Conservatives Should Not Let the Left Write America’s AI Rules

Conservatives are right to distrust Big Tech.

These companies have censored political speech, tilted the information playing field, and worked too closely with government officials who wanted inconvenient viewpoints suppressed. That record deserves scrutiny.

But distrust of Big Tech should not lead conservatives into supporting a regulatory agenda developed by the ideological left.

That is the danger surrounding Humans First. The organization now presents itself as an America First campaign against “Big AI,” but reporting traces its creation to figures associated with the Center for AI Safety and the broader Effective Altruist movement. The organization initially promoted itself as bipartisan before announcing that it would focus exclusively on mobilizing conservatives.

That should set off alarm bells.

The people pushing broad new AI rules will not simply regulate server buildings. They will influence which AI systems can operate, what those systems may produce, and who gets to define concepts such as safety, misinformation, bias, and harm.

We already know how Washington institutions interpret those words. “Safety” can quickly become censorship. “Accountability” can become political control. “Protecting democracy” can become an excuse to suppress dissent.

Data centers are not an ideology. They are infrastructure. They support artificial intelligence, cloud computing, banking, health care, logistics, national defense, and nearly every part of the modern economy.

If America refuses to build that infrastructure, China will not follow our example. It will gladly take the advantage.

The conservative answer is not to freeze innovation or empower another federal bureaucracy. It is to enforce clear laws, defend free speech, and keep America technologically stronger than its adversaries.

We should not regulate America out of the future.