✨⚡ Can we actually build Stargate?

Massive funding for AI infrastructure may be no match for massive permitting obstacles. That needs to change.

In a White House announcement on Tuesday, President Trump unveiled the ambitious Stargate project, a $500 billion private investment initiative (The New York Times went with a $100 billion number) aimed at building massive AI infrastructure across the United States. The project, backed by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, promises to create over 100,000 American jobs and includes plans for multiple 500,000-square-foot data centers in Texas.

But the Stargate announcement was quickly challenged by Elon Musk, who chairs Trump's government efficiency board. On his social platform X, Musk claimed the companies "don't actually have the money," specifically targeting SoftBank's financial capacity. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded diplomatically, praising Musk as "the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time" while firmly refuting his claims about funding.

Here’s the thing: Full funding may well be a challenge to Stargate, but it probably isn’t going to be the biggest challenge. I just don’t see how it all gets built under the current federal permitting and regulatory regime.

And I’m not the only one who sees the problem. As the BBC noted:

Analysts have warned that the process is likely to be bogged down by issues such as power and land constraints and permitting. Trump, who has claimed credit for fostering business investment, promised he would intervene to help the industry. "I'm going to help a lot through emergency declarations because we have an emergency," he said, stressing the importance of keeping AI in the US. Trump said his government would "make it possible for them to get that production done very easily."

That thicket of rules — the existence of which is a big reason the American technology sector seems to have shifted rightward — was the subject of an event with top experts yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute where I work.

There was much discussion about the National Environmental Policy Act — the cornerstone federal law requiring US agencies to assess and disclose environmental impacts of their proposed actions through systematic review — but other obstacles as well.

I learned a lot. Here are some interesting takeaways that I think will give you a sense of why it’s hard to build in America — and the impact of that burden, especially, on clean energy of all sorts: