“The AI policy is the latest manifestation of the White House’s approach to many economic issues: centralized government actions in an attempt to sidestep normal economic policies. It starts with high tariffs…. Then there is direct interference in the economy.”
President Donald Trump has launched a national industrial policy backing artificial intelligence in a self-proclaimed race against China for world AI dominance. It’s called the “Genesis Mission” (not to be confused with the 1997 Sci Fi Channel TV series Mission Genesis).
On Thanksgiving week (Nov. 24), Trump promulgated Executive Order 14303, “Launching the Genesis Mission.” It proclaims, “Today, America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth.”
The executive order added:
…In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories.”
“Ideas have consequences. Even new pathbreaking ones that are shaking the foundations of the Federal Power Act of 1935 and state public utility regulation.”
The Department of Energy has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to federalize and streamline the connection of large data centers to the interstate transmission grid. DOE last week (Oct. 23) sent FERC a 16-page draft notice of proposed rule making, asking the commission to enact the new, unprecedented rule by the end of April, which is unlikely.
Under the DOE proposal, FERC would take over interconnection decisions for “large load” data centers, defined as those with a load of 20 MW or greater. These decisions are now made by regional transmission organizations, such as the PJM Interconnection, or by state regulatory agencies.
The DOE proposed rule states:
…In light of the unprecedented current and expected growth of large loads seeking to interconnect to the transmission system, and to provide open access and non discriminatory access to the transmission system, it has become necessary to standardize interconnection procedures and agreements for such loads, including those seeking to share a point of interconnection with new or existing generation facilities (hybrid facilities).
“A few states are bucking the national trend to prop up, temporarily, EV production. Domestic output is falling, which leaves foreign EV makers. The states do not have the federal “buy American” limit that applies to the batteries and internals of qualified EVs, however, which means that Japan’s Toyota bZ4x and Belgium’s Volvo’s EX30 could be the subsidized winners in an overall declining market.”
Biden administration $7,500 tax subsidy for purchasing electric vehicles, which helped propel a boom in battery electric vehicles (EVs), expired effective October 1st pursuant to the Big Beautiful Bill. Trump has long professed a distaste for this automotive technology, except for his EV photo-op in July when he turned the White House south lawn into a new car lot for Tesla cars to promote Elon and DOGE.…