“We gotta win the AI arms race” – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

“The real existential threat right now is not a degree of climate change. It’s the fact that we could lose the arms race if we don’t have enough power.”

Fire up the gas turbines, says US Interior Secretary: We gotta win the AI arms race

Climate change? No worry – we can solve that later, argues Doug Burgum

Brandon Vigliarolo 
Fri 12 Sep 2025  // 20:59 UTC 

You would think that the government official responsible for safeguarding the US’ natural resources would be opposed to abandoning climate change mitigation pledges in favor of firing up fossil fuels to power AI development. 

This is the Trump administration, however, so you’d be wrong. 

Speaking at a natural gas industry event in Italy this week, US Interior Secretary and former software exec Doug Burgum said that the true existential threat facing the world is America losing the AI arms race. Sure, climate change and its effect on future generations worry him, but “that’s all solvable,” Burgum said. 

“Yes, I’m worried about the future,” said Burgum, who sold the accounting software company Great Plains to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001, well before starting his political career. As he put it, “The real existential threat right now is not a degree of climate change. It’s the fact that we could lose the arms race if we don’t have enough power.”

…

Read more: https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/12/fire_up_gas_turbines_ai_race/

A video of the speech is available here.

The race for the ultimate AI is the race for cultural supremacy. The winner of the AI race will have the power to outsmart opponents on every level, they will know every weakness of their opponents and exactly how they should exploit that weakness to achieve geopolitical goals.

If the USA wins the race, US cultural values will dominate the world for the foreseeable future, and other societal systems like Chinese communism and European and Canadian socialism will be overthrown. If another power wins the AI race, their cultural values will dominate the world – it will be the USA and US constitution which will be overthrown, as irresistibly well prepared agents of influence sow confusion and tear away at the foundations of the Republic, until the structure collapses and the nation reforms around new value systems.

The cold war arms race is back on, except this time everyone is building ever more powerful AIs, and the power infrastructure to keep them running. What is left of the “green revolution” will be trampled in the rush to build real energy assets.