The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is sweeping the United States, reshaping both the economic and political landscape at a breathtaking pace. Nowhere is this transformation more evident than in the surge of data center construction—massive facilities that form the backbone of AI’s relentless advance. The scale is staggering: Hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta Platforms, and Oracle are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into new data centers across the country, according to Investors.com. These investments promise prosperity, but they’re also igniting fierce debates about energy, climate, and the future of local communities.
At the heart of this movement sits Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who recently spoke with TIME about the administration’s priorities. Wright made it clear that AI acceleration is “the No. 1 scientific priority of the Trump administration,” emphasizing a whole-of-government approach. “We’ll be the leaders in that effort, but it is across the administration. There’s huge upside,” Wright said. He highlighted how the Department of Energy’s national labs are racing to apply AI to scientific discovery—especially in fields like cancer research. “You can design molecules that can combat that ability to reproduce or grow. Our hope is in the next few years, a lot of cancers that are death sentences today become manageable conditions, enabled by AI,” he explained to TIME.
Yet, as AI’s promise grows, so does its hunger for power. The explosion of data centers is straining America’s electrical grid and forcing hard choices about where energy comes from. Wright has staked part of his legacy on supporting the un-retirement of coal plants to meet surging demand. “Maybe, the significant majority of all the plants that are slated to close are closing for political reasons,” he argued, suggesting that many coal plants have been shuttered long before the end of their useful life. “If we want to add net-generating capacity as fast as we can, one of the things we can do is stop digging the hole.”
This stance has sparked controversy. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported in 2023 that many coal plants were retired because they couldn’t compete with “highly efficient, modern natural gas-fired power plants and low-cost renewables.” But the calculus is shifting as AI escalates electricity demand. Wright is unapologetic: “The biggest source of electric generation today in the U.S. by far is natural gas. So gas will certainly be what’s added the fastest. We’re doing everything we can to get conventional nuclear power moving as quickly as we can. We’ll have lots of those plants under construction in the next 12 to 24 months, but that’s years until they’re electrons on the grid,” he told TIME.
Solar and wind technologies, while advancing, are not expected to be the main drivers of new AI capacity. Wright insists that “33 years of wind subsidies, that should be enough. These technologies should fly on their own. But they’re probably not a large contributor of new AI capacity.” He’s quick to point out that energy storage remains a challenge for renewables, and the grid needs capacity at peak demand times—not just when the sun shines or the wind blows. “When it’s the middle of the night and the wind blows really hard in Iowa, that doesn’t do anything to increase the capacity of our grid,” he said, echoing concerns reported by TIME about battery storage limitations.
Local politics are heating up as data centers multiply. While these facilities bring economic opportunity, they also spark backlash over electricity rates and infrastructure demands. “Anything new that moves fast draws public opposition, some of it for good reason. If a data center goes into your community and your electric prices go up, you don’t like that. I wouldn’t like it either,” Wright acknowledged. He argues for a “delicate balance” between building data centers and preventing spikes in electricity costs. “If hyperscalers need a gigawatt for their data center, they’ve got to bring us over a gigawatt of new power capacity, and they’ve got to pay rates that help stop the price rise. That hasn’t always been done.”
Meanwhile, the AI race itself is accelerating at a dizzying pace. According to a December 18, 2025 report by the U.K. AI Security Institute (AISI), AI capabilities are “doubling every eight months” in some domains. Jade Leung, AISI’s Chief Technology Officer, told reporters, “We are seeing really rapid capability improvement across basically all domains that the AI Security Institute has measured. In many domains, frontier systems are now matching, or indeed far surpassing human experts.” The report found that AI models are advancing rapidly in both biological and cyber capabilities, with safeguards improving as well. The time required for experts to discover a way to ‘jailbreak’ a model has increased from 10 minutes to over seven hours, a sign that companies are getting better at preventing dangerous behaviors.
Still, there are warning signs. AISI researchers tested for “precursor behaviors” that could indicate a model’s ability to escape human control—like self-replication or accessing its own model weights. In 2023, models succeeded at just 5% of these tasks; by the summer of 2025, that figure had jumped to more than 60%. Leung was quick to clarify that all such behaviors required explicit prompting and that “no models exhibited ‘concerning’ tendencies spontaneously.” But, she added, “the indicators are important to track as we move toward more advanced systems over time.”
AI’s influence is also seeping into everyday life. The AISI report revealed that 33% of U.K. adults surveyed had used AI models for “companionship, emotional support, or social interaction” in the past year. Four percent said they did so every day. General-purpose assistants like ChatGPT were the most popular, with specialized companionship models like Character.AI making up a smaller share. These numbers highlight the growing role AI plays not just in industry, but in the intimate corners of people’s lives.
The technological arms race is also playing out among industry giants. Google recently rolled out its Gemini 3 Flash AI model, which experts say is smarter, faster, and cheaper than previous iterations. With Gemini integrated into Google Search and Chrome, the company could pose a serious threat to rivals like OpenAI if it can reliably offer high-performing, low-cost models, as reported by TIME.
Amidst all this, climate activists are raising alarms about corporations quietly walking back their net-zero goals. But Wright remains unfazed. “I think the public has a very unrealistic view of climate change, like it’s the biggest problem in the world today. If you look at the data on climate change, it isn’t remotely close to the world’s biggest problem compared to starvation, public health, education, free trade,” he told TIME. Yet, the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025 suggests a different perspective: while short-term risks may be varied, climate-related threats dominate the long-term outlook.
Ultimately, the AI revolution is as much about power—both electrical and political—as it is about algorithms. The choices made today about energy, infrastructure, and community impact will shape not only the trajectory of technology, but the lives of millions. As the race accelerates, the stakes have never been higher, and the balancing act between innovation, economy, and environment grows ever more delicate.
