There you have it! China just committed $297 billion to data centers over five years.
June 10, 2026 · 0 likes · 0 comments
China Threat AI
There you have it! China just committed $297 billion to data centers over five years.
America is still arguing about who pays for the power lines.
Beijing's National Development and Reform Commission is drafting a 2 trillion yuan buildout — and it's engineered to run on domestic chips at least 80% of the time. Huawei, not Nvidia. Not because their silicon is better. Because the entire AI stack has to be sovereign. State-directed. One plan. One direction. Concrete in the ground.
Now look at us.
PJM — the grid operator covering 13 states from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest — is staring at 30 GW of new demand by 2030 and already can't keep up. The 2027/2028 capacity auction cleared SHORT. NERC put PJM in the "high risk" reliability bucket for 2029-2030. The backbone of East Coast power is behind before China pours a single foundation.
And what is Washington doing about it?
FERC is going to VOTE — on June 18 — on whether data centers should pay for their own transmission upgrades. That's the fight. That's the whole national strategy right now. A cost-allocation hearing.
Read that again.
China is running an AI infrastructure war. We're filing paperwork about it.
Here's the part nobody wants to say out loud: the U.S. will actually OUTSPEND China. Goldman says American hyperscalers will deploy $800 billion in capex THIS YEAR alone — more in twelve months than Beijing's entire five-year plan. The money isn't the problem.
The COORDINATION is the problem.
China's $297B is one fist. Our $800B is a thousand fingers pointing in different directions — Amazon here, a FERC docket there, a utility in Akron petitioning, a counter-filing on Monday, a "pledge" signed by seven tech giants that isn't a regulation, it's a press release with signatures.
I have seen this before. We don't lose to China because we lack capital, talent, or chips. We lose because we cannot decide, fast, and move together. Speed is a strategy. Right now ours is to deliberate.
You can protect ratepayers OR maximize buildout speed — and nobody in this fight has figured out how to do both. So we do neither, slowly.
The grid is the new battlefield. AI without power is a slide deck. And the country that wires the data centers fastest wins the decade.
China doesn't have this debate. State capital is fast and ruthless — until it isn't. But "until it isn't" is not a national strategy we can count on.
Build the wires. Pick a lane. Move.
Or keep bringing a regulatory filing to an infrastructure war.
Thoughts?
Source: https://lnkd.in/eN46SF8d
America is still arguing about who pays for the power lines.
Beijing's National Development and Reform Commission is drafting a 2 trillion yuan buildout — and it's engineered to run on domestic chips at least 80% of the time. Huawei, not Nvidia. Not because their silicon is better. Because the entire AI stack has to be sovereign. State-directed. One plan. One direction. Concrete in the ground.
Now look at us.
PJM — the grid operator covering 13 states from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest — is staring at 30 GW of new demand by 2030 and already can't keep up. The 2027/2028 capacity auction cleared SHORT. NERC put PJM in the "high risk" reliability bucket for 2029-2030. The backbone of East Coast power is behind before China pours a single foundation.
And what is Washington doing about it?
FERC is going to VOTE — on June 18 — on whether data centers should pay for their own transmission upgrades. That's the fight. That's the whole national strategy right now. A cost-allocation hearing.
Read that again.
China is running an AI infrastructure war. We're filing paperwork about it.
Here's the part nobody wants to say out loud: the U.S. will actually OUTSPEND China. Goldman says American hyperscalers will deploy $800 billion in capex THIS YEAR alone — more in twelve months than Beijing's entire five-year plan. The money isn't the problem.
The COORDINATION is the problem.
China's $297B is one fist. Our $800B is a thousand fingers pointing in different directions — Amazon here, a FERC docket there, a utility in Akron petitioning, a counter-filing on Monday, a "pledge" signed by seven tech giants that isn't a regulation, it's a press release with signatures.
I have seen this before. We don't lose to China because we lack capital, talent, or chips. We lose because we cannot decide, fast, and move together. Speed is a strategy. Right now ours is to deliberate.
You can protect ratepayers OR maximize buildout speed — and nobody in this fight has figured out how to do both. So we do neither, slowly.
The grid is the new battlefield. AI without power is a slide deck. And the country that wires the data centers fastest wins the decade.
China doesn't have this debate. State capital is fast and ruthless — until it isn't. But "until it isn't" is not a national strategy we can count on.
Build the wires. Pick a lane. Move.
Or keep bringing a regulatory filing to an infrastructure war.
Thoughts?
Source: https://lnkd.in/eN46SF8d