AI Just Became A Massive Midterm Election Issue

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Artificial intelligence is about to become one of the most consequential issues in the 2026 midterm elections.

Maybe not immigration-level consequential or inflation-level consequential. But over the next two months, I think Americans are going to hear a lot more about a question that, until very recently, mostly belonged to Silicon Valley and a relatively small group of researchers: should the United States government force the development of frontier AI to slow down?

That question exploded into the political mainstream today. My take is that we may only get one chance to stop AI before it gets out of control, so let’s make sure we do it. President Trump spent Monday rejecting these types of growing warnings, calling the idea that AI could eventually escape human control a “HOAX” and comparing those concerns to what he regards as previous political hoaxes.

“I am the Hoax Buster, and I’m right now breaking another Hoax — That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World,” Trump wrote.

His position is that America needs to develop AI as quickly as possible, excessive regulation risks handing the technological advantage to China, and Washington shouldn’t stand in the industry’s way. Trump went so far as to call AI and data centers potentially “the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History,” bigger than oil, gold, diamonds or even the internet. His administration has also favored voluntary government evaluation procedures for certain frontier models rather than mandatory licensing or preclearance.

Later in the day on Monday, Trump’s comic book nemesis Kamala Harris took almost precisely the opposite position. “The frontier of artificial intelligence is advancing at an alarming speed,” Harris said, calling for Congress to urgently pass legislation creating a new federal entity responsible for oversight and independent testing of advanced AI. She also called for the United States to pursue an international agreement, including with China, designed to establish safety standards and limit the speed of AI development.

And there, in a single day, is the outline of what could become a major midterm debate: accelerate versus slow down, beat China at virtually any cost versus coordinate internationally to establish limits, and keep Washington largely out of the way versus create a new federal regulator overseeing frontier AI.

And the issue is unusually consequential because the stakes aren’t confined to politics. They extend directly into the stock market, as I wrote about days ago. My argument was simple: virtually the entire AI investment boom rests on an assumption of continued rapid development. Hundreds of billions of dollars in expected spending on chips, data centers, electricity, networking equipment and infrastructure are ultimately downstream from that assumption. Slow the technology down and Wall Street eventually has to...(READ THIS FULL COLUMN 100% FREE HERE).