On June 3, Georgia’s firebrand Republican congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, admitted she hadn’t read the entire “One Big Beautiful” megabill before voting to pass it out of the House. MTG was especially remorseful over missing the provision that prohibited states from regulating artificial intelligence (AI) companies.
Fortunately for MTG and the rest of America, concerned Senate Republicans picked up the slack and prevailed in what turned out to be a dramatic political saga.
The Trump administration has made AI development a priority. While concerns about this technology have mostly, and rightly, focused on its ability to help human users more effectively surveil and manipulate the public, a major reason the government is working overtime to foster AI development is because of its militaristic value.
All power nations are engaged in an AI race. AI helps the military process data for intelligence gathering and surveillance exponentially faster. It helps, or completely operates, various unmanned military tools, including drones. It is used to recognize patterns and break codes.
The military expenditures section of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) includes billions of dollars in allocations to unmanned and AI-dependent equipment. Here is an example of OBBBA expenditures that require AI:
That’s right. That final bullet point does indeed indicate that the U.S. military is building underwater robots.
Another drawback of AI is its voracious appetite for energy. This is why the Trump administration, like the one before it, has made moves to unleash the power of nuclear energy.
Before the emergence of AI, the global controllers’ propaganda campaign against nuclear power had largely succeeded. For decades, nuclear was vilified, its dangers overhyped, and its production minimized. The fear was severely disproportional to the harm it had caused. The Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island nuclear accidents have been the poster incidents of irrational fear toward this efficient, cost-effective energy source. But few people know that not a single person died in the Three Mile Island or Fukushima events. As for Chernobyl, the tenuous tally is 31 immediate deaths, most from the explosion and fires, not radiation. All three come to far less than the hundreds of deaths attributed to wind turbines, which, according to some sources, total more than 200.
President Donald Trump has signed executive orders to expedite the buildup of nuclear power plants, which will play a central role in powering new AI data centers.
A previous version of the OBBBA included an AI provision that read:
For a full 10 years after enactment, no U.S. state or locality may enforce any law or regulation that limits, restricts, or otherwise regulates artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems entered into interstate commerce. Only laws encouraging use or deployment of AI are excluded.
Advocates defended the provision as a bulwark against burdensome red tape, especially in blue states, that would impede AI development. People familiar with how the measure got into the bill told The Wall Street Journal it was added in May “when House aides on the Energy and Commerce Committee and some White House staffers saw an opportunity shortly before the legislation was voted on.” A big proponent was Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, a Republican from Kentucky. Texas’ Republican Senator Ted Cruz was the leading Senate supporter of this provision. Not surprisingly, Google and Meta Platforms (Facebook’s parent company) lobbied for it.
The provision drew a lot of negative attention. Among those who noticed was the man who had become an especially pointy thorn in President Donald Trump’s side. On June 5, another Kentucky congressman, Thomas Massie, posted on his X account pictures of the provision with a caption suggesting it would allow AI companies build data centers wherever they want.
But while Massie often stands alone, in this case he didn’t. Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Josh Hawley of Missouri “opposed it because the language was too broad and could be seen as preventing states from passing any laws affecting technology such as child online safety bills or laws protecting name, image and likeness,” the Journal reported.
Blackburn, who represents a state known for its music legacy, was also concerned this measure would leave the state no recourse if it wanted to protect musicians from having their songs stolen by AI. But Cruz tried to work her over, and almost succeeded. As the Journal reported, “Under [Blackburn’s] agreement with Cruz, the moratorium would be five years and states could pass laws tied to child online safety or protecting artists from unauthorized AI uses of their images.”
This triggered MAGA media figure and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, as well as legal activist Mike David. They contacted Blackburn’s office and told her not to let the “tech bros” have their way. Blackburn also got an earful from parents and creative groups. Trump, meanwhile, according to this report, remained largely noncommittal on the issue.
The amendment to get rid of the “AI free rein” provision passed the Senate 99-1 on July 1.