Biden Issues Executive Order on Advancing U.S. Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure
President Biden issued an Executive Order on Jan. 14, 2025 to secure American leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) and ensure that the infrastructure needed for advanced AI operations—including large-scale data centers and new clean power infrastructure—can be built with speed and scale in the United States.
According to The White House,
Building AI infrastructure in the United States is a national security imperative. As AI’s capabilities grow, so do its implications for Americans’ safety and security. Domestic data centers for training and operating powerful AI models will help the United States facilitate AI’s safe and secure development, harness AI in service of national security, and prevent adversaries from accessing powerful systems to the detriment of our military and national-security. It will also help prevent America from growing dependent on other countries to access powerful AI tools.
Building AI infrastructure is also vital to America’s continued economic competitiveness. AI is poised to have large effects across our economy, including in health care, transportation, education, and beyond, and it is too important to be offshored. In addition, the significant and growing electricity needs of large-scale AI operations present a new opportunity for advancing American leadership in the clean energy technologies that will power the economy. This infrastructure can and must be built without raising costs for American consumers and in ways that support continued progress on commercializing and deploying clean energy.
The Executive Order directs certain agencies to make federal sites available for AI data centers and new clean power facilities, facilitate this infrastructure’s interconnection to the electric grid, fulfill permitting obligations expeditiously, and advance transmission development around federal sites.
