A recent New York Post opinion column argues that the sudden wave of AI "doom" warnings — including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call for global AI governance — looks less like genuine alarm and more like a coordinated Democratic talking point timed to the midterms.
The column's author, Miranda Devine, points to Bernie Sanders' parallel push for an AI regulation bill and Barack Obama's reported private lobbying of Democratic donors to make AI a campaign centerpiece, calling the coordination suspicious.
That national argument lands squarely on Ohio's U.S. Senate race. Data centers have become an emotional firestorm, fueling city council chaos in towns across the state. Sherrod Brown has run television ads all summer tying Republican Sen. Jon Husted to unpopular data center projects and rising energy bills, part of a broader Democratic strategy that a leaked National Republican Senatorial Committee memo reportedly took seriously enough to warn AI companies about.
For a man who has spent 50 years running for public office, it's fair to ask where Brown really stands on the issue, because frankly, his thirty-second "I hate data centers" commercials kind of feel like they are driven by the flavor-of-the-week outrage cycle.
We could be wrong, but probably not. After all, he did "approve this message."
The odds are, Brown is against them now because his campaign data (probably driven by AI) tells him to be against them. But there's a political fog that no one seems to want to clear up.
Brown has long branded himself Ohio's champion of organized labor. But the state's building trades unions, through Affiliated Construction Trades (ACT) Ohio, have been actively pro-data center. Executive Director Matt Szollosi told state lawmakers this summer that data center construction has driven a surge in trades apprenticeships, wages and job hours, calling it "the gift that keeps on giving."
So, what will be Sherrod Brown's position if he wins? Will he be the guy running ads against data centers, or the one who has spent decades voting with unions that now absolutely need them for their own survival?
Is this campaign position durable policy, or is it, as any fair-minded skeptic could argue, this cycle's version of Bud Light, where data centers are his version of Dylan Mulvaney sitting in a bubble bath?
Brown's campaign, notably, hasn't called for a construction ban, only more oversight. That's fine, but what is the definition of "oversight"?
The Pennant editorial board has a sneaky suspicion that oversight means as long as data centers are built with union labor, he's for them. Or put another way, he's against 'em until he doesn't need to be.
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