Listen up, folks, because if you thought the elites were just content with telling you what to eat, drive, and think, think again. They’ve got their sights set on your thermostat, your TV, and even your fancy electric car battery. And leading the charge is none other than Patricia Poppe, the big cheese at California’s PG&E, who’s been caught on tape spilling the beans about how the state – yeah, your friendly neighborhood government – should remotely regulate your energy usage with AI. Because nothing says “freedom” like some faceless bureaucrat deciding when you can crank up the AC on a scorching day.
This isn’t some dystopian fever dream from a bad sci-fi flick. Poppe laid it all out back in January 2023 at the World Economic Forum’s shindig in Davos – you know, that annual gathering where billionaires jet in on private planes to lecture the rest of us peasants about saving the planet. During a panel on “Mastering New Energy Economics,” she gushed about a 2022 heatwave in California where the state blasted out emergency texts begging people to cut back on power. Boom – 2,500 megawatts vanished from the grid in an instant. Californians, being the compliant types they are, played along. But Poppe wasn’t satisfied with that voluntary nonsense. Oh no. She wants it automated. “We shouldn’t have to send a text message,” she said with a straight face. “It worked, but what it says is that could be automated with smart devices, WiFi communicating devices, and electric vehicles as a power resource, bi-directional power resource, back to the grid.”
Translation for those not fluent in elite-speak: Your smart thermostat? They’ll turn it down. Your EV? They’ll suck the juice right out of it to “smooth the demand curve” when the grid gets cranky. And AI will be the enforcer, making sure you don’t get too comfortable while the bigwigs sip champagne in their air-conditioned mansions. Poppe calls it “demand management” and “anyways economics” – as in, you’ve already bought the gadget, so why not let the state hijack it? It’s all about optimizing “distributed variable resources” to deliver power “the right way at the right time.” Sure, Patti. And I’m the Easter Bunny.