(The Center Square) \u2013 Texas institutions developing nuclear energy and winning the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race are imperative to national security, Gov. Greg Abbott and former Gov. Rick Perry argued at an event in Austin hosted by the Texas Nuclear Alliance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AI race is a race that we absolutely have to win,\u201d Perry said. \u201cWe have to win this AI driven or data center race because the Chinese are making great extraordinary moves and we are behind.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perry co-founded Fermi America, which is partnering with Texas Tech to build the \u201cfirst-of-its-kind behind-the-meter HyperGrid\u2122 campus\u201d that will \u201cintegrate the largest nuclear power complex in America, the nation’s biggest combined-cycle natural gas project, utility grid power, solar power, and battery energy storage to deliver next-generation artificial intelligence,\u201d The Center Square reported.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Being built near Pantex, a primary nuclear facility, it\u2019s projected to deliver up to 11 gigawatts of power and 18 million square feet of AI capacity, it says. It and multiple AI companies have identified the panhandle and oil rich Permian Basin in west Texas as the center of their operations, The Center Square reported.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n “The Chinese are building 22 nuclear reactors today to power the future of AI,” Perry said. “America has none. We’re behind, and it’s all hands-on-deck.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chinese are not building nuclear reactors so that people have more air conditioning in China. They’re not damming the world’s highest river so that they can lower consumer prices for air conditioning in China. They are doing these things in a preliminary act of artificial intelligence war against the United States. This is a fight we must win,\u201d Fermi America cofounder and CEO Toby Neugebauer said. He also said Abbott and the Texas legislature understand that developing nuclear energy and winning the AI race \u201cis about defending western civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n Abbott and the state legislature advanced legislation earlier this year<\/a> to make Texas the nuclear capital of the world; entrepreneurs and Texas universities are working to accomplish this, The Center Square reported.<\/a> But because the U.S. hasn\u2019t invested in developing large scale nuclear energy and infrastructure, AI is needed to help bring facilities online faster, more efficiently and economically, lawmakers and those in the industry argue.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe arc of our planet is changing,\u201d Abbott told a room of several hundred people. He also said winning the nuclear and AI war was imperative to preparing the U.S. for the future of warfare. Future wars won\u2019t occur on battlefields in the Middle East, Russia or Ukraine, he said, but in space: \u201couter space or cyberspace through artificial intelligence, robotics, drones, and satellites.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA satellite has, and will, have the capability of completely eliminating a battleship on the sea, a group of tanks, a brigade of soldiers, whatever the case may be, the battle taken place in space has already occurred,\u201d he said. \u201cThat’s why you see this massive space race,\u201d pointing to the work of SpaceX, which has revolutionized space technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States must achieve world dominance in space,\u201d which involves achieving world dominance in AI, he said. Abbott also cited examples of the U.S. being the first to develop the nuclear bomb, ending World War II, winning the space race in the 1960s, as an analogy for the U.S. achieving AI dominance within the next decade.<\/p>\n AI dominance will be defined over the next 10 years by who wins the modern AI and space race, he said. \u201cThat’s why there’s such an urgent need on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis that we’re all leaning into and striving to win that race. Because the fact of the matter is the future of civilization itself is going to be defined by the winner of that race,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTexas will not cede that ability to the Chinese or to any other country,\u201d Abbott said. The United States must win, and Texas must \u201clead the way for a nuclear power renaissance in the United States to empower our future. Texas must be the epicenter for nuclear power generation or must be the epicenter for nuclear energy supply chain.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n This is why the state legislature created the Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy Office and Abbott appointed its leader, Jarred Shaffer, who helped craft nuclear legislation he signed into law that is already in effect. The state\u2019s $350 million Advanced Nuclear Development Fund was created to encourage investment in Texas, which Abbott says is \u201cthe largest fund of its kind in any state\u201d in the U.S. \u201cIt is replicable, it is scalable. It’s just that we haven’t seen another state commit to it the same way that we have,\u201d he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n He also told those in the industry that the state of Texas \u201cwill do everything we can to accelerate your ability to get across the finish line in whatever project you’re working on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe demand is extraordinary,\u201d he said, but Texas has the resources, structure and strategy \u201cto be able to advance a nuclear renaissance \u2026 and build the future of nuclear power in America.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square) \u2013 Texas institutions developing nuclear energy and winning the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race are imperative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[451,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-13083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-energy","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}