Artificial intelligence could become a powerful engine for American economic growth, but concentrating its infrastructure and development among a handful of dominant technology companies poses risks that extend beyond ordinary questions of market competition. Patmos CEO John Johnson argues that decentralized AI infrastructure would distribute both economic opportunity and technological power beyond Silicon Valley, while warning that AI’s growing ability to convincingly imitate human beings could create “counterfeit” people capable of influencing, deceiving, or manipulating the public. His concern places human agency at the center of the AI debate: the danger is less that machines independently seize control than that powerful institutions use increasingly humanlike machines to expand their influence over society.
Key Takeaways
- Johnson argues that America’s larger long-term AI vulnerability may be the concentration of technological power inside the United States rather than simply competition with China, calling for AI infrastructure to be distributed across more companies, regions, and communities.
- AI systems capable of convincingly imitating human behavior introduce another dimension of risk: synthetic personalities can potentially be used for impersonation, persuasion, fraud, and manipulation. Reported U.S. losses from imposter scams reached $3.5 billion in 2025, illustrating the existing scale of identity-based deception even before more sophisticated AI impersonation becomes ubiquitous.
- Decentralizing AI infrastructure could spread investment and technical capacity beyond established technology centers, but communities hosting data centers must also confront electricity, water, land-use, grid, and public-service demands associated with those facilities.
In-Depth
Artificial intelligence is becoming infrastructure, not merely software, and that shift raises an American question in a new technological form: who holds the power? Patmos CEO John Johnson argues that concentrating AI development among a small circle of Silicon Valley firms risks giving private technocrats extraordinary influence over information, commerce and human interaction.
His warning about “counterfeit” humans points to AI’s convincing ability to imitate speech, personality and behavior. The immediate danger is not necessarily a machine developing independent ambitions. It is people using machines to impersonate, persuade, manipulate or deceive other people at unprecedented scale. Federal fraud data already show the financial damage caused by impersonation schemes, underscoring why increasingly realistic synthetic identities deserve serious scrutiny.
Johnson’s proposed answer is decentralization. Rather than allowing computing capacity, models and expertise to remain concentrated geographically and corporately, he favors expanding AI infrastructure throughout the country. That approach could broaden competition while directing investment, jobs and technological capacity toward communities far beyond established coastal technology centers.
There are tradeoffs. Data centers require substantial electricity, water, land and grid capacity, and communities increasingly demand transparency about who receives the economic benefits and who bears the costs. Decentralization therefore cannot simply mean scattering server farms across America.
The larger principle is sound: transformative technology is safer in a competitive environment where power is dispersed, alternatives remain available and citizens retain choices. America’s challenge is not to stop AI development, but to prevent technological progress from quietly becoming technological dependency controlled by too few institutions.
Sources
- https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/06/ftc-data-show-people-reported-losing-3-point-5-billion-imposter-scams-2025
- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/three-principles-for-growing-an-ai-ecosystem-that-works-for-people-and-planet/
- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/local-implications-data-centers-rural-communities-us/
- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/turning-the-data-center-boom-into-long-term-local-prosperity/