The AI Manhattan Project is here
Can you hear the music, America?
The Artificial Intelligence Manhattan Project is here. OpenAI, alongside other tech companies like SoftBank, Oracle, MGX, Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, and more, has begun the StarGate project. Project StarGate plans to invest over 500 billion dollars into AI infrastructure, with $100 billion deployed. This announcement marks one of human history's most significant private investments into technology. The Manhattan Project sat at roughly $30 billion adjusted for inflation. The National Interstate and Defense Highway Act came out to about $400 billion, which coincides with a flurry of executive orders regarding the Council on Environmental Quality and National Environmental Policy Act, which loosens the proverbial knots tied around the construction of energy and other crucial infrastructure. The Project StarGate comes at a comparable price tag to major historical projects with a key distinction: private funding.
This MASSIVE package comes from the private sector alongside a set of regulatory rollbacks from the Trump administration. These actions, all being taken simultaneously, lead me to believe that the great AI expansion is underway—as LLMs become more advanced and efficient, the race to AGI will come sooner, assuming it has not already begun. This is the newest front in the technological Cold War, and we need to make damn sure we win. The race to AGI is going to require manpower, energy infrastructure, and American innovation, which has saved us all the times before. The race has begun, and we haven’t been watching closely enough.
Hold on to your tin foil hats while I pretend to justify this set of mental gymnastics; Project StarGate and the Trump EOs on CEA/NEPA regulation coincide with Zuckerberg announcing Meta will be enlisting AI Software engineers. Just a few days ago, Mark Zuckerberg announced on the Joe Rogan Show that in 2025, Meta aimed to deploy AI software engineers who would work at the level a human engineer would. This marks the most notable automation of human labor by AI, not to ignore the basic labor that has been reduced, but the fullest removal of human labor.
[P]robably in 2025," Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan 10 days ago, "we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of midlevel engineer that you have at your company that can write code."1
This is in addition to the recent reporting by Axios that OpenAI’s Sam Altman had a closed-door meeting with the U.S. government on January 30th to discuss recent internal advances, further stokes my suspicion. It is also important to note that the closed-door meeting coincides with an increasingly aggressive China-cutting undersea internet cables. Recently, the Chinese AI DeepSeek model released itself as open source. Despite the AI aficionados praising the open-source version of Deep-Seek, I am again cautious about praising innovation from China given their history of Intellectual Property theft and data privacy issues.
It has been reported that OpenAI will soon be ready to deploy “PhD level AI-super agents.” The ChatGPT o3 reasoning model will likely come in the next few weeks before the PhD superagents. This rate of advancement has been jarring, and it feels as though every few days there is some significant advancement regardless of where it comes from, be it Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or DeepSeek innovation is here, and its staying, if not increasingly rapid. The schizophrenic conspiracy theorist part of me wants to believe this is the beginning of something much, much bigger.
Still, in all likelihood, this is an expansion of the technological war between the U.S. and China. This race to AGI feels like a simple expansion of the trade war and semi-conductor battle for the technology to rule the globe. The ongoing ‘Cold War’ between China is a battle for technology, innovation, and progress rather than a war of ideological bounds. There is an ideological component of state capitalism vs free markets, overproduction vs market liberalization, a global set of trade practices, and much more. Semi-conductors have been the hidden threat of the last decade and will be the point of contention in the U.S. v China over Taiwan. Now that semiconductors are beginning to be made in the U.S., where does this leave this fight? The new front is Artificial Intelligence.
A better conceptualization of what is happening here is as simple as this: the United States of America and Silicon Valley in an AI Cold War with China. The singularity is still decades away, but AGI may be closer than expected. Frankly, it is a damned good thing that we throw our technological, economic, and innovative might behind such a project. I don't believe we are on the cusp of the singularity. Instead, I think that somewhere in Silicon Valley, there is some consensus that progress and innovation can be massively overhauled (as they should) and that by reducing the regulatory red tape (NEPA, CEQA, CEA review, etc.), the U.S can rapidly innovate in the realm of artificial intelligence.
Trumpicon Valley
One of the most surprising developments in recent years is that Silicon Valley has forged a close alliance with the Trump administration. Rumors had begun swirling in the summer of 2024 that Silicon Valley was considering throwing its weight behind the Trump ticket. This relationship was strengthened by Trump's selection of J.D Vance for the role of Vice President, as during his time as a Venture Capitalist, Vance forged close ties with the industry. Furthermore, in the summer of 2024, Silicon Valley heavyweights like David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, and the biggest of them all, Elon Musk, began backing the former President. Massive flows of cash entered the Trump ticket coffins. This, too, coincided with the Crypto community rallying behind Trump as his pro-business stances, pro-crypto acceptance, and, more likely than not, the alienation of Democrats due to culture war issues and anti-trust efforts of the Biden administration and Fair Trade Commission.
So, why is there a coincidence with Trump back in the White House, Elon Musk acting as shadow president, and Silicon Valley tech giants attending the inauguration? As I see it, the AI Cold War has begun, and we are now in a race to Automated General Intelligence. On day 1 of his Presidency, Trump announced a flurry of Executive Orders, most of which rolled Biden’s Executive Orders back and dismantled Federal Government directives. I would argue that most of the EOs fall on the harmful side of the spectrum, with a few of them being outright dangerous (looking at your birthright citizenship EO); however, among the bunch were a few that snuck by. One of the orders about redirecting the Council on Environmental Quality to streamline environmental investigations, thus significantly weakening NEPA and expediting the regulatory process, caught my attention.
While sitting in my gym at roughly 10 pm, this particular E.O. caught my eye, as it appears this rollback is a step in the right direction in cutting environmental green tape and building things in America. Most executive orders involve revoking Biden’s orders or rolling back older directives. One could even argue that most of these are just outright useless, dead in court, or simple messaging, but the NEPA/CEA order is striking. I am by no means a NEPA expert like, Thomas Hochman, for better analysis, see the post below. Thomas provides a far better (and far more experienced) look into the permitting EO and exactly its ramifications. His publication, Green Tape, is a personal favorite of mine and is worth a read.
More importantly, I think the culmination of factors—supply-side constraints, Trump’s so-called “Unleashing American Energy,” an AI cold war, regulatory chokeholds, and an increasingly aggressive China all come together to form an image of what I hope the future holds; An America that is ready to meet the needs of the future by rapidly building energy infrastructure to meet the demands from tech and civilian populations. I choose to focus on the Executive Orders that may make substantive change in a positive direction rather than the culture war symbolism of the other orders.
Silicon Valley is in the driver's seat, both of tech, the U.S. government, and the fate of the U.S. vs. China.. and I am far from certain whether that gives me hope or means we have already lost. Silicon Valley higher-ups have been staffing inside the White House and its related executive agencies. Marc Andreessen, Scott Kupor, Sriram Krishnan, and David Sacks, among many others, are poised to play significant roles in the upcoming administration. As it has been less than 3 days of the new administration, the true extent of Silicon Valleys’ influence has yet to be seen, however the influence prominent VC’s and tech leaders have at the onset of the admin again give me both hope and fear for their goals.
Part of me hopes that these Venture capitalists, techno-futurists, mostly center-right tech folks envision an America that is more advanced, wealthy, and secure than ever. Another part of me hopes that they see the failures of the Bay Area regarding regulation, permitting, and that role in stalling growth—focusing the administration’s efforts towards greater efficiency in the private and public sectors. I, too, hope they see the benefits of using green energy to lower costs and create cheap, abundant energy without damaging the climate more than we have. In my darker moments, I fear that their goals are out of alignment with the American public and that the need for technological innovation and wealth will fail to benefit the common man. At this time, I sit patiently and hope for the best.
Race for AGI
The emergence of the AI Cold War was fueled by massive investments like Project StarGate and the curious convergence of Silicon Valley's ambitions with government priorities. This is not just another arms race in code; it’s a reordering of geopolitics, economics, and society. The stakes are immense: competing power blocs, increasingly sophisticated cyber warfare, restructured supply chains, and the specter of widespread social and economic upheaval. At its core, this AI Cold War isn’t simply about technological supremacy; it’s a clash of visions for the future. On one side is the United States, leveraging Silicon Valley’s innovation engine; on the other is China, a rising AI superpower with its shadowy strategic playbook.
The dividing lines are deepened by the rise of AI-powered cyber weapons, tools capable of crippling infrastructure, manipulating financial systems, and disseminating disinformation at scale. These aren’t hypothetical risks—they’re inevitabilities in a world where economic disruption and geopolitical instability are being coded into the system. This showdown is the culmination of the last few decades of rivalry and competition between the shadowy state capitalism of China and the United States. The Chip War seems to have ended in a small victory for the United States. Crucial semi-conductor manufacturing has exploded in the U.S as a result of the CHIPs act, with the Arizona TSMC factory is up and running. There continue to be issues such as permitting issues, labor shortages, and other funding/construction rules largely a symptom of the stringent Federal environmental permitting regulations. I don’t see this as a coincidence that Trump’s E.O. significantly weakened NEPA and the influence of Silicon Valley on the White House as a mere coincidence.
To meet the needs of the future, Project StarGate is a crucial step in winning this technological race, and I pray for its success. Given the proverbial red tape being reduced to allow the construction and rapid build-up of both technological and human infrastructure to occur, combined with the past few years of semiconductor manufacturing in the United States, the time is now to unleash the real might of American manufacturing. Build the energy infrastructure necessary to feed innovation, build the housing required to accommodate the workers who will innovate, and by god, Pray that we are the victors in this race. In today’s supply-constrained economy, the way out is by increasing supply, building MORE rather than LESS.
The AI Manhattan Project is here, and for the sake of the United States, for the free world, and for the future of technological innovation, I pray we come out the victors.
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/19/ai-superagent-openai-meta