I love the United States. I believe in this country with everything I’ve got. I also believe artificial intelligence has the power to make our lives better. It can help doctors diagnose illnesses, keep our roads safer, and make everyday tasks easier. But here’s the uncomfortable truth. If we let AI run the whole show without a backup plan, we’re setting ourselves up for disaster.
If someone wanted to destroy America, they might not need missiles or boots on the ground. Just let us build our world around AI. Let us become fully dependent on machine learning and automation. Let us give up our skills and instincts in exchange for convenience. Then wait. When the moment is right, pull the plug.
What happens if a cyberattack takes out the data centers running our AI models? What if a carefully crafted virus shuts everything down? What if an EMP knocks out the grid and we lose everything from GPS to communications? Suddenly, the country that runs on artificial intelligence is stuck with nothing.
I do not say this to fearmonger. I say this because I care. I do not want to see our country brought to its knees by overconfidence and poor planning. And to be honest, I worry that China and Russia are watching us run full speed into AI dependency with a smirk. Maybe they are letting us build the system just so they can watch it collapse.
Because the real threat is not AI. The threat is blind trust. We already see it. People cannot drive without GPS. Teenagers rely on chatbots to write essays. Entire businesses freeze when the cloud goes offline. The next step is a nation that cannot think or act without machine assistance.
That cannot be who we become. I am not anti-AI. Far from it. I think artificial intelligence can help this country thrive. But we need to use it with wisdom, not laziness. We need redundancies. We need printed maps and working radios and people who know how to lead without asking a machine.
Being patriotic means preparing your country to survive any threat. Being pro-AI means building systems that can fail safely and be recovered. We need both.
We cannot afford to be so advanced that we forget how to survive. Keep in mind, folks, the lights will not stay on if no one remembers where the switch is.
