Divided as we might be, let's face it: America and much of the world quickly fell in love with C-3PO, the humanoid robot character who appears in every Skywalker "Star Wars" movie as well as in television series, novels, comics, and video games.
C-3PO's designer, Ralph McQuarrie, based his robot on the female robot in the 1927 Fritz Lang movie "Metropolis" — made just seven years after Czech playwright Karel Capek had introduced the world's first robot in his play "R.U.R."
White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar David Sacks is today but one of many who believe that America and much of the world will soon fall in love with actual robots that assist them in chores from folding laundry — as Tesla's Optimus apparently can already do — to taking out the trash, washing dishes, and performing other household chores. Robotic machines already are performing major functions in fields from manufacturing to land mine and bomb removal.
President Donald Trump's appointment of Sacks coincided with his Jan. 23 executive order that commits the U.S. to sustain and enhance American dominance in AI, cryptocurrencies, and robotics "to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security." Sacks and his fellow native South African Elon Musk worked together to found PayPal, and the two visionaries continue to play vital roles in America's technological renaissance.
Sacks is so bullish on AI and robotics that he visualizes these new technologies providing answers to the nation's crushing debt load. AI-powered robots are expected to perform tasks so efficiently that they drive down production costs and massively expand the U.S. economy — in addition to further reducing the drudgery of household chores.
"I don't like America's fiscal picture at all," Sacks said, "but what if the AI and robotics revolution plays out in the most optimistic way over the next decade and is massively deflationary, and we get basically AI-powered robots expanding the economy massively? What if the new technology provides an answer to the fiscal situation that's not currently on the table?"
To be sure, such a scenario also requires huge investments in electric-power generation, whether it be for the grid or as standalone (likely nuclear) units.
To that end, President Trump issued an executive order in April to enhance the reliability and security of America's electric grid. Now the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to reverse the Obama-era "endangerment" finding that carbon dioxide can be regulated as a criteria pollutant — a boon to the U.S. power industry.
For decades, fearmongers drove federal regulations. In prior years, the claim in the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 that AI will displace about 92 million jobs would have been treated as gospel — and used to thwart and demonize AI development.
CNBC quoted Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called godfather of AI, as saying there is a 10% to 20% chance that AI will replace humans completely.
The WEF report further indicates that AI will usher in 170 million new jobs, with the largest growth being in farm workers, construction workers, delivery drivers, salespeople, and food processing workers and the greatest decline among cashiers, ticket clerks, administrative assistants, caretakers, cleaners, and housekeepers — many of which are claimed to be jobs Americans won't do anyway.
BizTech Weekly recently pooh-poohed the idea that AI and robotics will bring about mass unemployment, stating that AI is proving to be less about wholesale job destruction and more about labor-market recomposition — not unlike what happened with railroads, automobiles, and even the Internet.
Unlike the WEF, BizTech says that AI and robotics are creating new demand for prompt engineers, model auditors, and data curators while enhancing the value of coders, researchers, and legal drafting and creating a huge market for reskilling and upskilling, often in partnership with technical colleges.
Like Sacks, Musk is bullish on robotics and predicts that his Optimus robots will be productivity accelerators that may one day remake the entire global economy and lead to a "universal high income" in a world where "no one wants for anything."
While Musk boasted last October that Optimus could become the "biggest product ever of any kind" and that he expected to produce more than a million humanoid Optimus robots a year by 2030, there are reports that severe bottlenecks are slowing down production dramatically, making meeting his goal of 5,000 units this year unlikely.
Sankaet Pathak, whose Foundation is also developing humanoid robots, started out "to build technology that makes life self-sustaining for humans" and sees robots as providing infinite labor, energy, and resources. Pathak expects to increase production from about 40 units this year to 10,000 in 2026.
Rather than replace humans and take their jobs, Pathak says that robotics can encourage a reversal of declining birthrates. The challenge, he says, is to create machines that evolve to navigate and support human spaces and not to subjugate humanity in the service of machines.
Former Pentagon military analyst Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis writes that AI is no longer a niche tool for tech labs or science-fiction thrillers. It is now the battleground where the future of American power, prosperity, and freedom will be decided.
He sees President Trump's AI action plan as "the 21st century equivalent of the space race or the nuclear age."
That's why it is encouraging to see that multiple American companies are competing to make the U.S. the robotics capital of the world.
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst for CFACT (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow) and a former senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He has worked for Barry Goldwater, written for the Washington Free Press and Christian Restoration Ministries, and owned and edited environmental policy newsletters. He is also a poet, music promoter, and Sunday school teacher. Read Duggan Flanakin's reports — More Here.
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