technology

The real story is the looming energy crisis as opposed to what the US plans to do with AI models. The US power grid is already running on a razor's edge with reserve margins sitting at a scary low 15%. As more data centres keep getting deployed, the emergency buffer for heat waves, unexpected outages, and so on, is about to get swallowed whole.

The problem is you can't just wish new power plants into existence. Building new generation, whether it's a gas plant, nuclear, or renewables with their storage needs, takes the better part of a decade and has gotten brutally expensive thanks to the trade war. So we're about to see a classic supply and demand shock. A massive, constant, and inflexible new demand from AI data centers is going to slam into a power supply that can't keep up. The inevitable result is that electricity prices are going to go parabolic for everyone, not just the tech companies.

As a result, we'll see a cascading effect on the broader economy. First, grid stability becomes a national issue. Those rolling blackouts that were a regional problem in Texas or California could become a lot more common as the system gets overloaded. Second, and more dangerously, it torpedoes US manufacturing competitiveness. The US spent the last decade leveraging cheap energy to keep domestic manufacturing viable. Now, the US is about to have Europe's problem, where prohibitively high energy costs make it unprofitable to run a factory. Essentially, whatever is left of the physical industrial base will have to be sacrificed to power the AI bubble, and the economic hangover is going to be brutal.