There is a reason China watches the White House more closely than it watches Congress. Executive will beats legislative inertia every single time, and when President Donald Trump signed his executive order on July 23, 2025 titled Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure, he made one thing crystal clear: America is not interested in second place.
For those of us who believe in American strength, free markets, and the kind of bold national vision that built this country, Trump’s AI data center push is exactly what leadership looks like. Love him or challenge him on style, the substance here is sound.
Cutting the Red Tape That Was Strangling Us
One of the first things the executive order did was revoke a Biden-era order that would have buried AI data center development on federal lands under pages of DEI and climate requirements. The previous administration looked at one of the most consequential infrastructure races in American history and decided the top priority was making sure the paperwork checked the right ideological boxes.
Trump looked at that same situation and chose a different word: build.
The order directs federal agencies to streamline permitting reviews, provide financial support, and utilize federal land for the expeditious development of data centers, with a focus on high-capacity projects for AI and national security. That is the kind of action conservatives have been demanding for decades. Less government obstruction, more American output.
The “Winning the Race” Framework
On July 23, 2025, the White House unveiled “Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” a roadmap built on three pillars: accelerating AI innovation by removing regulatory barriers, building America’s AI infrastructure needed to support AI at scale, and establishing American AI as the global standard through diplomacy and security.
Three pillars. Clean, direct, and unapologetically America First. This is the kind of strategic clarity the federal government rarely produces, and frankly it reads more like something a serious CEO would write than anything that came out of Washington in the previous four years.
The administration’s own AI Action Plan did not mince words about why this matters. It stated plainly that America’s environmental permitting system and other regulations make it nearly impossible to build this infrastructure in the United States with the speed required. That is a remarkable admission from a sitting administration, and it is also completely true. Anyone who has watched a pipeline, a refinery, or a power plant get delayed for years by procedural bureaucracy knows exactly what that statement means.
Federal Land, Federal Will
The order directs the Department of the Interior, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense to authorize data center construction on appropriate federal lands. And the administration followed through fast. Just one day later, the Department of Energy announced four site selections including Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and Savannah River Site for public-private development projects.
Why This Is a Values Issue, Not Just a Tech Issue
Some conservatives have been slow to engage with AI policy because it feels abstract. It does not feel like a border or a ballot. But the competition with China over artificial intelligence infrastructure is one of the defining national security questions of our era, and pretending otherwise is a luxury we cannot afford.
The White House views artificial intelligence as essential to economic competitiveness and national security, and the success of American technology firms as vital to both. That framing is correct. A country that cannot build is a country that cannot lead. And a country that cannot lead will eventually answer to one that can.
Ben Sasse spent years in the Senate warning anyone who would listen that America’s greatest long-term threat was complacency, the quiet erosion of the can-do national spirit that built everything worth defending. Trump’s AI data center agenda, whatever its imperfections, is the opposite of complacency. It is a loud, unambiguous declaration that the United States intends to win.
The left will call it reckless. The regulatory class will call it corner-cutting. Nebraskans who understand what it means to build something from the ground up will probably just call it common sense.
Build, baby, build. We mean it.
