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Skynet Is Government Control of AI: Jim Pfaff on Bobby Gunther Walsh | Sep 21, 2026

Published: September 21, 2026
Network: WAEB Allentown
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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The host opened the September 21 segment on WAEB Allentown planning to cover AI first and a separate issue after. AI took the whole segment. Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff argued one point from several directions: the danger is not the machines, it is government control of AI. He walked through the timing of the new AI scare, the business motive behind the frontier companies’ calls for regulation, the open source models that compete with them, and the equipment The Conservative Caucus has just bought to run its own. The host pushed back on the Wild West, on product liability, and on why ordinary people are frightened — and added a comparison of his own about Iran.

Topics Covered

• The Timing: A Scare That Followed the Midterm Convention
• Skynet Is Government Control of AI
• Open Source Models With No Telemetry
• Who Is Pushing Regulation, and the All-In Converts
• The Wild West, Product Liability, and Self-Government
• More Worried About AI Than Iran
• Key Takeaways

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The Timing: A Scare That Followed the Midterm Convention

Pfaff’s first instruction was to watch the calendar. A lot of people, he said, point to polls showing 80% of Americans are concerned about AI and data centers and conclude it is too risky to go against them. His answer: as with any issue, look at who is doing what and why.

He started with data centers. Anyone on the internet or watching a video on YouTube is working on a data center all day, every day. It is not new technology, and where to put one is a question to adjudicate with local governments. But data centers, he said, are not a risk to you. Then came the next wave, and he tied it to the Republican calendar.

“We have a pretty successful GOP midterm convention with Donald Trump, and immediately, actually a little bit during, but immediately after that, all of a sudden we’re gonna all die in 10 years because AI is gonna kill us.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

His reading of that timing is political. Democrats, he said, could lose an election if they cannot find an issue that takes away all the positive information Republicans can talk about since the Trump administration came back into power on January 20, 2025. The host was less sure Democrats needed a new issue — gas prices and home heating oil are coming, he said, and will be a problem for Trump — but he agreed that once government gets involved, we have a problem.

Skynet Is Government Control of AI

Pfaff’s line on the doomsday talk is that we are not in the middle of the Terminator movie. In the film, Skynet was the AIs getting together to destroy humanity. If there is ever a Skynet, he said, it will not be AIs getting together in some private fashion and taking us over.

“Skynet’s gonna be government regulating it.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He repeated it a minute later — Skynet’s government — and called the idea of an AI getting so smart it takes you over one of the greatest falsehoods out there right now. What government control of AI looks like, in his telling, is specific: regulation that cuts him off from doing things, and censorship run through government.

“What we have to be worried about is government capture, government control. And if government starts regulating AI, they’re going to start using it to censor you again. If you thought it was bad in the Biden administration, just go 10x, 100x that in terms of the control over your life.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The word “again” carries the argument. He treats the Biden years as the baseline and multiplies it, and said it would be really remarkable and scary if government ever gets that control with Democrats in charge. TCC has covered the same argument in AI doomerism and who really wants control. He also rejected the jobs scare as another big lie that has totally not come true: AI is building employment, in the data center buildup, in the tools themselves, and in the companies that use them.

Open Source Models With No Telemetry

Pfaff is not arguing from the outside. He said he works with AI deeply every day, and that he and his chief technology officer have built processes at The Conservative Caucus for elections and social media.

“AI is one of the most wonderful tools that there ever was that will allow organizations like ours trying to do good things to overcome those who are trying to do bad things. It’s working for us.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

That experience grounds his claim about motive. The companies calling for rules, he said, want regulatory capture because they face massive competition from open source AI models — and not all of those come out of China; a whole lot come out of the United States. Google and Facebook are releasing open source models with no telemetry and no connection back to their companies. You can run them locally. That competes with the frontier models — Anthropic, which has Claude, and OpenAI, which has ChatGPT — and he said they do not want that competition because it might mess up their current revenue model. Regulatory capture, on this account, is a business strategy for them.

This, he said, is why Donald Trump is pushing against the doomerism, and he is right to do so. Trump has key players in the industry backing him, including some who seem to be on the left, because they know what good this will do for the country.

Who Is Pushing Regulation, and the All-In Converts

Pfaff was blunt about who is pushing for government control of AI.

“And the Democrat Party is an evil party. It used to be just the left side of the ledger compared to the right side Republicans in the ledger. It’s not that anymore.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

What it is now, he said, is the difference between the American approach and the non-American communist socialist approach. The people pushing this regulation are, by and large, on that leftist side of the ledger. The host came at it through trust: for everyone who wants government to regulate AI because they do not trust big business, why did they trust Big Pharma? He called the hypocrisy glaring and said he would trust someone doing AI more than someone in Big Pharma.

Pfaff agreed and pointed to the All-In podcast. David Sacks, he said, has been a conservative and a Republican for a long time. Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg were giving to Democrats, then figured out Democrats are trying to destroy this country, not help it, and mostly came to Trump’s side on this — though, he noted, Jason Calacanis is still not a Trump supporter. Every one of them is a billionaire from investing in technology companies. What Democrats tried to build around COVID, he said, is breaking down.

The Wild West, Product Liability, and Self-Government

The host asked how you regulate it without it becoming the Wild West. Pfaff said everyone calls the uncontrolled free market the Wild West — and that is the kind of Wild West we want. In a John Wayne movie, he said, the Wild West produces a lot more justice than injustice. There will always be injustice; that is the human condition.

“The question is, do you want government to be the mitigator of justice, or do you want citizens to be the mitigators of justice under properly organized structures that just adjudicate when people have done right and wrong, not telling people how they ought to determine what right and wrong is?”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Going to court when a wrong is done, he said, is the free market liberty system our Constitution put together. Asked what that means in practice, he answered with Anthropic. Its CEO, Dario Amodei, is saying this will get out of control and government needs to regulate it — and, Pfaff said, is calling for an internationalist body like the World Health Organization to do it.

“My question is to him, if you have such problems with your models, then don’t release it. Stop putting it out there.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

His charge is that the frontier companies want to avoid product liability. Every product, from an automobile to a toaster, works this way: companies are liable when they purposefully put out something harmful. He cited what he described as the recent Facebook settlement, $17 billion paid to people harmed because the company did not pay attention to whether a young lady in her teens could be manipulated online, and kept going because the money was flowing in. If you do something wrong, he said, you pay a price.

After the call briefly broke up, the host pressed. Be careful, he warned: say a company that knowingly makes a harmful product is liable, and they will go after the gun manufacturers. What about people regulating themselves, and parents watching their kids? Pfaff said all of it — the user of a product and the producer — comes down to being responsible for themselves.

“At the heart of all this is, are we going to be a society that is self-governed, or are we going to be a society that’s governed by a government institution that’s going to decide who gets to do what and when and how.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Every person who starts a company takes a risk. Risks are best mitigated, he said, when the free market works: fail and you pay the price; do something very well and you reap the benefits. When government decides who fails and who benefits, you have high inefficiencies and, frankly, no liberty. That is what he sees at stake in government control of AI.

More Worried About AI Than Iran

The host’s last challenge was the ordinary listener. People are still leery. The average person is easily scared by what he does not understand — the host said he does not understand it himself — and there is the noise and the water with data centers. Someone will say prove it.

Pfaff said he can prove it: they are doing it right now, and data centers for AI are no different from the ones already all over the country. He pointed to the claim that AI has a 10% chance of killing all humans by 2030 and called it absurd. Even atomic bombs, he said, would not destroy the whole world, though they would cause major harm.

“Isn’t it interesting? People are more worried about AI than Iran with a nuclear weapon.”
— Host, WAEB Allentown

Pfaff agreed. Mitigate harms by defining them properly and looking at what is actually happening. Nuclear weapons are a deterrent no one has wanted to use — a much worse scenario than anything AI could be. AI, he said, is helping build wealth all over the country and creating jobs, a greater net benefit in productivity than even the World Wide Web. His closing challenge to conservatives who still doubt him: tell him why The Conservative Caucus should stop using AI to get good people elected and good information out, just because radical leftists in politics and far-left-of-center CEOs want it slowed down.

“I don’t want to slow down. We’re having incredible effectiveness with this.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Key Takeaways

1. Skynet is government – Pfaff said any Skynet will be government regulating AI, not AIs banding together, and that government control of AI would be used to censor Americans again — 10x or 100x the Biden administration.
2. Watch the timing – The doomsday talk ramped up during and right after a successful GOP midterm convention, which Pfaff tied to Democrats needing an issue to drown out the good news since January 20, 2025.
3. Regulatory capture against open source – Pfaff said Anthropic and OpenAI want regulation because Google and Facebook release open source models with no telemetry that anyone can run locally.
4. TCC is building local AI – He has just bought equipment to work voter data, donor data, and research on local AI on the organization’s own server, and says small and medium-sized businesses can do the same.
5. Liability, not regulators – His answer to Dario Amodei’s call for a World Health Organization-style body: if your models are dangerous, don’t release them. The host warned the same logic reaches gun manufacturers.
6. Self-government is the stake – When government decides who fails and who benefits, Pfaff said, you get high inefficiencies and no liberty.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Sep 21, 2026 on Bobby Gunther Walsh, WAEB Allentown.