Author Wynton Hall argues in his new book Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI that the Trump administration’s “Pledge to America’s Youth: Investing in AI Education” initiative has opened a narrow window for conservative parents to shape their children’s AI-powered future. But the clock is ticking.
“Against this dour backdrop, a new generation of AI-powered educational tools is making their way into the hands of educators, students, and parents,” Hall writes in CODE RED, noting that the educational landscape is “shifting seismically under the feet of parents, teachers, and students alike” and that with “new AI models dropping weekly — many shattering records and potentially disrupting the jobs and skills students develop — trying to keep up can feel exhausting. But we must.”
The White House education pledge, spearheaded by First Lady Melania Trump, enlisted America’s biggest tech companies, including Amazon, OpenAI, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, to invest in K-12 AI literacy. The timing matters. As Hall documents, the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed that two decades of reading and math gains were wiped out by forced school closures. One-third of American eighth graders now score below basic competency in reading, the worst performance ever recorded in NAEP history. The US Department of Education called the results “a heartbreaking reality for American students” that “confirm[s] our worst fears: not only did most students not recover from pandemic-related learning loss, but those students who were the most behind and needed the most support have fallen even further behind.”
Hall sees the White House initiative as a way to close that gap. He writes in CODE RED that “machine learning offers the exciting possibility that every student, regardless of income or geography, can have access to a customized AI tutor.” A Harvard study found that an AI chatbot tutor in physics doubled students’ learning gains, and an AI math tutor in Ghana boosted scores the equivalent of an extra year of learning. For conservative families, Hall writes, “a high-quality AI tutor that can explain homework is a useful resource to keep their child’s academic progress accelerating.”
None of it matters, though, if parents sit on the sidelines. Hall lays out a framework he calls the “Three C’s: Character, Critical Thinking, and Creativity.”
According to CODE RED:
The best way to deter students from using AI to cheat is to raise a generation that believes that cheating is wrong in the first place, one that knows that there are virtue and reward in difficult pursuits achieved honestly. Old-fashioned? Yes, in the best way possible. There’s a reason classical education prized the Aristotelian ideals of ethical and virtuous intellectual inquiry. . . . The Left doesn’t have any vocabulary for how raising children is about shaping their character, instilling virtues, or calling them to something higher.
Hall is equally blunt about vetting AI tutors the way you’d vet a human one. “Leftist educational indoctrination thrives when parents remain in the dark about the propaganda embedded in radical curricula and woke textbooks,” he writes in CODE RED. “Parents must stay vigilant and mindful about the AI tools administrators and instructors introduce into their child’s learning diets.” Even well-designed platforms carry ideological risks. Hall points to Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, which was proudly showcased “dismantling” skepticism about global warming rather than encouraging genuine open inquiry.
And this isn’t only about what happens in the classroom. Hall warns that the Left is building its own AI education infrastructure right now. In 2025, OpenAI teamed up with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to work “with 400,000 teachers to shape the future of AI in schools.” The AFT, Hall notes, is “a massive Democratic Party donor, pumping millions of dollars to Democrats and virtually nothing to Republicans.” If a Democrat returns to the White House, “Big Tech will almost certainly default to its long-standing leftist partners.”
That political reality is what makes Melania Trump’s championing of youth safety, paired with the White House education initiative, so urgent. As Hall concludes in CODE RED, “The future of education will be defined not by AI but by parents and educators who use it wisely to benefit their students.” The conservative economist Thomas Sowell’s warning, which Hall cites, puts it plainly: “Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, praised CODE RED as a “must-read.” She added: “Few understand our conservative fight against Big Tech as Hall does,” making him “uniquely qualified to examine how we can best utilize AI’s enormous potential, while ensuring it does not exploit kids, creators, and conservatives.” Award-winning investigative journalist and Public founder Michael Shellenberger calls CODE RED “illuminating,” ”alarming,” and describes the book as “an essential conversation-starter for those hoping to subvert Big Tech’s autocratic plans before it’s too late.”
