Massive AI Infrastructure Planned in the E.U. and U.S.: A Synergistic Opportunity

The relationship between human and artificial intelligence is a tantalizing but formidable investigative topic requiring much more intelligence than I can proffer. The likelihood of interlarding emotion and desire to warp the former under the gravitational pull of selfishness may render us the weaker party even though, at least as of 2026, we humans still held the strings. That the human mind is not far-reaching enough in its intellectual gaze may be why we are so afraid of the potential of AI as being able at some point to displease our desire to control it (and just about everything else under the Sun). The advent of planned AI gigafactories in the E.U. and giant data centers in the U.S. presented American and European elected officials in 2026 with a synergistic opportunity that, if successfully achieved, could cause a leap in AI while paradoxically showcasing the human mind and thus possibly increasing our confidence in ourselves while decreasing our corresponding fear of AI.

At the AI Action Summit in the E.U. in February, 2025, President von der Leyen announced a plan  to build “up to seven AI gigafactories . . . to train advance AI models and catch up with global tech companies.”[1] Gigafactories “are large-scale computing facilities equipped with state-of-the-art, highly specialised chips designed to train the next generation of AI technologies—notably the most advanced large language models, which require crunching trillions of data points.”[2] So many data points would present the need for huge data centers to house so much data. So it is highly relevant that over in the U.S., in late July, 2026, President Trump announced a plan to repurpose “large chunks of federal land to host enormous data centers and the power plants needed to run them” in order to “accelerate the development of artificial intelligence.”[3] The obvious yet politically challenging synergistic conclusion would be to open both the factories and data centers to both European and American tech companies.

The net gain from specialization and “trade” can be gleamed simply from reading Adam Smith’s famous text, The Wealth of Nations. Getting in the way of such a lucrative “marriage,” with both countries anxious to thwart China’s intent to dominate the tech sector, including AI, was the E.U.’s enormous fine against Google for having operated a search engine in preference to the company rather than its competitors. The Trump Administration’s defense of Google and the E.U.’s less business-friendly Digital Act clashed and this difference could quell any political interests in favor of linking the gigafactories and data centers in spite of the tremendous potential synergy.

Moreover, both the Commission’s “rhetoric about the urgency of catching up with the US and China” and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright hoping that the U.S. “wins the A.I. race” evince a mercantile governmental position that is at odds with joint mega-projects. In his text, Smith argues that the economic advantages to two countries trading with each other as each takes advantage of its comparative advantage vastly exceed economic gain from countries being exclusively oriented to their own gain (and even trying to cause other countries to lose, economically and in terms of AI). Whether a government is trying to maximize its storage of gold and silver or its exclusive AI technology, the resulting technology achievable by E.U. and U.S. firms (and governments) by linking the planned gigafactories to the planned data centers can be anticipated to be much greater. 

Such a feat would take the enlightened self-interest that is in leadership oriented to the long-term. For both the E.U. and U.S., the threat of China’s dominance in AI—in particular, how the autocratic government might use its AI to spy on the West and even undermine Western tech companies and even governments—highlights the self-interest part of enlightened self-interest, which in turn is associated with visionary rather than exclusively transactional leadership. The presidents of the E.U. and U.S. (i.e., the respective heads of the respective executive branches, whom I contend can be regarded as the respective presidents of the respective unions) would have to look past the Commission’s fine against Google (without cancelling the fine, for no common ground on that score need be supposed or demanded as a precondition for broader synergistic relations).

Moreover, high officials of both the E.U. and U.S. would also have to look askance at the natural political interest of each administration to defend and look out for the interests of home tech companies while being unconcerned with or even hostile to giving greater access to tech companies based in the other union. A synergistic agreement with respect to sharing access to the gigafactories and data centers would benefit from a vision of Western civilization out in front on AI as geo-political foes Russia and China are forced to try to catch up rather than dominate and thwart from up front. In this way, foreign policy, trade policy, and tech policy can be seen as dovetailing, which itself implies some synergy. The question in mid-2026 was perhaps whether the human, all too human intelligence of the politicians in high office in the two unions would be enlightened enough over narrow self-interests (both of the unions and the respective politicians themselves!) for artificial intelligence to be able to leverage tremendous synergy. In this relationship, I am afraid that we are the weaker party.

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1. Luca Bertuzzi, “EU Opens Call for Seven ‘Gigafactories’ to Train Next-Generation AI Technologies,” Euronews.com, 30 July, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Brad Plumer, “Energy Dept. Wants to Put Data Centers on U.S. Land,” The New York Times, July 31, 2026. Print edition. Online: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/climate/trump-federal-data-centers.html 

European Priorities Regarding Ukraine

On 5 August, 2026, President Von der Leyen of the E.U. “announced that €1.4 billion in profits from immobilised Russian assets [held in the E.U. would] be allocated after Russia’s deadly strikes on Kyiv.”[1] This response sounds well and good, especially as Ukraine had failed to shoot down all of the missiles and thus was in vital need of American anti-missile weaponry. Yet in spite of this strategic vulnerability, “only €70 million” of the €1.4 billion would be “directed toward military assistance.” The lion’s share of the profits would “be used to repay G7 and EU loans.”[2] In other words, the E.U. Commission was seeing to it that almost all of the profits from Russian assets would go to creditors outside of Ukraine in the E.U. and elsewhere. Because Russia had been serially lobing missiles on civilian targets such as apartment buildings in Ukraine with overwhelming success, and, moreover, occupied at least 20 percent of Ukraine in the east at the time, the Commission’s decision to pay off loans rather than keep them outstanding so much more money than €70 million could be directed to Ukraine’s military defenses. Both ethically and geopolitically, getting the lent money back especially to creditors in the E.U. right away is problematic.

The Commission acting on behalf or in the interest of creditors that are in the E.U. has all the earmarks of an institutional, or structural conflict of interest even though the expedient politics are obvious behind the decision are obvious. In a conflict of interest, typically a relatively narrow, or confined (usually private) benefit is put before satisfying a wider benefit, which can even be viewed as being a duty. A duty to the public good, for example, is eclipsed by a desire to satisfy a more narrow or circumscribed private benefit, whether to oneself or a related party. In this case, the exploitation of the conflict of interest lies in the E.U. prioritizing the relatively narrow private financial benefit of E.U. creditors over the wider, public good of pushing the invading Russians out of Ukraine and thus standing up against military invasion itself.

Although most of the scholars on the conflict-of-interest scenario in ethics have argued that an unexploited institutional conflict of interest is not unethical, I contend that human nature renders such a temptation ethical even though the temptation is in the structure within an organization or inter-organizationally. For President Von der Leyen even to have the power to siphon off most of the profits to lenders in the E.U. is arguably unethical in itself, given the incentive of the underlying expedient politics of preferring one’s own over exogenous groups (e.g., Ukraine). Accordingly, the Council of Ministers, the European Council, and the E.U. Parliament should have passed a federal law mandating that all of the profits go to Ukraine to augment its military.

Also on 5 August, 2026, “Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy . . . called for allies to send more anti-ballistic air defence, after Russian strikes killed at least 17 people overnight.”[3] Von der Leyen’s response to this plea can be put in the following way: Even though we have €1.4 billion at our disposal now, we are giving you only €70 million. Zelensky could be forgiven for thinking, thanks a lot sarcastically even though being thankful for getting anything. For overnight, when the “Russian army sent 115 drones and fired 28 high-speed missiles, including ballistic ones, Ukraine’s military had been “unable to shoot down a single Russian missile” due to “a drastic shortage of anti-ballistic munitions.”[4] The opportunity cost in the Commission’s decision to pay off loans rather than devote the entire amount of profits to Ukrainian defenses was spelled out at the time by Ukraine’s president, who said, “Ballistics interceptors are something that could have saved the lives of those who died today. It is very important that partners realise that delays in their delivery or unwillingness to transfer anti-ballistics leads to such terrible victims and destruction.”[5] Moreover, the Russian advantage in missile offense says, in effect, that it is ok to invade another country that does not pose a threat; furthermore, military power decides geopolitical disputes with impunity. Lest that dogma become the default for international relations, international law can be relegated as an oxymoron in what is a return to a Hobbesian state of nature beyond the nation-state. With so much on the line—big picture—Von der Leyen’s decision to divert so much of the profits to Ukraine’s international creditors can be viewed as a case of Aristotle’s notion of misordered concupiscence: putting a lower good above a higher one. She would have been easily understood were she to have told those creditors that it was more important to buttress Ukraine’s anti-missile (and other) defence than even to make full interest payments because the world needed to show Russia’s President Putin that military aggression does not work in the twenty-first century—that war crimes won’t go unpunished, and of course Ukraine desperately needed anti-missile munitions and weaponry, and fortifying other weaponry wouldn’t hurt Ukraine’s position either.

In short, priorities, especially that interlace geopolitical, business, and military affairs, matter even in terms of what sort of global order might result amid the collapsing post-World War II order. Would international relations boil down to “dog eat dog,” or would even just informal coalitions of nation-states force back aggressive advocates of military might who scoff at international law and norms that constrain political realism (i.e., strategic state interests as hegemonic)? Priorities matter in terms of whether the overblown militaristic forays into Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran would eventually be able to become and even define the status quo in international relations.

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1. Sandor Zsiros, “EU Releases €1.4 Billion to Ukraine from Frozen Russian AssetProfits after Kyiv Attacks,” Euronews.com, 5 August, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Sasha Vakulina, “Ukraine Failed to Shoot Down a Single Russian Missile Launchedin Overnight Barrage,” Euronews.com, 5 August, 2026.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.