Last week, I sat down with Governor JB Pritzker and Christian Mitchell for a live conversation on how Chicago wins the next decade.

We started the conversation about their “space nerds” group chat before getting into a wide range of topics from clean energy to the AI Cabinet, downstate fear of data centers, digital asset tax, and tourism.

Governor Pritzker said he picked Christian as his running mate because he already ran the hard parts of the administration, does not rest, and could be governor on day one.

On energy, Mitchell spoke about one of his major projects: CEJA: 100% clean by 2050, keep the nuclear fleet (about 54% of Illinois power), lift the moratorium, workforce hubs for people locked out of the trades.

He said federal hostility to renewables slowed projects, and that a new storage procurement just landed about 600 megawatts, with solar-plus-storage next. Governor Pritzker also spoke about how CEJA rebates have sent about $800m back onto bills, and keeping two nuclear plants online was the cheaper path for ratepayers.

On the AI Cabinet, which I wrote about last week, Governor Pritzker said he will pick the seats personally. He called Illinois' AI safety law stricter than what California and NYC got through, and said states have to be the lab while Washington sits out.

I asked the Governor why the state treats quantum so differently than AI when AI has more known commercial risks. This ultimately became one of my favorite moments from the conversation.

He said the following:

He explained that agriculture and manufacturing don’t grow fast enough on their own. Quantum was the bet that came out of Argonne, Fermilab, UChicago, and Northwestern. The state put about $200m into it in the 2019 capital bill, and federal money followed.

The quantum strategy isn’t a rejection of AI. Illinois is an AI hub too. Quantum is where this state can be first in the country, and that is what moves GDP.

A few months ago, Illinois announced it was considering a Digital Asset Tax Act, which would impose a tax at the rate of 0.2% of the value of the digital asset starting January 2027. Not a tax on profit. A tax on the value of the asset in the transaction.

This past week, we learned that the tax may not start on time.

The Chamber of Digital Commerce and the Illinois Blockchain Association, with state officials, asked a Sangamon County court to move the Digital Asset Tax Act's start date from January 1 to July 1, 2027.

The Department of Revenue posted draft rules September 28, and comments close 5pm CT October 30. The rules aren't filed with the Secretary of State or at JCAR, so read them as a proposal.

Under the draft, gas and network fees paid straight to miners or validators aren't valuable consideration, but a protocol fee a DeFi platform keeps can be. Stablecoins count. NFTs don't. A retailer taking crypto for goods isn't a broker and shouldn't charge the tax at the register.

When I sat down with Governor Pritzker, I put a question to him from Coinflow CTO Ben Meeder about this tax.

The Governor agreed the state has to be "hyper careful" that implementation "does not overtake more than was intended," and he pushed founders to file comments with the Department of Revenue.

Mitchell added that those comments aren't a formality: "It genuinely may change policy."

In late September, OpenAI told Chicago that its model had reached a public-facing city database. The data in question was public data from a public facing dashboard. The city of Chicago is unaware of any sensitive information being obtained.

This wasn’t a breach, it was more of a notice.

OpenAI has been telling organizations that its agents reached their sites, and the company has said a notification isn’t automatically a security incident. The same review included government sites elsewhere.

Chicago's take, on the city's account, stayed on the public side. Crime stats, street sweeping, incentive projects. The stuff already on the open data portal.

ChatGPT already pulls Chicago data when people ask it questions.

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