge, which fits with their habit of blaming “corporate greed” for their own inflationary policy failures.
Of course, greed has nothing to do with it. These pricing systems merely reflect the market data and conditions that they find, aggregate, and analyze. Blaming them for high prices is akin to blaming the weatherman for the rain — and, as aforementioned, it can cost the U.S. economy significantly.
It is entirely hypocritical for the government to attempt to stop the private sector from using this technology when the government uses algorithmic AI for a variety of reasons, from pricing toll roads and limiting roadway congestion to setting public transportation fare rates to monitoring energy usage and pricing on its power grids. However, that is not stopping Chuck Schumer from attempting to send the president an AI regulation “roadmap” before the end of the year that could further hamper this technology, which is otherwise poised to take the U.S. economy to the next level.
Who benefits if the U.S. falls behind on AI? That’s easy: China.
With its 38,000 AI patents compared to the U.S.'s 6,300, China already holds a significant AI advantage. If Schumer and the Democrats continue to go after this technology, our loss will be the CCP’s gain, both economically and militarily.
If you want the picture of a future where we failed to lead the global AI race, imagine a hyper-efficient Chinese economy surpassing ours in GDP and worker productivity while AI drone swarms shred American carrier groups in the South China Sea.
Republicans will control the House and the Senate in January, and Donald Trump’s decisive victories in the electoral college and popular vote give him a strong mandate to govern.
In the 2024 GOP platform, Trump promised to rescind Biden’s “dangerous Executive Order that “hinders AI Innovation and imposes radical leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.” House Speaker Mike Johnson has also pledged to protect the technology from any future regulatory power grabs.
Democrats’ unpopular ideology of stagnation, however, can still act as an impediment, both in Congress and via their overrepresentation in the supposedly apolitical federal bureaucracy. This would be a disaster for the United States. What we’ve been doing isn’t working. If we’re going to remain prosperous and powerful, we need innovation, we need it fast, and we need it just about everywhere.
Garrett Johnson is a co-founder and chairman of the board at the Foundation for American Innovation.
