In a rare display of bipartisan force, President Trump, Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, and Republican Senator Dave McCormick gathered this week at Carnegie Mellon University to announce a new industrial revolution for Pennsylvania. Flanked by CEOs from Amazon, Google, and Blackstone, they unveiled a staggering $90 billion in private investments aimed at transforming the state into a global leader in artificial intelligence and energy production.

The vision is grand: old power plants resurrected, new data centers built, and tens of thousands of high-skilled jobs created. But as the state’s political and corporate elite celebrated this “unified front,” a different set of voices—professors, students, and community advocates—warned of the immense, uncounted costs. This moment is more than an economic announcement; it is a profound test of our 21st-century governance and whether our constitutional system can balance the promise of massive, top-down development with the rights and welfare of the communities on the ground.

A “Unified Front” for a New Revolution

The vision presented at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit was one of boundless optimism. President Trump declared that the state is “reclaiming its industrial heritage” and taking its place at the “forefront of the AI technological revolution.”

Governor Shapiro echoed this, stating that “Pennsylvania is on the rise,” while Senator McCormick stressed that a “unified front, at the local level, at the state level, at the national level – that’s the only way to win.”

The scale of the investments is monumental. A $15 billion project will resurrect the former Homer City Generating Station into a massive natural gas-fired power plant. Google will invest billions to revitalize hydropower facilities. The goal is to leverage Pennsylvania’s energy resources to power the immense and growing electricity demands of AI data centers.

The Uncounted Costs and Unheard Voices

Outside the summit, however, a different narrative took hold. Critics from within the Carnegie Mellon community argued that the event deliberately excluded experts on the environmental and social impacts of such large-scale development. They pointed to the immense strain that data centers and new power plants will place on the region’s energy grid and fresh water supplies.

“All these experts who are trying to solve an imminent global crisis… are not really part of this summit,” said Carrie McDonough, a CMU environmental chemist.

This raises a fundamental question of democratic representation. When a state’s future is being planned by a “unified front” of its most powerful political and corporate leaders, who is left to speak for the communities that will bear the environmental burden? This is the central tension: the promise of massive wealth versus the potential for “harm to the communities,” as one student activist put it.

The Constitutional Framework for an Industrial Revolution

A $90 billion plan like this does not happen in a vacuum; it must navigate a complex constitutional landscape that was designed to balance federal power, state authority, and individual rights.

• Federalism and the Commerce Clause: While this is a state-focused initiative, massive energy and data infrastructure projects inevitably cross state lines and fall under federal jurisdiction. These projects will require federal permits under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, governed by Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. This sets the stage for future conflicts between the state’s desire for “expedited approval” and the federal government’s duty to enforce national environmental standards.
• The Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause: The path to this new future will likely run through private property. Building new power plants, data centers, and the transmission lines needed to connect them often requires the use of eminent domain. The Fifth Amendment allows the government to take private property for “public use,” but only with “just compensation.” As these projects move forward, legal battles over what constitutes “public use”—a corporate data center?—and what constitutes “just compensation” are almost certain to arise.

The promises made in a university auditorium are easy. Fulfilling them requires navigating a complex web of constitutional law that was designed precisely to protect the environment and the rights of individuals from being overrun by powerful corporate and governmental interests.

The true test of this new industrial revolution will not be whether a “unified front” can announce big deals, but whether our constitutional system is robust enough to manage the consequences for the citizens who were not invited to the summit.