By Breitbart News Network | Created at 2026-10-03 22:26:37 | Updated at 2026-10-03 23:50:43
3 hours ago
More than four decades ago, Ronald Reagan reminded Americans that freedom cannot be taken for granted. His warning carries new meaning today as the United States competes with China for leadership in artificial intelligence.
China is closing the gap. America remains ahead in critical areas, but whether that advantage lasts will depend not simply on algorithms or software. It will depend on the strength, skill, and determination of American workers and our willingness to build the infrastructure they need.
In 1980, Reagan warned that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. He said preserving freedom required more than resolve. It required action.
As America marks its 250th year, we face a test Reagan would have recognized. An authoritarian adversary is rising. A technology race carries profound consequences for our prosperity and national security. And another generation of Americans must decide whether it has the will to compete.
The answer must be yes.
The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI’s 2026 AI Index illustrates both America’s advantage and the intensity of the global technology race. The United States hosts 5,427 data centers, more than 10 times the number in any other country.
That infrastructure is more than an economic asset. It is a strategic foundation we must continue strengthening.
Americans have always answered the call to build what the nation needed. They built factories and farms, power systems and highways, universities and communications networks, and the industrial capacity that helped win two world wars. Today, that tradition continues in advanced manufacturing plants, semiconductor facilities, energy projects, and data centers.
America does not simply inherit its strength. American workers create it.
The infrastructure of the AI age is increasingly critical to our economic and national security. It includes energy, semiconductors, data centers, computing capacity, and, most importantly, the skilled workers needed to build and operate them.
These investments support hospitals, schools, manufacturers, logistics networks, first responders, and the secure digital systems that power modern commerce and government. They will also help determine whether the United States or China sets the pace in technologies that will shape the global economy for decades.
That is about more than competitiveness. It is about maintaining American technological leadership and the economic and security advantages that come with it.
The future will not be built by algorithms alone. It will be built by electricians, engineers, construction workers, technicians, machinists, and countless others who turn investment into American capability.
American technological leadership will not be sustained by innovation alone. It will depend on the workers who build, operate, and maintain the infrastructure that makes that innovation possible.
Free markets, not government mandates, should drive this development. Private capital is already moving. Amazon is among the companies making major, long-term investments in American cloud infrastructure because communities across the country have the workforce, land, energy infrastructure, and other assets necessary to make these projects possible.
Government’s role should be straightforward. It should set clear rules, enforce accountability, and allow private enterprise to do what it does best.
Communities also have every right to ask hard questions about energy and water use, tax arrangements, and the commitments developers make. Good projects should withstand scrutiny. Developers should provide clear answers and be accountable to the communities where they operate.
But responsible oversight should not become an obstacle to responsible growth. The jobs, investment, tax revenue, and strategic benefits associated with data center development are too significant to surrender because America made itself unnecessarily difficult to build in.
Capital is mobile. Technology companies can choose where to invest. If the United States makes critical infrastructure harder to build here, those investments can go elsewhere, along with the jobs, innovation, and computing capacity they create.
Reagan understood that America’s strength was never accidental. Free people built it by making difficult choices, taking risks, and doing the work.
In America’s 250th year, we face another such choice.
We can build the energy, computing, and industrial infrastructure necessary to sustain American leadership through the AI age, or we can watch more of that investment move beyond our borders while our competitors accelerate.
For 250 years, American workers, entrepreneurs and communities have chosen to build. This generation should do the same.
Ken Blackwell served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and served on the boards of the U.S. Air Force Academy Foundation and the International Republican Institute. He is a senior fellow for human rights and constitutional governance at the Family Research Council and a national bestselling author.
