AI: America’s Newest Savior. Or, Is It?

AI: America’s Newest Savior. Or, Is It?

J. Matson Heininger

Somewhere in America, an executive is on a stage unveiling the future. Behind him, a gleaming electric car rotates under perfect lighting. The screens show swooping animations, the crowd murmurs in admiration, the financial press types the usual adjectives: “revolutionary,” “transformative,” “game‑changing.”

There is only one problem. The car has no battery. It will never move an inch under its own power. It can be photographed, worshipped, hyped, and securitized. It just can’t go anywhere.

That is exactly what the United States is doing with artificial intelligence.

We are pouring fortunes into the shell of a technological future while the real source of power—our infrastructure and our people—is corroded, underfunded, and intellectually exhausted.

We are trying to bolt a glittering top floor onto a building whose foundations are already failing, and we are congratulating ourselves on the view. You can’t build the top when the bottom is rotten.

In this metaphor, the “battery” isn’t a block of lithium under the floorpan. The battery is everything we have systematically neglected for the last twenty years: the physical infrastructure and the general quality and competence of our citizens.

Our roads are potholed and crumbling. Our bridges are crumbling, patched and posted, many quietly unsafe. Our water systems and grids look more like artifacts from a previous civilization than the backbone of a leading one. We pass emergency spending bills to keep the lights on, then call it “investment.”

At the same time, we have turned education into a debt‑financed sorting mechanism instead of a public good. We’ve spent two decades distracting children, hollowing out curricula, and training entire cohorts to consume glowing rectangles instead of reality.

The result is a population that is, quite visibly, falling behind every month and every year—less numerate, less literate, less capable of concentration, less capable of distinguishing truth from spectacle.

That curve is not steady.

It is rising.

Decay compounds, just like interest.

Every year of neglect produces a citizenry a little less able to repair what was left undone the year before.

Into this landscape we introduce AI… The Savior.. tech will save us. No it won’t, And China will do it better anyway.

But ask a simpler question: what, exactly, does this AI sit on top of?

We have offshored our manufacturing. We have dispersed and weakened our supply chains. We have allowed our rail, port, and logistics systems to age. We have treated the trades as an embarrassment. We have trained a generation to type on glass and live in debt.

We are not a country overflowing with strong foundations looking for clever tools. We are a country whose foundations are cracked, whose tools are rusted, and whose elites believe that if the software is shiny enough, the concrete will magically pour itself.

AI, in this context, is not a lever; it is wallpaper. It generates images, text, and valuations. It offers endless distraction and a new vocabulary of buzzwords.

But it cannot substitute for bridges, transformers, machinists, welders, nurses, lineworkers, plumbers, or teachers. It cannot keep the lights on when the grid fails or the pipes burst. It cannot rebuild a country that no longer knows how to do basic things.

We are building an electric car without a battery and convincing ourselves that if the entertainment system is sophisticated enough, no one will notice there is no power.

Now compare this to China and parts of Asia.

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