In steel country, Silicon Valley's Ro Khanna pitches AI safeguards and a federal jobs program

A potential 2028 presidential contender launched a Rust Belt tour in Pittsburgh on Thursday to pitch his vision for a massive, New Deal-style expansion of the federal workforce.

To counter the coming social upheaval caused by the spread of artificial intelligence into a growing number of industries, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna said the government should gear up to hire 1 million people as part of a broader reordering of the American economy.

A Bucks County native, Khanna now represents a portion of Silicon Valley that is home to many of the tech giants that are driving the rapid growth of the AI sector - and creating a growing class of ultra-wealthy individuals.

Khanna has pushed in recent months for a 5% tax on billionaires' net worth to pay for the government programs at the core of his economic plans.

You could raise $4 trillion. You could have universal childcare in this country," Khanna told the Post-Gazette in an interview before kicking off his "Heartland Tour."

"You could have teachers paid at a $60,000 starting salary everywhere. You could have free public college," Khanna said.

The plan would also set up 1,000 new trade schools and tech institutes across the country to train people for the jobs that AI isn't replacing.

"I've gotten to live the American dream because I went to public school and got a fancy higher education, went out to Silicon Valley and have seen the future," he said. "But I don't want it to work just for people in Silicon Valley. It's got to work for the country."

To protect sectors of the economy that employ millions of people, he said the government should set limits on where AI-powered technology can be deployed - including some technologies that are being tested in Western Pennsylvania, like fully autonomous semitrucks.

"I am not for driverless trucks," he said. "That would be 4 million people out of work. I came on a plane from D.C., and I'm glad we have a pilot. I think we should have regulations on important jobs and make sure that AI is not just displacing large numbers of workers in a mass way and that AI is actually used to improve their safety."

Khanna said his tour - which included four stops in Western Pennsylvania before he moves onto Ohio and Michigan - was because of his role as the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the U.S. and China.

But the representative hasn't ruled out a potential White House run in two years, and the trip included meetings with influential union leaders and manufacturers, including United Steelworkers President Roxanne Brown at the group's Downtown headquarters.

In Leetsdale, Khanna - alongside U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Fox Chapel - met with senior managers at the historic Bethlehem Steel factory, where BCI Steel and Nextpower are manufacturing key components of the country's growing solar energy industry.

At the plant, enormous steel coils are shaped into long tubes to be used for solar trackers, the devices that move solar panels throughout the day so they stay aligned with the sun.

Beginning in January, the factory began using a large robotic arm to lift the steel tubes, inspect them for flaws, and empty them of material left inside from an automatic drilling process.

Despite longstanding fears of mechanization leading to more lost jobs, workers at the plant - which employs about 60 people - say the automation has aided, rather than replaced, their work.

"Technology takes away, but it also gives," said Ray Hormel, quality director at the plant.

Tim Rocky, senior steel sourcing manager at Nextpower, a global energy technology provider based in California, which operates out of the Leetsdale facility, said it is already using AI to coordinate shipping and operations at more than 100 of the company's plants and project sites scattered around the world.

"It's a logistics nightmare and a modeling nightmare, so we're using AI," he said. "It's definitely leading us to some efficiencies and leading us to speed up."

In Koppel, Khanna and Deluzio visited Tenaris, where scrap metal is melted down in a 3,000-degree electric-arc furnace and made into steel bars.

The process of loading the furnace is done entirely by robots - work that had previously been done by people, often leaving their gloves smoking from the heat when they were finished, said John Vasquez, senior director of steelmaking at the plant.

For Vazquez, Khanna's plan to create more trade schools could help solve the long-running problem of filling the manual jobs that remain.

"We struggle with finding qualified labor, especially electricians and mechanics, so for sure, any legislation or political drive to promote trade schools would benefit us immensely," Vasquez said.

As artificial intelligence-powered automation encroaches further into the manual jobs that remain in manufacturing, Khanna told the Post-Gazette that it's vital for the federal government to step in with a sweeping jobs program larger than anything seen since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to combat the Great Depression.

They can create new parks. They can clean up a toxic site. They can help as a teacher's assistant, help with mental health counseling," Khanna said. "It's this opportunity to build economic security for communities that haven't had it."

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