Rand Paul: The Loom-Smashers Were Wrong. So Are the People Who Want an AI Kill Switch

After the Senate blocked Kennedy’s bill he went on Fox and reached for history — the rioters against machines and electricity lost, and they deserved to

Rand Paul posted the moral of the segment in one shot.

History is full of people who smashed looms and rioted against electricity. None of them were right.

The chyron behind him was the fight. The Senate blocked Kennedy’s AI “kill switch” bill. Paul was there to explain why Washington should not get a panic button on the next machine.

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The Old Fear in a New Suit

Every generation finds a technology that looks like the end of work, the end of safety, or the end of the species. The loom was going to starve the weaver. The wire was going to burn the house down. Both became ordinary.

Paul’s point is not that tools have no risk. It is that Congress is a terrible inventor of off switches. A kill switch written by people who still lose hearings to their own phones is not prudence. It is a lobby for whoever already has power.

If the last two centuries of machine-breaking were a mistake, why is the same instinct suddenly wisdom?

What the Bill Was Asking For

A federal kill switch is not a seatbelt. It is a claim that a committee should be able to freeze an industry because a scenario in a white paper got loud.

Paul has spent a career telling the same branch of government it does not get to run medicine, money, or speech by emergency. AI is the new excuse to try.