Compute is power. There's no way around it.
The country that builds the most compute, the fastest, will shape the world order for the rest of the century. This isn't abstract. Compute is now a strategic asset on par with oil, energy, steel, and the dollar.
The risks to security
America's compute power could be the difference between winning and losing a war — between protecting our cities from an attack and leaving them exposed. Modern defense runs on computational power: detecting threats, breaking through enemy systems, defending our own. The side with more compute sees first, decides first, and acts first.
The risks to progress
The country with the most compute builds the most: the most innovation, the most jobs, the most infrastructure. Compute is the foundation everything else gets built on — the same way electricity was a century ago. Fall behind on the foundation, and you fall behind on everything.
The misinformation is not an accident
Bad information about data centers is rampant, and that's by design. Our adversaries understand exactly what's at stake. They quietly fund the campaigns, seed the talking points, and amplify the fears that stall our buildout — because every project we delay is a head start we hand to them. While we argue over our own infrastructure, our competitors are pouring concrete.
Build fast, but build right
This is a decisive moment, and it calls for us to come together, not split apart. The concerns people raise — water, power, land, neighborhoods — are real and deserve real answers. We don't win by dismissing those questions. We win by answering them.
- $295B
- China's state-mandated 5-year data center plan
- 1.4B
- Population feeding datasets with fewer privacy limits
- ~⅓
- New U.S. data centers are designed to run entirely off-grid
Every time someone searches for directions, streams a show, gets a fraud alert, or checks the forecast — that's a data center. This technology isn't going away; it's only going to grow more proficient. The question isn't whether we need data centers. It's whether we want them built here, or in authoritarian countries.