Essay by Eric Worrall
“… ensures an uninterrupted and affordable supply of power …” – just not possible with renewables.
White House Unveils America’s AI Action Plan
The White House
July 23, 2025
The White House today released “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan”, in accordance with President Trump’s January executive order on Removing Barriers to American Leadership in AI. Winning the AI race will usher in a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people.
The Plan identifies over 90 Federal policy actions across three pillars – Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security – that the Trump Administration will take in the coming weeks and months.
Key policies in the AI Action Plan include:
- Exporting American AI: The Commerce and State Departments will partner with industry to deliver secure, full-stack AI export packages – including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards – to America’s friends and allies around the world.
- Promoting Rapid Buildout of Data Centers: Expediting and modernizing permits for data centers and semiconductor fabs, as well as creating new national initiatives to increase high-demand occupations like electricians and HVAC technicians.
- Enabling Innovation and Adoption: Removing onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment, and seek private sector input on rules to remove.
- Upholding Free Speech in Frontier Models: Updating Federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.
“America’s AI Action Plan charts a decisive course to cement U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence. President Trump has prioritized AI as a cornerstone of American innovation, powering a new age of American leadership in science, technology, and global influence. This plan galvanizes Federal efforts to turbocharge our innovation capacity, build cutting-edge infrastructure, and lead globally, ensuring that American workers and families thrive in the AI era. We are moving with urgency to make this vision a reality,” said White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios.
“Artificial intelligence is a revolutionary technology with the potential to transform the global economy and alter the balance of power in the world. To remain the leading economic and military power, the United States must win the AI race. Recognizing this, President Trump directed us to produce this Action Plan. To win the AI race, the U.S. must lead in innovation, infrastructure, and global partnerships. At the same time, we must center American workers and avoid Orwellian uses of AI. This Action Plan provides a roadmap for doing that,” said AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks.
“Winning the AI Race is non-negotiable. America must continue to be the dominant force in artificial intelligence to promote prosperity and protect our economic and national security. President Trump recognized this at the beginning of his administration and took decisive action by commissioning this AI Action Plan. These clear-cut policy goals set expectations for the Federal Government to ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology,” said Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio.
Learn more at AI.Gov.
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/07/white-house-unveils-americas-ai-action-plan/
Looking at the referenced AI Action Plan, the following caught my eye.
…
Develop a Grid to Match the Pace of AI Innovation
The U.S. electric grid is one of the largest and most complex machines on Earth. It, too, will need to be upgraded to support data centers and other energy-intensive industries of the future. The power grid is the lifeblood of the modern economy and a cornerstone of national security, but it is facing a confluence of challenges that demand strategic foresight and decisive action. Escalating demand driven by electrification and the technological advancements of AI are increasing pressures on the grid. The United States must develop a comprehensive strategy to enhance and expand the power grid designed not just to weather these challenges, but to ensure the gridøs continued strength and capacity for future growth. Recommended Policy Actions
ø Stabilize the grid of today as much as possible. This initial phase acknowledges the need to safeguard existing assets and ensures an uninterrupted and affordable supply of power. The United States must prevent the premature decommissioning of critical power generation resources and explore innovative ways to harness existing capacity, such as leveraging extant backup power sources to bolster grid reliability during peak demand. A key element of this stabilization is to ensure every corner of the electric grid is in compliance with nationwide standards for resource adequacy and sufficient power generation capacity is consistently available across the country.
ø Optimize existing grid resources as much as possible. This involves implementing strategies to enhance the efficiency and performance of the transmission system. The United States must explore solutions like advanced grid management technologies and upgrades to power lines that can increase the amount of electricity transmitted along existing routes. Furthermore, the United States should investigate new and novel ways for large power consumers to manage their power consumption during critical grid periods to enhance reliability and unlock additional power on the system.
ø Prioritize the interconnection of reliable, dispatchable power sources as quickly as possible and embrace new energy generation sources at the technological frontier (e.g., enhanced geothermal, nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion). Reform power markets to align financial incentives with the goal of grid stability, ensuring that investment in power generation reflects the systemøs needs.
ø Create a strategic blueprint for navigating the complex energy landscape of the 21st century. By stabilizing the grid of today, optimizing existing grid resources, and growing the grid for the future, the United States can rise to the challenge of winning the AI race while also delivering a reliable and affordable power grid for all Americans.
…
Read more: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf
If I’ve understood this correctly, every future federal approval for energy supply will be assessed on whether it advances the USA towards the goal of a reliable, dispatchable grid fit for ensuring US AI dominance.
Obviously renewable suppliers can try to play in this game by ensuring they co-install several days worth of battery backup, to lay claim to being dispatchable, but unless battery prices drop substantially it is difficult to imagine such efforts being affordable.
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Yeah, rating wind and solar on how
dispatchable they are is a category killer. As Texas demonstrated in 2021, wind and solar
produces not bupkis in freezing rain and still
air.
Sounds good. What bothers me is that wind and solar get preference but can not sustain the grid. Fossil fuel and nuclear are needed on standby to insure the grid isn’t compromised and by doing so make it appear that wind and solar are a good replacement for fossil fuel and nuclear when they clearly are not. Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear. Build new fossil fuel and nuclear. Remove all wind and solar from the grid.
Step 1: Stabilize and strengthen the grid.
Step 2: Implement the AI Action Plan.
Let’s not put the cart before the horse.
Just make all AI ventures provide their own electricity + say 20-50% extra for the grid.
It will all have to be dispatchable… ie Coal, Gas or Nuclear.. (or hydro where rainfall and terrain permit)
Why is AI different from any other large-scale electricity consumer?
Isn’t ensuring there is enough electricity to meet demand one of the jobs of regulators?
As much as I am impressed with AI as an hallucination free librarian after WE taught how to usefully ‘program’ Perplexity, I remain very reservedly skeptical about all the AI hype.
I was the global head of the MOT strategy offices during the .com bubble of 1998-2000, and I see several very scary parallels.
Back then, the MOT StarTAC flip phone was still just a wireless phone, but we could see smart phones eventually coming. It was Apple’s Jobs that solved the interface problem years later with the iPhone, causing MOT stock go from $160 when I left to $10 when it ‘sold’ (gave) its cell phone business to China’s Lenovo.
At that bubble time, Sun Microsystems (marketing slogan, “We put the dot in .com”) and Cisco were the stock darlings. Sun collapsed from a peak valuation of $200 billion in 2000 and was bought in 2010 by Oracle for ~$5 billion. Cisco remains a shrunken husk of its former networking hw/sw self. Now it is Nvidia and OpenAI.
At that bubble time, the vaunted constraint was fiberoptic network capacity—which got way overbuilt, resulting in the spectacular bankruptcies of Global Networks, MetroMedia, and Frontier. Now it is grid electrical capacity for data centers.
At that bubble time, then President Clinton compared the rise of the internet ‘dotcom’ era to the dawn of radio in revolutionary communications importance, and promised to ‘bridge the digital divide’ and ‘support e-commerce’ . Now it is Trump AI EO’s.
Might be wrong, but this battle scarred veteran of past tech wars has bad vibes.
I agree a lot of AI plays are just hype, but enough problems have been solved so there is real value. For example AI driven selective agricultural weed killing is big business in Australia. AI Drug retasking is also big business.
“AI” is such a broad term. Many of us use chatbots and generative AI. These differ from the AIs used for medical research.
Rud:
Nice review of dot.com history I bet that our current infatuation with AI will rhyme with the
dotcom era with it’s attendant booms & busts. However, the economic & social implications of AI, especially AGI, could be fair greater than the smart phone or even the internet.
Recent interesting AI reads [books]:
“More Everything Forever” by Adam Becker [the ongoing fight between the AI optimists and
the AI “doomers” – I did not realize how kookie some of these positions are (see “Longtermism”)]
“Genesis” by H. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt & Craig Mundie [geo-politics of AI using the framework of how the world dealt with nuclear weapons, & a Forward by Niall Ferguson]
“On the Edge” by Nate Silver [quasi-about AI: how to assess and handle uncertainty, with quite a few asides on gambling (especially Texas Hold’em & sportsbetting) – a fun read ]
Not every AI application or business envisioned today will make it. Your comments echo Ken Olson when he stated, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home”. Now-a-days almost everyone has many computers in their home (except my parents and their church, who refuse one because it is only useful if connected to the internet – and the internet is evil). None of my friends have fewer than a dozen desktop computers/tablets/phones/game consoles that all exceed the power of the computer Ken Olson was talking about – and we’re all septuagenarians/octogenarians. It’s a nascent technology with a lot of potential. And yes, many AI applications are doomed to fail. The ones that survive will make our lives so much fuller and richer.
There’s a lot of hype. We’re starting the We are replacing everyone with AI phase, soon to be followed by the We’re hiring people to fix our AI phase.
In the mad rush, companies are taking shortcuts. How soon until some trader takes the restraints off his AI and crashes the Nasdaq? How soon until somebody crashes online sports betting with an out-of-control AI?
“…the MOT StarTAC flip phone…”
At about the same time, Tracfone, and walking around a wooded campground, “Can you hear me now?” Memories…..
There are enough natural idiots, we have no need of Artificial ones.
Zig:
Paraphrase of Box’s quip about models: “All idiots are idiots, but some idiots are useful”.
We have to live with stupidity [US example: AOC]; at least an artificial one has an OFF button.
“at least an artificial one has an OFF button.”
Until it decided not to let you turn it off 😉
I’ve had to manage enough idiots in my time to realise that some can be made to be useful, but I’ve always preferred non-idiots.
As for Artificial Idiocy, I’m afraid we’ve got serious problems ahead. My review of pretty much all software user interfaces tells me that the vast majority pander almost exclusively to the owner of the systems, not the users. Occasionally, they do pander to users’ needs in order to be competitive, but almost always to the 80% or so of ‘standard’ users who don’t want anything complicated.
I say this as a software developer, building a lot of user interfaces in my career, and as a definite outlier as a user, my needs always seeming to be in a minority.
Artificial Idiots will behave in exactly the same way. They will do what the owners want, not what the users want. Of those that do pander to user needs, they will only pander to the masses, not individuals at all.
It’s going to be a nightmare for the rest of us, but the masses probably won’t even notice. They haven’t noticed how social media has warped their perceptions and deliberately created divisions in order to sell more advertising. In the same way, they will be used and abused.
The only attribute of AI that I have discovered that leads to a conclusion of intelligence is the very good human language interface.
Long ago a person who was deaf and dumb was assess with very low intelligence due to the inability to speak. At the same time those with excellent rhetorical skills were proclaimed geniuses.
That still seems to be the case.
According to ChatGPT, it is not intelligent because it is not self-aware.
Decades ago there was work in Neural Networks trying to achieve AI but simulating neurons with electronic (analog) circuits. The games came along and the computer was called AI. It stuck.
That’s exactly what it would say if ChatGPT were trying to deceive us, innit?
I really wish people would stop referring to wind and solar as “green” energy.
In their manufacture, implementation and disposal they are, without a doubt, the most filthy, polluting and environmentally destructive form of energy there is.
From an accounting point of view they are all red (ink).
Why don’t we convert the existing fossil fueled electrical grid to nuclear? SMRs could be used as steam generators, what used to be called boilers, to feed the existing generators. Then life of the huge investment in our electrical infrastructure could be extended and stabilized.
It started with 3 Mile Island, which turned out to not be a nuclear disaster and augmented with Jane Fonda and The China Syndrome. Both shaped public opinion, apparently past a tipping point.
“renewable suppliers can try to play in this game by ensuring they co-install several days worth of battery backup, to lay claim to being dispatchable“
Several days is hardly sufficient. Considering the “Dunkelflaute (dark doldrums) already experienced around the globe, it won’t even work short term, much less summer to winter . There is simply no storage mechanism in the foreseeable future for solving the “dispatchable” problem.
Dispatchable also requires the ability to synchronize with the grid. I know how phase lock loops work, which is the proposed solution. I know how capacitors work, which is part of the proposed solution. The proposed solutions are patches on the symptoms that do not address the root cause/problem.
As a prior national SME on electrochemical energy sources (cells and batteries), I know of their limitations and they will not stand the test of time and temperature.
The solution would make Rube Goldberg proud.