Artificial intelligence (AI) has been heralded as a technological revolution that will transform our world. From curing diseases to automating dangerous jobs to discovering new inventions, the possibilities are tantalizing. We’re told that AI could bring unprecedented good—if only we continue to invest in its development and allow labs to seize precious, finite natural resources.
Yet, despite these grand promises, most Americans haven’t experienced any meaningful benefits from AI. It’s yet to meaningfully address most health issues, and for many, It’s not significantly improving our everyday lives, excluding drafting emails and making bad memes. In fact, AI usage is still largely confined to a narrow segment of the population: highly educated professionals in tech hubs and urban centers. An August 2024 survey by the Federal Reserve and Harvard Kennedy School found that while 39.4% of U.S. adults aged 18-64 reported using generative AI, adoption rates vary significantly. Workers with a bachelor's degree or higher are twice as likely to use AI at work compared to those without a college degree (40% vs. 20%), and usage is highest in computer/mathematical occupations (49.6%) and management roles (49.0%).
For the majority of Americans, especially those in personal services (12.5% adoption) and blue-collar occupations (22.1% adoption), AI remains an abstraction, something that exists in the future rather than their present.
While the rewards of AI are still speculative, the costs are becoming increasingly tangible. And the people paying those costs are not the ones benefiting from AI today. In fact, much of the burden of AI’s development is falling squarely on the shoulders of the American West—both its people and its land. According to recent research, data centers in the United States are consuming an increasing share of the country's total electricity. These facilities, which are crucial for AI deployment, used about 3% of all U.S. electricity in 2022. By 2030, their share is estimated to grow to 9% of total U.S. electricity consumption.
This surge in energy demand is particularly significant for the Western United States, with its concentration of tech hubs and data centers. Moreover, the carbon dioxide emissions from data centers may more than double between 2022 and 2030, further intensifying the environmental impact on these regions.
Here’s why: developing and deploying AI requires enormous amounts of energy. Advanced machine learning models demand computing power on a scale that most people can barely comprehend. Recent International Energy Agency projections highlight the magnitude of this demand: global electricity consumption from data centers, cryptocurrencies, and AI is expected to reach between 620-1050 trillion watt hours (TWh) by 2026. To put that in perspective, 1,000 TWh could provide electricity to about 94.3 million American homes for an entire year.
All that energy has to come from somewhere. Increasingly, it’s coming from the West —the part of the country that has long been tapped to fuel the nation’s ambitions, from oil and gas to solar, wind, and hydropower.
This energy extraction is putting immense pressure on the West’s already strained resources. Land is being consumed, water is being diverted, and communities are being disrupted, all to keep the lights on in tech labs far removed from the realities of life on the ground. The irony is that the very regions making AI possible are the least likely to benefit from it.
The rush to ramp up energy production for AI feels eerily familiar. We’ve seen these “get rich quick” schemes before—industries that swoop into rural areas, extract valuable resources, and leave environmental and social destruction in their wake. The West has been exploited before by out-of-state interests with big promises and shallow commitments, and AI risks becoming the latest chapter in that story.
We need to have an honest conversation about the true costs of AI development—particularly when it comes to energy consumption. AI labs may talk about curing diseases and inventing new technologies, but until those breakthroughs become reality, the rest of us—especially those in the West—are left footing the bill. And right now, that bill is being paid in the form of depleted resources and communities that are being squeezed for the sake of a future that remains distant and uncertain.
The truth is, we can’t continue to deplete our resources in the hope that AI’s promises will eventually materialize. We must demand accountability and transparency from those developing AI. Where is the energy coming from? Who is being impacted? And most importantly, who will benefit?
AI’s future may hold incredible potential, but we must make sure that we’re not sacrificing the West’s present for a future that may never arrive. If AI is going to reshape our world, it must do so in a way that lifts up all Americans, not just a select few. Until then, we need to be clear-eyed about the costs—and demand better.
Frazier is an adjunct professor of Delaware Law and an affiliated scholar of emerging technology and constitutional law at St. Thomas University College of Law.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.