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.
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
