America can’t afford to stop building our AI future

America has never shied away from building the infrastructure that powers American prosperity. We laid the railroads, poured the interstate highways and wired the internet. Each was a foundational technology that took vision, steel and skilled hands to construct, and each powered decades of growth, security and prosperity.

The next of those foundations is being built right now. The data centers and the energy to power them are the physical backbone of artificial intelligence, the technology that will define the next generation of American security and prosperity. Yet just as that work gets underway, a growing number of communities and states are moving to stop it, reaching for moratoriums and outright bans.

Banning the AI infrastructure build is a serious mistake. Not because every project is perfect or communities should not ask hard questions. Concerns about electricity, water and siting deserve serious attention. The men and women we represent live in these communities too. We raise our families here.

But writing a blanket prohibition on one of the fastest-growing sources of jobs and investment into law is the wrong answer to those concerns, and one that could cost communities dearly for decades to come.

The infrastructure behind today’s economy and tomorrow’s AI breakthroughs will be built somewhere. The only question is whether America builds it or bans it. We should not be the country that walks away.

The U.S. is........

© The Hill