It was sold as an AI dinner and played like a telethon for megawatts. Trump worked the room seat-to-seat, asking the world’s richest people how much they’d spend in America—a pledge drive with better cutlery.
The numbers landed like paving slabs. Meta: “at least $600 billion through ’28” in the U.S. Apple: “$600 billion.” Google: “$250 billion in the next two years.” Microsoft: “$75–80 billion per year in the U.S.” Lisa Su said AMD is “building the brains.” Sam Altman promised to “invest a ton,” which is either coyness or a new FASB category.
The exchange rate was clear: compliments for permits, applause for tariff mercy, and very large numbers for electricity. Data centers don’t run on ambition; they run on substations, planning approvals, and neighbors who agree to live next to something that hums like an anxious wardrobe.
“This is definitely a high IQ group,” Trump opened—then the IQ remained seated while the names went for a walk: “Leonardo. Leopold. Leopold.” A few beats later came a wartime stat rendered as, “this week 7,4 people were killed” [sic].
He promised to make permits and electric capacity “very easy,” then dangled tariffs like mistletoe: “We’ll be putting a fairly substantial tariff… unless they build here.” The CEOs clapped the threat because the threat comes bundled with sockets.
Nadella delivered the evening’s smoothest kowtow—“you and your policies are really helping a lot”—the kind of line you say when you need the power company to answer on the first ring. Pichai offered “constructive dialogue” and “some resolution,” while Trump credited Biden for a Google case filed by Trump’s DOJ. History, remixed for vibes. Cook smiled and matched the $600 billion like a man ordering the same wine to avoid a scene. Zuckerberg detonated his number with the casual air of someone who once re-architected society for fun and would now like a grid transformer the size of a bungalow. (Not the Vaswani kind.)
Between courses, the boasts swerved into science fiction. “We’re leading China by a lot—by a really—by a great amount,” as if repetition could waterboard a graph. There were “palaces of genius… as large as Manhattan… more lateral than up and down,” which is urban planning in the style of a child describing a cake.
Meanwhile, on the wholesome channel, the First Lady hosted an AI-education push the same day, collecting corporate pledges with school-fair energy. Lovely. Also handy cover for the main trade: access in exchange for investment theatre. (For avoidance of doubt: these headline figures are commitments—a mix of capex/opex/supplier spend—not a dump truck of cash arriving tomorrow.)
If you’re looking for the adult bit, it’s this. The real industrial policy now happens at the junction box. Whoever controls grid access, permitting speed, and tariff treatment dictates where the “palaces of genius” actually stand. Billions are theatre; megawatts are policy. Without new transmission, transformers, and local consent, pledges produce nothing but warm PR and a queue for diesel backups.
And the contradictions were impossible to miss:
- Applauding a man threatening tariffs on the very supply chains that make your chips.
- Praising a “high IQ group” while misnaming guests and mangling numbers.
- “Voluntary” pledges delivered in a room where permits, power, and antitrust remedies sit on the table like cutlery.
- Credit for a prosecution handed to the wrong administration because it made for a tidier line.
Strip away the flattery and you get a blunt storyboard:
- Praise the host.
- Drop a number ending in “billion.”
- Nudge the levers: permits, grid capacity, tariff waivers, softer remedies.
- Receive a benediction: “in pretty good shape.”
Repeat until dessert.
Call it what it is: a grid-first arms race. The companies will build wherever electrons are cheap and approvals are quick; the White House will award proximity to the switch. If America wants the rectangles that glow at night, it needs to build the unglamorous bits—substations, lines, transformers—and make peace with the communities they bisect. Pledges don’t flip breakers.
By the end, everyone had what they came for. The President got headlines full of numbers; the CEOs got photographed next to the socket. The rest of us got a reminder that the future isn’t decided by slogans about “leading by a lot,” but by who gets to plug in first.