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A call to action — examining how corporate interests are reshaping our digital landscape, economic reality, and physical environment under the guise of innovation, with solutions that serve everyone's interests.
A new paper from Kenneth Russell DeGraff
Published by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy,
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
and join the upcoming newsletter Truth in the Machine.
America Needs to Prepare for the Flood of AI
Artificial Intelligence rise presents three interconnected crises that work in concert as an interlocking machinery of reality distortion. These aren't isolated problems—they reinforce each other in a dangerous cycle that we must break.
The most important point: many of these solutions actually serve Silicon Valley's self-interests. Cheaper clean energy, better infrastructure, and reliable human content—America can't compete if we don't have a population of educated, healthy, and economically resilient people.
Three Crises with Real Solutions
AI-driven disinformation erodes our ability to distinguish fact from fiction, weakening societal trust. Building collective resilience against reality manipulation—whether from human actors or AI systems—is now essential for a functioning society.
A few corporations wield immense control over our digital lives, shaping discourse and behavior with minimal accountability. We deserve solutions that empower people to make their time better spent.
AI infrastructure affects your pocketbook - a perverse system where everyday people pay more money to burn the dirtiest fossil fuels to generate digital pollution and misinformation. American and global manufacturers are ready to build cheaper solutions to power the globe, it's time for all hands on deck.
Kenneth Russell DeGraff
Having spent nearly 20 years on Capitol Hill helping policymakers navigate complex issues, DeGraff has seen how hard it is for Congress to find agreement on problems and basic facts, much less solutions. Congressional leaders are often caught between acknowledging potential harm and letting AI run wild for the sake of innovation—but this is a false choice.
During his 12 years as the chief climate, technology and science advisor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he played a key role in helping Congress design, enact, explain and enforce legislation, including President Biden's "Investing in America" jobs strategy. His work included contributions to landmark laws like the Inflation Reduction Act ("the most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis" according to the UN), the CHIPS & Science Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Before serving Speaker Pelosi, DeGraff was the Legislative Director and Assistant to Congressman Mike Doyle, a Policy Analyst at Consumer Reports, and a Truman Scholar from Butler University. He was recently a member of the U.S. Foreign Policy for Clean Energy Taskforce of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He wrote this paper as a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
