Artificial intelligence (AI) is omnipresent in our daily lives. While AI is greatly misunderstood, our smartphones use it as do chatbots and social media outlets. As do many other tools. Fears about humans being displaced are largely unwarranted, even with the emergence of generative AI tools that produce new things or outcomes.
While America leads in AI innovation, China is rapidly catching up. The U.S. can’t cede to the CCP. That’s why AI must be powered by electricity that’s reliable and be unburdened by onerous regulations.
Countries desiring to be competitive in AI must first adopt an energy abundance mindset by ditching net-zero climate pledges. Under the new Trump administration, reliability and abundance is taking priority over arbitrary and unenforceable climate posturing to ditch fossil fuels by 2050.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, alongside President Trump, has promised to unleash America’s Golden Age of energy, including AI, by prioritizing abundance (or energy addition) over net-zero. He said an “abundance of American energy required to power modern life and to achieve a durable state of American energy dominance.” Even S&P Global conceded, “The persistent use of fossil fuel power generation to meet datacenter demand will make reaching net-zero goals more difficult for the tech sector and electric utilities.”
AI-powered data centers require lots of energy, arguably the equivalent amount needed to sufficiently power cities. Wells Fargo predicts U.S. AI data centers will add 323 terawatt hours of electricity demand by 2030. Therefore, our energy demands - including AI - will be fulfilled by reliable, baseload power sources - not by intermittent, questionably “green” ones.
Solar and wind are insufficient to meet rising electricity demand, as they optimally function for 25% and 35% of the year, respectively. Natural gas, nuclear, and even coal - energy sources that cumulatively make up 79% of current U.S. electricity generation - are already being tapped into for data centers. Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia - or “data center alley” - and across the Southeast, new natural gas and existing coal plants, like nuclear plants, produce reliable electricity. And the oft vilified coal remains, unsurprisingly, the largest source of electricity generation globally.
During his confirmation hearing, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was bullish about harnessing “clean coal” on federal lands to supplement natural gas and nuclear power needed for this burgeoning industry. He argued that not tapping into coal for AI purposes could result in us losing “the AI arms race to China” and have subsequent national security implications.
For other nations, nuclear power plays a more outsized role to power AI. At this week’s Paris AI Summit, French President Emmanuel Macron traded friendly barbs with “his friend” and American counterpart, President Donald Trump, when he joked, "I have a good friend in other side of ocean [sic], he says drill, baby, drill. Here there is no need to drill, it is plug, baby, plug."
Nuclear energy - a reliable baseload power operating optimally 93% of the year - supplies 70% of France’s electricity generation. On account of this, Macron is making a play for AI companies to set up shop in his country, despite the European Union being a place where innovation notoriously goes to die.
France might largely “plug, baby, plug” but the U.S. can safely drill, plug, and innovate without losing our competitive edge.
Like Macron, Vice President J.D. Vance also delivered a speech at the Paris A.I. Summit. His first major speech as VP touted “AI opportunity” and earned him high mark from the likes of the Wall Street Journal.
“...At this moment, we face the extraordinary prospect of a new industrial revolution, one on par with the invention of the steam engine,” Vance said. “But it will never come to pass if overregulation deters innovators from taking the risks necessary to advance the ball.”
The U.S. is adopting AI policies that encourage - not stifle - innovation. In his “Removing Barriers to U.S. Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” executive order, President Donald Trump emphasized the U.S. must maintain its competitive edge by developing “AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas.” The same can’t necessarily be said of the E.U. - which has been ruthlessly mocked as a “valley of death” for innovation.
The recently enacted E.U. AI Act, formally enacted in August 2024, is a source of frustration for European nations that want to unleash AI. Macron admitted that Europe must “synchronize with the rest of the world” and lamented that his continent is “too slow.”
My Independent Women Forum colleague Carrie Sheffield notes in her new Policy Focus on AI that “fear cannot drive our national AI decision-making, nor allow us to ignore this technological race.” By all indications, America - under new leadership - is fearless in its quest to win the AI race.
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