Pittsburgh is poised to be at the heart of America’s second Industrial Revolution

PITTSBURGH — It was the site of America’s first industrial revolution. Now it’s prepared to usher in a second one, when the country’s leaders in innovation, technology, energy and artificial intelligence meet at Carnegie Mellon University on Tuesday for the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit.

President Donald Trump, in an interview with me ahead of the summit, said the event is going to “open the eyes of a lot of people of what is about to be unleashed in Pennsylvania.”

Senator David McCormick, the Pittsburgh Republican who assembled the July 15 event, said the energy and AI summit will feature Trump, several cabinet members, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, big Tech leaders from OpenAI and Meta as well as energy leaders from all over the country, including the natural gas powerhouse EQT’s Toby Rice.

“And what is about to happen here in Pennsylvania, with the technology experts from our universities, the natural resources, the ability to turn around long dormant industrial communities and our unparrelled workforce is a game changer,” McCormick said.

He compares the moment to 1859, when Edwin Drake became the first American to successfully drill for oil. Drake’s Well, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, ushered in an energy revolution.

Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie was an early investor in this oil boom, which he then used to build the largest steel company in the world in western Pennsylvania. Carnegie became one of the richest men in American history, and donated most of it — including to the Pittsburgh research university that bears his name.

“People will quickly see we are on the brink of America’s next industrial revolution, just in the same way Pennsylvania led the first one when Drake’s oil was discovered,” McCormick said.

“We are at that moment right now, thanks to the technology that comes from [Carnegie Mellon] and the hubs of companies that surround it, as well as our incredible work force to build these AI data power centers, and the tradesmen and women who will supply the energy needed for them,” he said. 

Darrin Kelly, the President of the Allegheny-Fayette Labor Council, said if the investments in projects all line up, his men and women will be ready to go. “We have the best workforce in the world and no matter what it is, we’ll shine when the time comes.”

The event comes on the heels of a boom in the labor force in Pennsylvania that kicked off last month when Trump announced the partnership and $11 billion investment from Japanese-owned Nippon Steel. That investment not only kept the American steelmaker in the U.S., but also protected more than 100,000 jobs through investments in steelmaking in Pennsylvania as well as in other plants in Indiana, Arkansas, Minnesota and Alabama.

That announcement was quickly followed by Amazon pledging $20 billion in Pennsylvania for AI infrastructure. 

Shapiro told me that the investment will establish multiple high tech cloud computing and AI innovation campuses across the Commonwealth, “It will create thousands of new jobs that will build, operate and maintain the first two data center campuses in Luzerne and Bucks counties,” he said, adding, “look for more investment soon.”

Western Pennsylvania sits in the sweet spot for the growth and development of the AI boom; both the University of Pittsburgh and CMU are heralded for attracting and training some of the brightest minds in the country when it comes to engineering, research and artificial intelligence.

Western Pennsylvania has had its troubles. After the end of the steel boom, the area decayed, unemployment was rampant — still-vacant coal fired power plants, steel mills and manufacturing plants stand as ghostly sentinels of an era that has long vanished.

But things started to turn around about 15 years with a natural-gas boom and oil fracking technology. McCormick says between the access to massive amounts of energy, both natural gas, nuclear as well as coal that will turn things around in a way no one has seen for generations.

In April, in Homer City, the stacks of a former coal fired power plant were imploded, and the site is being redeveloped into a $10 billion AI and data center.

In the two years since the Homer City coal fire plant had been closed down, the tiny western Pennsylvania village had already started to show signs of depression — but the new investment changed everything.

McCormick said this isn’t just about the potential tens of thousands of construction jobs to build these AI data centers. “These jobs will also include chemists, scientists, engineers, AI experts, physicists,” he said.

McCormick said people have asked him why Pittsburgh?

His answer: “The energy production is incredible, it is the number two energy producer in the country which is the first necessary step to power the AI revolution and to really power the energy revolution. We have incredible skilled labor, with the welders, steam fitters, pipe fitters, construction workers and electricians, but we also have incredibly sophisticated technologists.”

“I think it’s arguably CMU is the best AI university in the country. It’s got incredible tradition with computer science and technologists, which is why in recent years, Google and Apple and Airbnb and everybody else, Tesla all have offices around here because they’re trying to draw on that talent,” he said.

Trump, Shapiro and McCormick all expressed great excitement about what people learn from this summit, but also to show the turn around for the region.

“Too often the stories have been about what once was, well this is a moment about how great things will be,” said McCormick, adding, “We are only beginning.”

Salena Zito is the author of “Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland,” out now.