photo #9371156

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE Cartoon Published 09/02/2026 About 70 percent of Americans don’t want AI data centers in their backyards. Trump thinks communities rejecting them will end up “backwards and poor.” I guess I’ll end up backward and poor because I don’t want to live anywhere near one. I realize Trump has gone ‘all in’ on data and wants to build the centers and AI infrastructure to make sure we don’t need to lose the AI race to China. Maybe he can build one at Mar-a-Lago. Why are we in a race at all? Why are we dashing at breakneck speed to allow AI to do things for us—and control us? The finish line might be a dystopian system—and if that’s the case, China has already won. Citizens there have no privacy or freedom. Their faces are scanned and their movements tracked. They are pressured to meet social credit scores and if they don’t measure up, they could be castigated from society. It’s already happening in America. Flock cameras are springing up everywhere. Our cars, phones, and TVs listen to what we say and all our of our data goes through Palantir and government bureaucrats. They know what we are doing, but we can’t know what they are doing—just like in China. Our 4th Amendment is ignored. We are racing because huge corporations have invested $1.6 trillion, prompting some to say AI is the latest bubble. The real reason for the race is money, not because AI is important for ‘data to reign.’ Meanwhile, Chinese AI companies released powerful open-weight and free AI models that challenge top U.S. systems. It’s no wonder there’s a race—US companies want their huge investments to pay off as soon as possible. Elon Musk is building massive (and massively expensive) data centers. Naturally he wants Americans to cheer him for that. Musk announced he detected a Chinese bot network with 200 accounts specifically posting anti-data center propaganda on social media. As a result, any American who objects to a data center in their backyard is automatically suspected of being a Chinese boiler room operative—or an American who has been misled by such propaganda. I guess that makes me Chinese because I’m one of those who think we are progressing way too fast with AI. We now see AI slop everywhere. It is taking away a lot of desk jobs from Americans. Commercial artists are being replaced with AI and perhaps editorial cartoonists are next. The rush to replace all office jobs with AI will benefit near-trillionaires like Musk, but will robots pay social security? Data centers make noise—an annoying hum that causes headaches and anxiety. They require a lot of water to cool off computer equipment. Some areas in our country don’t have enough water. Data centers use a tremendous lot of electricity at a time when many can’t afford their rising electric bills. AI certainly benefits big corporations, but as for most of us, we will remain backward and poor. — Ben Garrison