The US Must Not Lose the Race for Nuclear Fusion Energy to China

A visionary, an entrepreneur, a futurist, and perhaps one of the most creative of his generation, one still needs to spend considerable time in reading the comments of Elon Musk to determine his current opinion regarding fusion energy.

Prior published interviews suggest he has been a very strong proponent of solar and wind power, energy sources that have brought Europe to its knees economically and that, understandably, are not currently in favor at the White House.

In 2023, Musk told Joe Rogan during a podcast that "You could actually power the entire United States with 100 miles of 100 miles of solar."

Musk did in fact recognize the power of fusion energy but, in this context, he meant the sun generating electricity through solar panels:

"We have a giant fusion reactor in the sky.... the sun is converting more than four million tons of mass to energy every second and requires no maintenance....If you can generate energy from solar panels and store it with batteries, you can have energy 24 hours a day."

Yet Musk tacitly recognizes a growing strategic fact. The nation that owns the stunning advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) may well hold the technology that dictates who will dominate the rest of the 21st Century. AI consumes an enormous amount of power, so much so that Microsoft is investing in bringing online the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to ensure uninterrupted electricity to power its AI data centers.

No matter the size of their "farms," solar panels and wind turbines simply cannot produce enough uninterrupted electricity to protect America's AI leadership. Consider this quote from a report issued by the International Energy Association:

"In the United States, power consumption by data centres is on course to account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals."

All of this points to a startling but simple conclusion. Without the means of harnessing a new, clean, inexpensive, inexhaustible source of power through fusion, our nation may face the difficult choice of either powering AI advances to protect our world leadership or keeping the lights on at our industries and cities -- but not both.

This is the reason the Trump administration needs to make research and development into fusion power a national priority that mirrors the Manhattan Project of World War II and the Apollo moon project of the 1960s. Actually, Musk should be one of fusion's biggest champions. Both he and President Donald J. Trump, of all people, know full well what will happen to a nation that loses the race for strategic technology leadership.

© Gatestone Institute