RUTHFULLY YOURS

Eighty years ago this summer, the United States would assure its role as a global superpower for generations to come by harnessing its scientific, industrial and military resources under the code name, “The Manhattan Project,” creating a war-winning weapon, the atomic bomb. President Donald Trump now has the means to repeat history by funding a 2025 version of the Manhattan Project that guarantees our access to all the energy we will need to power this century.

To place the challenge in context, the president is no fan of wind turbines. Grounded in the economics of business, he appreciates that the energy rate of return for the enormous investment required to build wind turbines makes little sense. He remains focused on some of America’s greatest energy resources, domestic fossil fuels, making us not only capable of running our economy but independent of foreign crude and those control that spigot.

And yet, there is an energy shortage on our nation’s horizon.

It’s electricity. The necessary power required to run not just artificial intelligence (AI) computers but also propulsion, transportation, military needs, heating, cooling refrigeration, lighting and so on, comes from electrical generating stations — and they are going to be hard-pressed to supply what is needed if the United States is to maintain a lead in this crucial sector. Given that AI is projected to have an impact on everything from future medical breakthroughs to battlefield victories, it is a leadership we dare not give away. However, without American generated electricity – and a lot of it is – the next generation of AI success will belong to a foreign power.

It is best to appreciate the challenge. AI data centers are projected to consume approximately two to three percent of U.S. electrical consumption this year alone, with expectations of continued growth now a given. Future projections can see AI requiring as much as 12% of America’s electrical production.

Several tech companies have already announced plans for AI data centers that would each require hundreds of megawatts of power. These kinds of demands have compelled Microsoft and Constellation Energy to craft plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Others are proposing to build new nuclear facilities from scratch to power required AI centers.

Those tens of billions of dollars required to build nuclear fission reactors would be far better spent in bringing to a successful conclusion current research on fusion power – one that harnesses the nearly unlimited power of the atom in a manner that does not create radioactivity nor threaten a “meltdown” similar to the fate of Three Mile Island in 1979.

To get there, analysts are proposing that the Trump Administration fund the Department of Energy’s proposed fusion energy research budget starting at $1.5 billion dollars per annum, at least equal to what China is spending, and double America’s current research and development investment. The Chinese are reportedly planning to commercialize fusion energy and outpace the U.S. by 2030 to win the fusion energy race.

It will likely require even more of a national focus and greater financial resources to accomplish this goal, but the payoff would literally usher in a new era. This author has previously described it as Trump’s 2025 Manhattan Project.

Eighty years later, we need to appreciate several realities. Whoever can create unlimited energy will own the future achievements of AI as well as global leadership. The partnership of fusion power and AI is the obvious means to achieve and sustain global dominance.

Who will own the future? The answer resides with those who recognize the stakes and are the first to realize success.

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.