Sen. Dave McCormick: Pennsylvania’s Potential to Pioneer the AI Revolution

The role of technology in America’s future has been a passionate subject for U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, who has written a book about it and has been advocating for Pennsylvania to be at the forefront of the growing tech industry.

Appearing at Lehigh University on Wednesday night as part of the Compelling Perspectives series, the first-term senator discussed the future of artificial intelligence and what it means for the the state and nation.

After a brief introduction by Lehigh President Joseph Helble, who mentioned McCormick’s time as a wrestler for the U.S. Military Academy, the former hedge fund CEO talked about technology advocacy in his book “Superpower in Peril: A Battleplan to Renew America,” and how it translates to his current views.

“It was based on my belief that we were going astray, that we needed a sort of focus on the building blocks of leadership in the world,” said McCormick, R-Pa. ”One was the belief that this was an existential competition with China, and a battle that we had to win in terms of leadership in the world. The building blocks of our success are in our hands.

“And the second key theme was that we didn’t really have a plan.”

Coming up with that plan has been a part of McCormick’s goals ever since.

Here are five takeaways from the nearly hour-long discussion with Helble before a large audience in the auditorium at Packard Lab:

The U.S. is engaged in a contest for three key things

McCormick said that if the U.S. is to stay ahead of China, it must have supremacy in talent, technology and data.

Talent must be organically developed, and McCormick said he’s worried about the secondary school system.

“They aren’t creating people who are equipped to deal with this moment,” saying he’s in favor of school choice. “It starts with the seed corn. Our public schools are failing us. I’m a public school kid and I’m the son of public school teachers, but we have to do something fundamentally and change the model.”

McCormick is also in favor of being the world’s talent magnet and attracting international students to learn and stay.

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U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., discusses the government’s role in supporting artificial intelligence and innovation with Lehigh University President Joseph J. Helble on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025, during Lehigh University’s Compelling Perspectives program at the school’s Packard Laboratory Room in Bethlehem. (April Gamiz/The Morning Call)

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“We need to make sure that there’s funding to support the growing number of scientists,” he said. “For those folks that come, we need to get them the opportunity to stay and build the next generation of great companies.”

Together, they develop technology, which is the foundation of everything: AI, life sciences, next-gen manufacturing and military capability. He stressed the need for the U.S. to remain the technology leader.

As for data, it’s the new strategic currency; McCormick likened it to what oil was for geopolitics. He said the U.S. must develop a data strategy that balances the strategic need for data to fuel AI with the American principles of privacy and personal control.

Promoting Pennsylvania

Perhaps the highlight of McCormick’s first year as a senator was the July 15 Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh that included announcements of several energy investments in Pennsylvania worth $52 billion and an additional $40 billion for data centers.

He said that the state is a natural home for innovation.

“I think our state is uniquely blessed, honestly, relative to the rest of the country, for this moment,” McCormick said. “If a Martian landed in America and could pick any state in the country to be the AI energy mecca, I think it’d be Pennsylvania. The reason for that is we’re the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world.

“We have a huge pool of building trades and skilled workmen, welders, pipe fitters, steam fitters, electricians, and you need that to build all this energy infrastructure.”

He added that the number of universities — including Lehigh, Carnegie Mellon, Penn and Penn State — along with the state’s location near the Atlantic Ocean and within 500 miles of 60% of the U.S. population also are advantages.

The role of higher education

McCormick said that universities will be a critical part of the country staying competitive in the future as they are a nucleus of innovation, conducting research and fueling the entrepreneurial spirit.

However, he said many elite universities have lost the confidence of the American public. Some solutions would be price transparency about tuition, ensuring that tax breaks for large endowments benefit the public, and avoiding politicized research.

A concern was raised about cuts in basic research funding for the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. The latter is facing a more than 50% cut in funding.

McCormick said he’s in favor of increased funding for those agencies, noting that current research and development funding as a percent of the gross domestic product is at an all-time low compared to 1950.

Responsible development

McCormick admitted that there is a balance between the need for open-ended innovation that doesn’t have burdensome government regulations and the need for ethical guidelines and frameworks.

He brought up “The Terminator” film franchise that he watched as a teenager in the 1980s and how robots are increasingly being used by militaries around the world.

“I remember watching that movie and thinking, that’s ridiculous, right?” McCormick said. “It doesn’t sound so ridiculous. I met with the commanding general of the U.S. Army forces in Europe, and we talked about what’s happening in Ukraine. The battlefield in Ukraine with swarms of drones, with robots on the battlefield.”

Audience questions

There was time for a handful of questions from the audience at the end of the discussion. One person wanted to know if building data centers is something people in Pennsylvania really want.

McCormick said it’s an economic growth engine and that voters in the 2024 election who elected him want this.

“I do think that people have spoken and elected people who want to do this because they think it’s right for Pennsylvania, but every community’s going to get a chance to weigh in,” he said.

Another asked about an AI bubble and whether consumers would get stuck with higher energy bills.

McCormick said data centers will bring positive economic growth, but there would be increased energy capacity and they take some of the costs from the grid “that should lower prices in the medium term.”

On the topic of international talent, a student wondered how McCormick is working to make the topic of work visas less politicized.

“People believed that there was kind of an existential problem with fentanyl and all the things that were happening from the open border,” McCormick said. “I think there’s hopefully a moment where we can begin to think comprehensively about legal immigration and how to make it more effective. There’s no doubt there’s a lot of dividing views on this. So I’ve sort of staked out my ground at a high level, and now I’m trying to figure out how to participate in this in a way that makes a difference.”

Morning Call reporter Evan Jones can be reached at ejones@mcall.com.