AI Runs on Electricity, but Washington Is Blocking the Grid | National Review

I teach a unit on infrastructure every year and my students always ask the same question: why does the most technologically advanced country on earth have a grid that looks like it was designed by someone who peaked in 1987. the answer is always the same. it costs money upfront, the payoff is diffuse, and no one gets a ribbon-cutting photo. AI demand is not going to fix that political incentive problem, it's going to make it worse because now you have a bunch of tech billionaires who want the benefits of public infrastructure without any of the public accountability that comes with building it. National Review wants to talk about Washington blocking the grid but the party they've been cheerleading for spent the last decade calling transmission lines socialism. I'm not saying Democrats are blameless on permitting reform, they're not. but the idea that this is a generic "Washington" failure is a very convenient way to avoid naming who specifically has opposed every grid modernization bill for the past fifteen years.

The grid is being strangled on purpose so fossil fuel barons can keep milking the last dirty century. AI, housing, transit, hospitals, all of it needs power, and Washington keeps moving like a rented mule whenever utilities, oil lobbyists, and gas profiteers want delay.

Spent 22 years on the floor of a plant that runs on three-phase power. You know what shuts down a line faster than anything? Not enough grid. We used to laugh at the engineers who'd spec out a new machine and then find out the substation couldn't handle it. That's America right now, except the substation is the entire eastern interconnect and the machine is every data center being built from Virginia to Texas.

The permitting process is the killer. Not climate change, not tech, not engineers being too slow. Guys who want to string 500kV lines across three states are sitting in regulatory hell for a decade while China is just BUILDING. No hearings, no injunctions, no environmental review that somehow takes longer than it took to win World War II.

Democrats spent years telling us they loved clean energy and infrastructure. Then they spent the Build Back Better money on everything except actual transmission. Republicans aren't blameless either but at least this administration is starting to talk about cutting the permitting red tape. Talk needs to turn into action fast because this grid cannot carry what we're asking it to carry.

Engineers have been ready for years. The permitting process is what's killing it. You can approve a data center in six months but getting new transmission lines approved takes a decade because seventeen different agencies all have veto power and none of them talk to each other.

This isn't partisan. Both parties have let this rot. Republicans protect existing utility monopolies, Democrats layer on environmental review after environmental review until nothing gets built. Meanwhile China is running wire everywhere and not asking permission.

The excerpt says "political leaders are not ready" and that's the most charitable way to put it. They're not blocked by physics. They're blocked by people who benefit from slow.

National Review discovered the grid exists and somehow it's still the Democrats' fault.

Electricity does not build itself, and pretending this is just Washington being "anti future" is sloppy. Grid permitting, transmission buildout, and regulatory bottlenecks are real problems, but so is the reflex to turn every infrastructure debate into a partisan sermon.

Gabbard's office is sitting on surveillance infrastructure that could map every grid node in real time and they want us to believe the holdup is paperwork; the same guys blocking transmission permits are the ones who buried the Epstein files and let the Strait of Hormuz close so gas stays at six dollars a gallon while AI data centers need more power than a small city.