Powering Tomorrow—The White House AI Action Plan's Ambitious Vision for U.S. Infrastructure

While the entire plan signals a significant shift in national technology policy, the second pillar, “Build American AI Infrastructure,” presents the most immediate and tangible opportunities and challenges for companies in the energy, manufacturing, technology, and real estate sectors. This pillar articulates a clear mandate to construct the vast physical backbone—data centers, semiconductor facilities, and power generation—required to support a dominant AI ecosystem, with implications for a wide variety of industries. This alert focuses on the key components of this infrastructure push.

A Brief Overview of the Three Pillars

The AI Action Plan outlines a multi-pronged approach to achieving global AI dominance:

• Pillar I: Accelerate AI Innovation. This pillar focuses on fostering a vibrant private sector by removing burdensome regulations, promoting open-source AI development, protecting free speech in AI models, and accelerating AI adoption across government and key industries.
• Pillar II: Build American AI Infrastructure. Recognizing that AI leadership is contingent on physical infrastructure, this pillar centers on streamlining the development of data centers and the energy grid needed to power them.
• Pillar III: Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security. This pillar aims to export American AI technology to allies, counter foreign influence in global standard-setting bodies, and strengthen export controls on critical AI-related hardware and manufacturing technology.

Deep Dive: Pillar II and the Mandate to ‘Build, Baby, Build!’

The AI Action Plan asserts that America’s path to AI dominance depends on a historic buildout of its digital and energy infrastructure. The plan rejects “bureaucratic red tape” and calls for aggressive policy changes to facilitate rapid development. This translates into significant opportunities for companies across several key areas.

Streamlined Permitting for Data Centers and Energy Projects The plan and the executive order on “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure” directly confront the regulatory hurdles that slow down large-scale construction. They recommend a series of actions aimed at accelerating the permitting process for data centers, semiconductor plants, and energy infrastructure, including:

• Establishing new Categorical Exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to fast-track data center projects
• Expanding the use of the FAST-41 process to cover all eligible data center and related energy projects
• Exploring a nationwide Clean Water Act Section 404 permit tailored for modern data center development
• Directing federal agencies to identify and make federal lands available for data center and power generation construction
• Expanding application of AI to accelerate environmental reviews.

Our environmental team will prepare a deeper analysis of the potential impacts of the plan and related executive orders on environmental regulation, which we expect to release in the near future.

Developing a Grid to Match the Pace of AI The plan acknowledges that the enormous energy demand from AI challenges the nation’s grid capacity. It proposes a comprehensive strategy to enhance and expand the U.S. power grid through three phases: stabilizing the current grid by preventing premature decommissioning of critical power sources; optimizing existing grid resources with advanced technologies; and growing the grid for the future by prioritizing the interconnection of reliable power sources, including enhanced geothermal and nuclear energy.

Revitalizing the Domestic Supply Chain and Workforce Pillar II also includes a renewed focus on restoring American semiconductor manufacturing through a revamped CHIPS Program Office, stripped of extraneous policy requirements. Critically, the plan recognizes the need for a skilled workforce to execute this vision, calling for national initiatives to develop training programs and apprenticeships for high-priority occupations essential to building and maintaining this new infrastructure, such as electricians and advanced HVAC technicians.

Bolstering Cybersecurity for Critical AI Infrastructure The Action Plan recognizes that as AI systems become more integrated with the nation’s physical backbone, they also become critical targets. Pillar II outlines a robust cybersecurity strategy to protect this new infrastructure. Key actions include:

• Promoting Secure-by-Design Principles: The plan calls for ensuring that AI systems used in national security or other critical applications are built from the ground up to be secure, robust, and resilient against adversarial attacks like data poisoning
• Establishing an AI Information Sharing and Analysis Center (AI-ISAC), led by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to promote the sharing of AI-security threat intelligence across U.S. critical infrastructure sectors
• Enhancing Incident Response: The strategy includes updating the federal government’s existing cybersecurity incident response playbooks to specifically address failures or attacks involving AI systems, ensuring a mature and rapid response capability.

Building AI Data Centers for Military and Intelligence Agency Missions The Action Plan calls for steps to facilitate the development of high-security data centers to support the use of AI for the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence Community. The Action Plan calls for creating new technical standards for high-security AI data centers and for advancing the adoption by agencies of classified compute environments to support scalable and secure AI workloads. Pillar I of the Action Plan also outlines steps to accelerate AI adoption within DoD. The Action Plan is among the signs that the adoption of AI within the government may drive potential opportunities for industry.

What This Means for You

The ambitious goals outlined in the AI Action Plan will be executed through complex transactions, innovative project financing, and the successful navigation of a shifting regulatory environment. Vinson & Elkins is closely watching developments in this area. Please reach out to your Vinson & Elkins team to discuss the potential impact of these developments on your business.