FEAR → ANGER → THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD

Jimmy was listening to Bloomberg Politics.

He always did.

Senator Bernie Sanders was calling on America’s largest AI companies to pause development.

The warning was no longer abstract.

Artificial intelligence had reached what Sanders called a critical threshold.

Systems behaving in ways their creators hadn’t anticipated.

Questions about control.

Questions about safety.

Questions about whether anyone truly understood what they were building.

Sanders wanted the labs to stop.

Others wanted them to go faster.

America was beginning to choose sides.

· · ·

Meanwhile, data centers were becoming political targets across the country.

Texas.

Virginia.

Pennsylvania.

New York.

Electricity.

Water.

Land.

Tax incentives.

Utility bills.

Jobs.

Billions of dollars in planned investment were colliding with communities that increasingly wanted to know what exactly they were getting in return.

The backlash had become bipartisan.

Governors and candidates who once competed to attract data centers were suddenly talking about restrictions, moratoriums, local consent, ratepayer protections, and making Big Tech pay its own way.

The country had spent years asking what artificial intelligence could do.

Now Americans were beginning to ask what artificial intelligence was going to do to them.

Job loss.

Higher electric bills.

Water consumption.

Surveillance.

Automation.

Their children’s futures.

Skynet had escaped science fiction and entered the cultural vocabulary.

Fear was becoming political.

And politics was becoming angry.

· · ·

Jimmy walked into a packed town hall in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.

He could sense the fear before anyone said a word.

He recognized it.

The eyes.

The conversations.

The confusion.

He had seen it before.

· · ·

Jimmy was still in high school when Bethlehem Steel began laying off generations of workers.

People wanted to believe it was temporary.

A downturn.

A pause.

They would be called back.

Jimmy knew a classmate whose father was a union leader and supervisor.

He had to hand men their pink slips.

Men he knew.

Men whose families he knew.

He had gone to their weddings.

Their children’s christenings.

Now he had to tell them they no longer had jobs.

He knew something many of them couldn’t yet accept.

They weren’t coming back.

· · ·

The region argued about why.

Management.

That was a no-brainer to some.

Unions.

Politicians.

Foreign competition.

Cheap imported steel.

Everybody had somebody to blame.

Meanwhile, families waited.

Jimmy watched.

And remembered.

· · ·

Now, more than four decades later, he was surrounded by that same fear in the Lehigh Valley.

Different industry.

Different century.

Same look in people’s eyes.

Jimmy thought:

I know how this story ends unless everyone gets a seat at the table.

Fast.

· · ·

Jimmy’s great-grandfather arrived from Russia around the turn of the twentieth century.

He started in the coal mines of West Virginia.

Eventually, he followed opportunity north to Bethlehem Steel.

Coal.

Steel.

Opportunity.

The American dream.

Bethlehem became one of the great steelmaking centers of the world.

Jimmy’s grandmother told him stories about enormous tractor-trailers moving naval guns across the Hill-to-Hill Bridge.

World War II.

National purpose.

Generations built lives around industries they believed would always be there.

Until they weren’t.

· · ·

“My electric bill went up forty percent!”

A man near the front shouted back.

“My son works construction on that data center!”

Someone else stood.

“My daughter just graduated with a computer-science degree. Tell me what the hell she’s supposed to do when the machine can do her job.”

Another voice.

“You shut this down, China doesn’t!”

The room erupted.

People stood.

Fingers pointed.

Someone shouted about water.

Someone else shouted about taxes.

Another person yelled that the data center would create jobs.

“For how long?”

“Longer than your politicians have!”

People laughed.

Others screamed.

Then somebody shoved somebody.

The first punch came fast.

Chairs moved.

People scattered.

Law enforcement pushed toward the front.

“BACK UP.”

Another shove.

“BACK UP.”

The officers were trying to bring the temperature down.

Jimmy watched their faces.

They lived here too.

Their utility bills went up too.

Their children would inherit whatever came next too.

They had a job to do.

They also had opinions.

They just couldn’t express them while wearing the uniform.

Jimmy remained standing near the back.

Watching.

Fear had become anger.

And anger was looking for somewhere to go.

· · ·

John Steinbeck.

The Grapes of Wrath.

People displaced by economic forces larger than themselves.

Families moving toward opportunity because staying behind meant dying slowly.

Jimmy thought about the song.

Rage Against the Machine.

“The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

Not yet.

America still had time.

· · ·

Outside the room, the political argument was becoming just as vicious.

Some blamed Big Tech.

Greedy coastal elites building infrastructure in communities they didn’t understand.

Some blamed politicians.

Others blamed environmentalists.

Some blamed foreign influence designed to fracture American support for AI development.

Others believed the real foreign threat was simpler.

China wasn’t stopping.

Parents were terrified.

Some had mortgaged homes.

Drained savings.

Borrowed against retirement.

Two hundred thousand dollars to educate a child for a profession that might be transformed before the first student-loan payment was due.

Law.

Accounting.

Software engineering.

Finance.

Medicine.

Consulting.

Design.

Research.

Millions of Americans were learning a phrase that sounded strangely clinical given what it might mean for their lives.

Knowledge workers.

For generations, automation had threatened the factory floor.

Now it was coming upstairs.

· · ·

Jimmy looked around the town hall.

The revolution would be televised.

And streamed.

And clipped.

And algorithmically amplified.

The 2026 midterm elections were weeks away.

AI had become something Washington could no longer contain inside policy papers and committee hearings.

Jobs.

Electricity.

Water.

Data centers.

National security.

The future itself was becoming a ballot-box issue.

Neither party completely controlled the argument anymore.

The anger was moving faster than they were.

· · ·

Jimmy’s heart went out to the people in the room.

But there was another reality he couldn’t ignore.

One that most Americans would never have reason to think about.

Early warning.

· · ·

Jimmy remembered the klaxon.

Strategic Air Command.

Minot Air Force Base.

The 5th Bombardment Wing.

Five nuclear-armed B-52s sitting on alert.

Ground crews moving.

Flight crews running.

Minutes mattered.

Early warning bought decision time.

Decision time preserved options.

Options preserved deterrence.

Jimmy had lived inside a world built around one terrifying assumption:

The other side had to believe America could respond immediately.

Artificial intelligence was becoming part of that equation.

Detection.

Signals.

Cyber.

Space.

Autonomous systems.

Decision advantage.

AI against AI.

Lose the technological edge badly enough and an adversary might eventually believe it could move before America could understand what was happening.

That was how deterrence began to fail.

Jimmy understood the fear inside the town hall.

He also understood something many of the people screaming inside it didn’t.

Others inside the military-industrial complex understood it too.

America couldn’t simply stop.

· · ·

The meeting eventually emptied.

Police remained near the doors.

People continued arguing in the parking lot.

Jimmy stepped outside.

Then stopped.

The aide-de-camp was waiting.

It had been ten years since he first appeared on Jimmy’s deck.

He was still wearing the same black tactical uniform that looked like it was custom ordered from Orvis.

This time he wasn’t alone.

Three black Suburbans sat nearby.

Engines running.

Jimmy looked at them.

Then at him.

Suddenly a voice shouted.

“Jimmy!”

Jimmy turned.

A man was walking toward him.

“Jimmy!”

It took him a second.

“Otter.”

Otter stopped in front of him.

“Jimmy.”

They embraced.

“I can’t believe it’s you.”

Jimmy smiled.

“How are you, brother?”

“Dude. What’s it been?”

“Eighty-five.”

“Forty-one years.”

Otter looked him over.

“Man, you’ve changed. Long hair. Tattoos. What are you, in a rock band?”

Jimmy laughed.

“What the hell are you doing at a town hall meeting in Macungie?”

“Long story.”

“You living in the Valley?”

“Wyoming.”

“Wyoming?”

Jimmy glanced toward Rob.

“Hey, I gotta run.”

He gave Otter his number.

“Text me. Let’s catch up.”

Otter entered it into his phone.

Jimmy’s phone buzzed.

He looked down.

He typed:

“Now I have yours.”

Jimmy looked up from his phone.

“Good seeing you, brother.”

Jimmy turned toward Rob.

Otter stayed where he was.

“Hey, Rob.”

“Jimmy.”

Rob opened the door.

Jimmy stepped inside.

“Director.”

· · ·

Later, on the way home to Wyoming, Jimmy looked at Otter’s text again.

He typed:

Brother. It’s been a long time.

Send.

· · ·

Sunday dinner was already underway when Jimmy arrived home.

Iman and Dakota had been cooking.

Three generations under one roof.

One day a week.

No excuses.

Dakota handed him a glass of Mercury Head.

“We’re having roast.”

“Perfect.”

· · ·

Jimmy looked around the room.

Ten years ago, Dakota had placed both hands against her belly while he stood outside holding a satellite phone.

Now they had a family.

Twins.

A boy and a girl.

Outside their home, America was wrestling with its future.

Inside, Jimmy was looking at his.

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