AI’s Next Moat Is Power, Money—and Permission to Build

The Debate

For years, the AI arms race has been narrated as a contest of models: whose system is smarter, faster or cheaper. But a model cannot run on ambition alone. It needs data centers, a reliable supply of electricity, enormous sums of capital—and permission to build where all that infrastructure has to go.

So what is becoming the real competitive moat: access to money and power, or the ability to clear the political and community hurdles around construction? Recent developments point...