Master the Electron, Master the Future

National power now rests on cheap and reliable energy. In an era of automation and artificial intelligence, electricity determines whether a state can scale its production and strategic capability. Those who fail to secure it will lose relevance as their industries and data migrate elsewhere. This logic of energy as the prime resource today runs through the heart of fierce great power geoeconomic competition.

The history of production is the story of replacing human labour with energy mediated by capital. From the Industrial Revolution to the current drive for hyper-automation, access to cheap power has allowed machines to do the work of people. Today, this logic has reached its final stage. In China’s “dark factories,” robots work continuously without lights or heat.

These facilities do not need to mobilise a massive workforce because they rely on a constant flow of electricity. In this environment, energy is no longer a supporting cost. It has become the primary factor of production. A country’s economic ceiling is now set by how many machines it can run and how cheaply it can power them.

The data shows that the United States is losing its lead in this race. China now generates more than twice as much electricity as the US. While US capacity lags due to regulatory friction and ageing infrastructure, Beijing is adding power, especially in clean energy, at a pace the West cannot match.

Technology leaders have consistently been warning that electricity is the main constraint on American AI development. OpenAI recently urged policymakers to treat electricity as a strategic asset to meet the massive demand of future computing systems.

Abundance is only half the battle. Energy must also be cheap. Automation and AI operate on tight margins. High electricity prices drive production toward cheaper nations. On the other hand, cheaper electricity acts as a subsidy across the sectors, including but not limited to manufacturing, computation and logistics. States with low energy prices gain a permanent edge. Those with expensive power are forced to de-industrialise.

A critical feedback loop now binds energy to intelligence. Because ‘scaling laws’ indicate that AI capability scales significantly with power input, electricity effectively becomes the raw material of cognition. Surplus power enables the training of superior AI models, which in turn unlock solutions to intractable engineering hurdles.

Consequently, electricity transcends its role as fuel for the current economy to become the generative force that invents the next one. By securing this recursive cycle, a nation gains a compounding advantage that becomes mathematically impossible to catch.

This logic is reflected in the laws of nature. Every living thing on Earth is essentially a machine designed to capture and use solar energy. Human civilisation is no different. Scientists use the Kardashev scale to measure how advanced a civilisation is based on its ability to harvest energy.

A “Type 1” civilisation harnesses all the energy that reaches its planet from its star. We are currently far below that level, but the potential is vast. The sun provides more energy in one hour than humanity uses in a year. Our limitation is not a lack of supply, but our current inability to store and move what the sun provides.

If we can remove the energy bottleneck, we can solve almost any other problem. Most global crises are actually just energy problems in disguise. Desalination can provide endless fresh water, but energy accounts for nearly half the total production cost.

Vertical farming can grow food anywhere if the electricity for lights is cheap enough. With enough power, we could even pull carbon directly from the atmosphere. By mastering energy, we can effectively end scarcity.

Materialising this potential requires treating energy capacity expansion as a core national security imperative. Governments must loosen the chokehold of regulatory red tape on power infrastructure construction and transmission. Focusing on the supply side and lowering the production costs would be a welcome decision, as it would, in turn, raise demand.

In a clean energy configuration, the baseload can be entrusted to nuclear power while other clean power generation methods, like solar, can be tapped for scale. Without a wartime mobilisation to harness energy, technological progress is bound to hit a wall.

Traditional measures of national strength, such as population size or GDP, are rapidly becoming obsolete. This calls for a more accurate, multidimensional measure of development that takes into account energy production, sustainability, and per capita income, in addition to GDP and GNP.

The emerging global order will be determined by these metrics, especially “electrical economics,” where sovereignty hinges on securing the massive, low-cost energy required to dominate AI and industrial automation.

The future belongs to the state with the political will to modernise its grid and master the electron, while those who fail to scale their energy infrastructure will inevitably be left behind.