By Patti Johnson - August 2, 2025

The Patriot Act was pushed through speedily after 911 because everybody was frightened of terrorists. People gave up their privacy for the sake of safety. When Covid arrived, people were again frightened. Operation Warp Speed with the Covid shot was fast-tracked without the usual safety studies “in order to save the millions of lives that were predicted to die from Covid 19.”

Recently the same fear tactics and fast-tracking have been used to push through several initiatives to build huge AI data centers and expand data collection and tracking. On July 4th to celebrate the freedom of our country President Trump signed “The Big Beautiful Bill” and “The Genius Act” was singed on July 18th. July 23rd President Trump signed an Executive Order called “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure.” August 31st President Trump announced his latest initiative, “Making Health Technology Great Again” (July 23, 2025)

When I observe the fast tracking of legislation, I want to investigate the reasons for the rush. There are two old adages: “haste makes waste” and “before you take down a fence find out why the fence was put up in the first place.” These are sound words of wisdom we should live by. Have we not learned from the recent past? The Operation Warp Speed COVID mRNA shot was rushed through development without adequate safety studies and ended up killing people instead of saving them. The Patriot Act was rushed through out of fear after 911. We ended up trading our right to privacy for protection. My gut reaction to fast tracked legislation is, “Wait a minute, slow down.” We need to learn from past mistakes before we create another solution that causes more harm than good. Another platitude also applies, “Sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) accelerated the building of massive AI data centers. The BBB originally had a clause with a . . .

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