It’s the hubris that really galls.

Last week, while recording a podcast at the abundance-themed “Progress Conference,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, “When something gets sufficiently huge, whether or not they are on paper, the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort, as we’ve seen in various financial crises.… Given the magnitude of what I expect AI’s economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort.”

It would be ill advised, amid the populist surge in American politics, for even a well-liked leader of a well-liked industry to come out and say they’re expecting American taxpayers to bail them out if and when the need arises. Altman is not well liked, and neither is his industry. In fact, AI billionaires may soon become among the top villains in American society. It’s a dynamic that could provide Democrats with the perfect wedge issue to ride back to power—if they can muster the political courage to take the people’s side over that of some of the country’s wealthiest corporations.

Last week’s election results demonstrated the first concrete proof of the potency of an anti-AI message, as the effects of AI data centers on utility bills played a significant role in several major Democratic victories. In New Jersey, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill’s closing argument was a pledge to freeze electricity rates, which have soared because of data-center demand. In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won after pledging to make data centers “pay their own way,” and many Democrats went even further. At least one candidate, John McAuliff, flipped a seat in the House of Delegates by focusing almost entirely on tying his Republican opponent to the “unchecked growth” of data centers, with an ad that asked, “Do you want more of these in your backyard?” And in Georgia, Democrats won their first nonfederal statewide races in decades, earning 60 percent of the vote against two Republican members of the Public Service Commission by criticizing Big Tech “sweetheart deals” and campaigning for policies “to ensure that the communities that they’re extracting from” don’t end up with their “water supplies … tapped out or their energy … maxed out.”

As these election results suggest, data center opposition is remarkably bipartisan. A large proportion of Big........

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