President Biden will sign an executive order Tuesday aimed at reducing barriers to construct new data centers and the accompanying energy infrastructure needed to power the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
The executive order directs the Department of Energy and Department of Defense to select federal sites that can be leased to companies to build “gigawatt-scale” data centers, while employing the Department of the Interior to identify available lands to build clean energy infrastructure to support the new data centers.
The administration also aims to prioritize the “full and expeditious” permitting of these sites and help facilitate the development of transmission lines and interconnection to the grid.
“Currently, the market for AI infrastructure is deeply constrained,” Navtej Dhillon, deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the White House Economic Council, told reporters on a call Monday.
“Not only are these investments capital intensive, but power constraints and powering challenges result in long lead times to bring data centers to market,” he added.
In order to lease these sites, companies will be required to pay for building, operating and maintaining the data centers and securing clean power to match their energy needs. They also must collaborate with the government to evaluate the national security risks of the AI models they develop and purchase an “appropriate” share of American-made semiconductors.
“The United States leads the world at the frontier of artificial intelligence (AI),” Biden said in a statement.
“However, we cannot take our lead for granted,” he added. “We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water.”
The executive order comes on the heels of a new framework released by the Biden administration Monday that seeks to place controls on the “diffusion” of American-made AI, particularly advanced AI chips.
The “diffusion” rule, which was immediately rebuked by the semiconductor and chips industry, places new restrictions on chip sales to most countries around the world, excluding a handful of U.S. allies.
“The president’s executive order on AI infrastructure really represents the flip side of that effort,” Tarun Chabra, deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for technology and national security, said on Monday’s call.
“As we take steps to ensure the responsible diffusion of AI technology abroad, it’s really vital that we ensure that the AI industry can build out the infrastructure for training and using powerful AI models here in the United States,” he added.
