Silicon Valley is racing against time.
They’ve got two years to make artificial intelligence ubiquitous and necessary. They need the government, the military, the economy and every American consumer to become dependent upon agentic AI while Donald Trump is still in office.
The urgency of their headlong rush into a “frictionless” world managed by AI agents was amplified by the resounding defeat voters dealt to the Republican Party at the state and federal level. In addition to bouncing the President’s party out of power, forty-four municipalities spanning eight states also passed restrictions on data centers and, according to tabulations by Data Center Watch, the overwhelming majority of winning candidates ran to some extent on restricting and regulating AI and data centers:
78% of elected congressional candidates support regulation or restrictions on data center development. Among declared winners, 62% support regulation or conditional development, while 16% support a ban or moratorium at the federal, state, or local level.
94% of elected governors support regulation or restrictions. More than a third (35%) support bans or moratoriums, and 59% support regulation or conditional development.
Democrats have taken more restrictive positions, although regulatory support crosses party lines. Among elected congressional Democrats, 23% support bans or moratoriums, compared with 3% of Republicans. Among elected governors, 50% of Democrats and 8% of Republicans took restrictive positions.
In other words, the functional immunity Silicon Valley has enjoyed throughout the last two years of Trump-fueled hyperscaling is about to change. This coming January they will face actual Congressional oversight. The Valley’s cozy financial relationships with the Trump family will be probed and publicized and the favors doled out by Trump’s administration will be scrutinized for the first time.
Ultimately, Congressional investigations and hearings will be embarrassing and potentially incriminating, but oversight is not enforcement. Trump’s Justice Department can and will shield them from the consequences recommended by lawmakers. And should Congress pass legislation restricting AI or the data centers that conjure it up, the Valley can bank on those laws succumbing to Trump’s veto pen until January of 2029. They may even get Presidential pardons if oversight reveals evidence of lawbreaking.
Until then, the AI industry will continue to exploit the regulatory indifference shown it by the administration’s various agencies. And that gives them plenty of time to tackle the problem of “adoption.” The trick is to become too necessary to regulate before a new, far-less friendly President is willing to sign AI-constraining bills into law. To get there, they have to convince Americans to invite agentic AI into their lives:
If these grannies can live their best lives with the help and support of an AI agent, what’s to stop you from doing the same? Just look at how helpful and supportive AI can be if you’re willing to take the leap and embrace an action-packed life of convenience and fulfillment!
In light of the midterms, though, the ad seems woefully out-of-step with the country’s mood. But that’s no problem for the Valley. Ads pushing adoption are now popping up during NFL games and primetime programming … and you can expect “friendly, helpful AI” to be a recurring theme during the impending holiday season.
To wit, Walmart is launching Sparky to help customers navigate holiday shopping. And Target recently partnered with Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to “accelerate [the] technology and learn alongside consumers' behavior shift”:
Consumers are turning to conversational AI for more of their shopping needs. AI-driven traffic to Target leapt 2,000% in the first quarter compared to last year. This compares to a nearly 400% increase in AI-driven traffic to retail sites overall.
Shopify’s president, Harley Finkelstein, explained the role “trust” plays in convincing consumers to use the highly-personalized agents and, in the process, give the AI industry access more information it can use to become more personalized:
"In the new world of personal agents, shop is not just a wallet. It is your complete buyer profile. So when you connect shop to Muse, Instinct, o r Claude Duet, or Grok Bot, the agent gets 3 things. First of all, it gets your entire shopping history across any Shopify merchants who can deliver these incredibly personalized recommendations. Second, with Shop Pay gets save payment details, you can pay the way you want with confidence, the agent doesn't get that information. And then the connection to the Shop app means even afterwards, you're able to track everything you purchased. So the fact that we have 400 million shoppers already trusting Shop and Shop Pay, now that trust goes with them into every single agent. We think that's really important."
Trust is an ironic currency given the power of AI to introduce doubt into every image, video and headline we scroll through or receive via DM from friends and family. But trust is what AI must secure if we are going to willingly invite it into our homes, our work and into our daily lives. If Target’s 2,000% year-over-year increase in adoption is any indication, the Valley need only treat adoption as a relentless war of attrition.
AI is already being preloaded onto phones and computers. It won’t be long before it is impossible to buy an AI-free TV, car or refrigerator. Retail, dining, entertainment will all be handled or arranged with input from data-hungry agents that can anticipate our needs and desires. Bills, taxes and government services will be made “frictionless” as clunky humans are phased out in favor of ever-more responsive agents that justify their use with hard to deny efficiency. Soon, agents will become ever-vigilant companions that manage life’s chores while collecting ever-more intimate details it can use to become irreplaceable.
They’ve got two years to win this war for our hearts, our minds and our data. And if agentic AI does manage to become inexorable before the US elects a president not bought and paid for by the Broligarchy, it will do so with our compliance and our complicity.
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