Author, columnist, speaker
The Curious Timing of the AI Panic
By Robert Knight
There’s a whiff of the apocalypse in the air.
It’s similar to that of climate change hysteria, when Al Gore and Greta Thunberg told us that we faced an unspeakable fate unless we gave up fossil fuels.
Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, warned six years ago that the earth faced “irreparable damage” in six or seven years.
By God’s grace, Americans took it with a grain of salt. Most people rejected giving up the cheap, reliable energy and free markets that enabled America’s prosperity and lifted billions worldwide out of poverty.
In 2020, the COVID pandemic and the George Floyd riots paved the way for relaxed election rules, with tens of millions of unrequested ballots and many still-unexplained anomalies.
Now, we’re being told daily that artificial intelligence (AI) will destroy humankind in the next 10 years.
The panic was magnified astronomically when an Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, 27, resigned and wrote an X post on Sept. 8, warning that AI developers were “gambling with our lives.”
A few days later, Sen. Sanders told CBS that the danger of AI is "probably greater than nuclear weapons" and that he would seek to ban its development.
Mr. Coxson's post went viral almost instantly, with as many as 170 million views. Time and other publications gave him celebrity treatment.
Former President Barack Obama, who knows a thing or two about effective demagoguery, has told Democratic leaders to put opposition to AI and data centers at the center of their campaigns, so expect more scare stories.
Never mind that communist China, which steals our technology and hacks our systems, is helping to fund the opposition.
China’s state media and Russia’s RT network are churning out propaganda to slow down America’s AI industry, according to two reports by the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
Radical groups in the U.S. have received millions from Neville Roy Singham, a billionaire communist who lives in Shanghai, China, and is married to CodePink founder Jodie Evans.
Singham is one of the main funders of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which “has been an influential organizer in a national campaign against AI and data centers, including 21 fights across 14 states, that produced moratoria, zoning rejections, and cancelled projects worth billions,” the report said.
It’s not all “astroturf.” Who wants a data center in their backyard?
The report acknowledges that “much American opposition to data centers is indisputably authentic. But two things can be true at once: 1) There is a foreign influence campaign against American AI; and 2) Americans have genuine concerns about data center buildout that need to be heard.”
We’re also being fed a narrative that we have flat-out lost the war with Iran. It’s over. The subtext, with a sniff of anti-Semitism, is that Israel put us up to it.
As far as the Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities that President Donald Trump took out with airstrikes in 2025? Ancient history.
Who cares if he denied the bomb to ruthless Islamists who dream of martyrdom?
Meanwhile, gas prices are above $4.25 a gallon, with diesel at a record high of more than $6, fueling more fears of inflation.
Americans will eventually benefit from Mr. Trump’s deal with Venezuela to tap into a reserve of 65 billion barrels of oil, and America’s own oil production is increasing. Iran’s regime may be on borrowed time.
But the news mantra is all bad news, all the time.
In about seven weeks, American voters will decide whether to keep the Trump train rolling or turn Congress back over to Democrats, who are preparing non-stop investigations to cripple him—again.
Love him or hate him, Trump, backed by a Republican Congress, has managed to secure America’s borders and deport thousands of illegal immigrants.
His administration has taken aim at sex experiments on children and at men in women’s sports, forced NATO to fund more of its own defense, reignited America’s manufacturing base, and greatly reduced the nation’s crime rate.
A president can do a lot with his pen and phone, as Mr. Obama said while pledging to go around Congress. But real change comes from legislation.
A useful contrast is the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act versus the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The first was a massive pinata for the climate lobby with a $1.2 trillion price tag over 10 years. The second bill gave a tax break to seniors, workers who get tips, overtime workers, and for car loans. It also made permanent the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
Democrats are banking on high gas prices, the AI panic, hatred for Mr. Trump and the media’s coverup of the party’s embrace of open borders, socialism, and Islam.
Mr. Trump would do well to curb his penchant for firing off intemperate texts at the slightest provocation. What was refreshingly candid in 2016 could be a turn-off for many swing voters.
Republicans need to bring down gas prices and remind Americans that the GOP is the party of law and order, including ensuring a secure border.
Also, that the Democrats, who favor abortion right up to the moment of birth, have gone over the cliffs of perversity.
On Sept. 14, the Republican National Committee posted footage of Texas U.S. Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico being asked to name his “favorite drag queen in Texas.”
Grinning girlishly, he exclaimed, “Oh gosh, it’s got to be Alyssa Edwards!”
Republicans are using the clip in Texas for the Ken Paxton campaign. They need to ask Democrats everywhere about Mr. Talarico.
Amid the manufactured apocalyptic atmosphere, “normal versus crazy,” plus the prayers and engagement of millions of God-fearing Americans, may just keep Congress under GOP leadership.
Illustration by Alexander Hunter / The Washington Times.
Beware of the Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
By Robert Knight
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear appears to be readying for a presidential run in 2028.
The telegenic Democrat was on a speaking tour last year in early primary state South Carolina. In September, he has a book coming out entitled, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country,” a reference to Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan.
His publisher summarizes it this way: “By regrounding faith in compassion and kindness, he believes we can start to heal as a country.”
Compassion and kindness are God-given, but I thought we were in the midst of healing from the nightmare of the Biden years, with its promotion of atheism, illegal immigration, sexual anarchy, and attacks on Catholics and pro-lifers.
Mr. Beshear, like Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, identifies as a Christian and a moderate and gets priceless media cover while supporting the Democratic Party’s radical social and economic agenda.
In 2023, for instance, he tried to block a state bill protecting minors from “gender affirming care.”
The law prohibits doctors from subjecting gender-confused teens to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible, disfiguring surgeries.
The law also bans males from competing on girls’ sports teams. Most people think this makes sense.
Beshear insisted that such a law “would hurt kids and their families” and violate “parental rights.”
He claimed there was no evidence of widespread harm. To which I would say one butchered child is too many and that evidence of harm is voluminous, including the growing number of suicides and trans-related violence.
On the same day of Mr. Beshear’s veto, both houses of Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode it. Naturally, a federal judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, issued an immediate injunction halting enforcement. The case is still in litigation.
A year earlier, Ms. Jennings, one of President Donald Trump’s few clunker appointees, struck down a Kentucky law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks and requiring medical oversight for abortion pills.
Gov. Beshear also vetoed that bill, and the legislature overrode him.
In South Carolina, which went for Mr. Trump by 30 points, Mr. Beshear emphasized his Christian faith while boasting that he was “a proud, pro-LGBTQ+ governor.”
This is a stance that ignores Jesus Christ’s clear restating of God’s creation of male and female and God’s marriage-based sexual morality from Genesis.
According to the Washington Post, Mr. Beshear said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.” How about protecting them from quacks who sterilize them and turn them into lifetime medical cases?
By the way, politicians love to haul out the term “children of God” like a magic amulet. The Bible says we’re all created in the image of God, but that we’re not children of God unless we believe in Him and submit to God’s authority. Until then, we’re on the other team, and I don’t mean the New Jersey Devils.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name,” John 1:12 says. If we’re automatically children of God, we wouldn’t need to be, as Jesus said, born again.
Anyway, Mr. Beshear is not the only wolf in sheep’s clothing. Democrats have become quite adept at using Christianese and buzzwords to fool people. President Barack Obama often gave biblical scholars heartburn over his misappropriating Jesus’s words to justify sexual sin and confiscatory redistribution of wealth.
In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico is battling hard-left U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator. Like Mr. Beshear, Mr. Talarico touts his Christian faith while cleaving to a radical agenda.
“He delivers left-wing orthodoxy in centrist packaging and fights Christian nationalism with Scripture,” the Wall Street Journal explains.
If you’re a patriotic Christian, he’s talking about you and your family as a threat to America.
Much of his rhetoric revolves around Marxist class envy, such as, “Make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.”
During remarks opposing a bill protecting kids from transgender treatments, he said, “Jesus never once condemned transgender people.”
Well, Jesus didn’t need to, and He welcomed all repentant sinners. The Hebrew Scriptures are crystal clear on sexual morality. Sexual confusion is the province of paganism, which historically often involved child sacrifice as well.
Any comparison to the pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ Democratic Party inferred by readers at this juncture may not be coincidental.
In a 2024 interview with MSNBC, Mr. Talarico said, “Christian nationalism is dangerous. … When politicians use the Bible to push division and hate, they’re not following Jesus; they’re using His name for their own agenda.”
This is classic projection, accusing your opponents of exactly what you’re doing.
Illustration by Alexander Hunter / The Washington Times.