This is All-In's joint interview with Pennsylvania's two senators — Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Dave McCormick. Both come from rural Pennsylvania with similar backgrounds (one went into politics, the other into the military via West Point), and they now deliberately model cross-party cooperation: reaching a great deal of bipartisan legislation on energy, the fentanyl crisis, antisemitism, drone technology, and more. They stress that Pennsylvania is a 'microcosm of the nation' (the two big Democratic cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh + vast Republican countryside), and winning elections depends on a cross-camp 'coalition of working families' — the blue-collar union rank-and-file, Latinos, and Black voters (whose 2024 turnout hit a 30-year high).

AI and data centers are the centerpiece of the whole session. McCormick describes the Energy and Innovation Summit he hosted last year, which catalyzed $92 billion in investment, with the president, cabinet, Governor Shapiro, and Fetterman all attending; since then a wave of investment has poured into Pennsylvania, such as Homer City converting a 4.4GW coal plant to natural gas, of which 3.4GW supplies a data-center campus and 1GW feeds back to the grid to lower electricity prices. He tallies it up: data centers bring four kinds of economic activity — thousands of jobs during construction, operational jobs, hardware-upgrade jobs every 3-4 years, and the supporting energy; plus restaurants, hotels, and logistics (the trucking association estimates each data-center job corresponds to about 2 logistics jobs). Chamath/Jason sum this up as a 'blue-collar boom' — essentially a construction wave, with construction-worker wages up 25-30%, and skilled welders and electricians being Pennsylvania's 'most stable jobs,' earning over $100,000 yet still short of workers; meanwhile manufacturing like a new US Steel plant, a new Eli Lilly plant, and the Philadelphia shipyard is also being pulled along by data-center and energy projects.

On AI, Fetterman clearly breaks with his own party: he says his party's push for a 'data-center moratorium' is, in his view, 'a China-first policy,' and describing AI as a scourge or cancer is lying; AI will remake the world, and 'the chassis is either built by us or built by China — which side are you on?' He also points out that much of the opposition is being pushed by money linked to the CCP. McCormick adds that resistance to data centers comes partly from 'disinformation by China and outside forces' and partly from communities' real concerns about energy prices, water use, and school and road congestion, and the solution is to spell out the 'compact' — closed-loop water use, tax-base contributions, building schools and infrastructure; and he draws the shale-gas analogy: back then environmental groups strongly opposed it over 'methane polluting water supplies,' and 15 years later about 80% of Pennsylvanians support fracking, because they saw the real jobs and royalty payments.

The host repeatedly presses sharp questions: Congress's approval rating at record lows, $40 trillion of debt, and bottom-tier Americans under a K-shaped economy deeply dissatisfied with both parties. Both concede that wealth concentration is a 'rapidly growing, enormous problem' — Pennsylvania's median income is only $52,000, and ordinary people were once promised something by 'globalization,' only to see the 2,000-worker factory in their hometown shrink to 100. Fetterman advocates mechanisms like 'Invest America accounts' and 'education choice (each person can donate $1,700 a year)' to bypass government and, through incentives and choice, give opportunity to the next generation (which he calls a 'modern-day Carnegie'); Freeberg offers a more free-market view — the less government intervenes, the cheaper things get and the greater the mobility.

On politics, Fetterman bluntly says his party is hijacked by 'Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS)' — 'if Trump came out for ice cream and lazy Sundays, we'd all be against it'; he defends the filibuster (admitting the whole party's 2020 wish to abolish it was a 'big mistake,' and thanking Manchin/Sinema for holding the line then), defends capitalism, supports Israel, and criticizes the far left's socialist and antisemitic leanings, refusing to change his stance even if it means a primary challenge (he says he votes 93% with the party, but 'a seat isn't worth keeping by lying'). McCormick, as an 'unabashed conservative,' also stresses that both parties have problems, but that the left's slide toward socialism and antisemitism is 'frightening,' and believes a strong, rational opposition party is needed for mutual checks. The ending touches on the flood of political money — the two campaigns each spent about $300-500 million, 'using $300 million to destroy each other's reputations,' and both agree that to some degree money should be squeezed out of politics.

(The value of this episode for AI investors: from the angle of policy and front-line jobs, it helps you understand why the data-center construction wave is a genuine economic engine, and where the political resistance surrounding it comes from.)