IFP Roundup: Special Compute Zones, NEPA guidance, and more
No big announcements this week, just a bunch of great links — enjoy!
🔗 Links from IFP
The US needs “Special Compute Zones” to rapidly and securely build AI clusters: We published the final piece in our “Compute in America” series. Director of Infrastructure Policy Arnab Datta and Director of Emerging Technology Policy Tim Fist explain specific executive actions the Trump administration could take to accelerate the AI buildout in exchange for higher security commitments.
“We propose that the federal government establish ‘Special Compute Zones’ — regions of the United States where AI clusters at least 5 gigawatts in size can be rapidly built through coordinated federal action, eventually totaling tens to hundreds of gigawatts across the country. Special Compute Zones would rely on strategic partnerships with top AI labs and computing firms. The government should help finance next-generation power plants and expedite permitting processes. In return, the government should require commitments from top AI and computing firms to invest in security and protect strategically important AI technology from the United States’ adversaries.”
NEPA needs new agency guidance following Trump’s EO: Infrastructure Fellow Aidan Mackenzie and FAI Director of Infrastructure Thomas Hochman proposed some recommendations for the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to consider following an executive order that rescinded previously binding CEQ regulations on NEPA implementation.
“We offer three reforms to pare NEPA back to fulfill its true statutory goals. First, to narrow the set of actions that trigger NEPA, CEQ should redefine ‘major federal action’ to ensure that projects with low levels of federal involvement do not trigger NEPA. Second, to expand the set of actions that are eligible for a CatEx, CEQ should set a clear and broad standard for actions that ‘normally [do] not have a significant effect on the human environment.’ Third, to narrow the set of actions that require an EIS, CEQ should set a high standard for what constitutes a ‘reasonably foreseeable’ significant effect. In each case, CEQ should be careful to reduce the litigation attack surface for agencies, advising agencies to consider issues like indirect effects under minimal scrutiny.”
Judicial review should be the top permitting reform priority: Arnab Datta and James Coleman wrote an article for City Journal making the case for bipartisan permitting reform to focus on solving the "litigation doom loop” that often ensnares energy infrastructure projects.
“What’s needed is a solution that ends the courts’ discretion to hold up a project indefinitely but allows for strictly time-limited review. We propose that courts receive a maximum of four years to block a project, beginning when environmental review starts. If a NEPA review is genuinely rushed, the courts can halt the project for the rest of the four years to ensure sufficient review time. But after four years, the project could go forward even if a court believes the agency’s review is inadequate. The court could still require the agency to do more review, but it could no longer delay the project.”
Why the two parties operate differently: Senior Editor Santi Ruiz interviewed Jo Freeman, a founding member of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s, a civil rights campaigner, and later a political scientist.
“I've been thinking about the political cultures of the two parties for a very long time. I've been to every Democratic convention since ‘64 and every Republican convention since ‘76. I've been particularly focused on what women were doing within the two parties, although I'll admit that in ‘64 they weren't really doing very much. In ‘76, they both were doing a lot, but they were doing it differently. Because I saw feminists do things differently in the different parties, I began to ask myself, ‘Why?’”
How to budget for the SEC: And in the second installment of his two-part interview with his dad, Santi asks about his experience as the Executive Director of the SEC during the financial crisis.
“There is this highly instructive story that makes the rounds in budget circles in Washington about a former head of the Army Corps of Engineers who was asked that question in his Senate appropriations hearing on the Hill. This head of the Army Corps of Engineers took the opportunity to say, ‘No, I think we're being underfunded in the President's request. I really don't think we're equipped to carry out our mission and we need more.’ He was on the street looking for work practically the next day.”
Why is homeowners insurance getting so expensive? In the wake of the Palisades Fire, Senior Infrastructure Fellow Brian Potter did a deep dive on homeowners insurance.
“To sum up, homeowners insurance costs have risen steadily and substantially since the 1970s. Construction cost inflation and increasing home size can probably only explain a small portion of the increase. Insurers’ profits don’t seem to be a driver, and neither does state-level population shifts: the cost increases are across the board, in essentially every state… Looking at data from types of claims filed, the increasing frequency and severity of wind and hail damage is responsible for around half the increase in insurance losses over the past two decades, despite the fact that loss ratios in most wind and hurricane-prone states seem to be down. Fire risk is a relatively small portion of the increase. And another major source of increase isn’t anything related to climate at all, but due to the increasing frequency and severity of water damage.”
Red tape is holding back clean energy deployment: Co-founder Alec Stapp was interviewed by Freethink about the regulatory barriers to building more solar, wind, geothermal, and nuclear power in the US.
Most people are wrong about what DeepSeek means for US-China competition on AI: Tim Fist went on The Dynamist podcast alongside FAI Chief Economist Sam Hammond to talk about what the new model from China’s leading AI lab should tell us about the efficacy of US export controls and whether China has caught up to the US.
🤝 Links from friends of IFP
Supersonic flight hit a new milestone — but we still need policy change: In honor of Boom’s supersonic flight achievement, re-read the classic white paper from Eli Dourado and Sam Hammond on what policy changes still need to happen to Make America Boom Again.
Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment: Andy Masley debunks some common myths surrounding water usage and power consumption for AI applications.
“One of the most important shifts in talking about climate has been the collective realization that individual actions like recycling pale in comparison to the urgent need to transition the energy sector to renewables. The current AI debate feels like we’ve forgotten that lesson. After years of progress in addressing systemic issues over personal lifestyle changes, it’s as if everyone suddenly started obsessing over whether the digital clocks in our bedrooms use too much energy and began condemning them as a major problem.”
Do prediction technologies help novices or experts more? Matt Clancy looks at the research literature to figure out who will benefit most from using AI tools.
“The impact of future AI on scientists and inventors will depend on your assumptions about what future AI will do well and how much that overlaps with existing expertise. My own view is that the current AI paradigm is going to keep getting better at identifying useful patterns in data, whether the protein data bank or the corpus of scientific journal articles. So to the extent an expert’s work is primarily based on mining patterns from data, AI is potentially going to erode their advantages over novices.”
Speculative Technologies announces the 2025 class of Brains Fellows: Brains provides training, mentorship, and connections to help scientists and technologists design and execute on coordinated research programs (like a DARPA program manager would).
👋 Tweet for the Road
"“One of the most important shifts in talking about climate has been the collective realization that individual actions like recycling pale in comparison to the urgent need to transition the energy sector to renewables." No, the energy sector needs to be shifted to (deregulated) nuclear, not unreliables.