Artificial intelligence is poised to be the cornerstone of the next economic era. Its impact will be greater than the industrial and digital revolutions combined. The AI impact will drive productivity, expand individual opportunity, and cement America’s national security dominance. For Texas and the nation, the mandate is clear: lean decisively into the future rather than retreat behind shortsighted regulatory barriers.
Data center moratoriums are a dangerous and gross strategic error for Texas and the United States. Texas built its modern economic phenomenon by aggressively recruiting capital out of high-tax, over-regulated states. Halting new facility permits and freezing grid interconnection throws away that hard-won momentum just as the state stands ready to eclipse Virginia as the world’s top digital infrastructure hub. Turning away billions of dollars in private capital does not protect local communities. It simply sends high-paying jobs and crucial investments to rival states and international competitors — or worse, our adversaries.
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The expanding data center moratorium fallout reaches well beyond state economic implications. It directly affects our national security. Texas serves as the industrial backbone for national defense, housing premier facilities for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, and SpaceX. These aerospace and defense leaders rely directly on advanced local computing power to train autonomous systems, secure sovereign networks, and model battlefield logistics. Data centers are the modern-day steel mill of America’s national defense. If American states intentionally choke off the physical footprint these mission-critical systems require, Beijing will gladly fill the global vacuum.
AI does not run on code and silicon alone. They run on concrete, steel, and round-the-clock electricity. Weather-dependent, intermittent energy generation simply cannot keep industrial-scale, mission-critical facilities online 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. To support the compute surge without destabilizing the ERCOT grid, policymakers must double down on firm, deliverable baseload generation. That means expanding reliable natural gas infrastructure, modernizing transmission corridors, and fast-tracking commercial licensing for advanced nuclear energy, particularly small modular reactors. Streamlining National Environmental Policy Act reviews, clearing state permitting logjams, and actively repurposing industrial brownfield sites make far more economic sense than following restrictive, heavy-handed regulatory bans from Sacramento or Albany.
This is all within the Texas wheelhouse.
Building out capacity, however, does not mean writing Big Tech a blank check. Principled free-market governance champions open competition, not state-sponsored corporate welfare. For over a decade, states across the country have handed out sweeping property and sales tax exemptions to tech conglomerates, draining public coffers while leaving municipalities to shoulder the strain on roads, water treatment plants, and distribution lines.
Hyperscalers must pay their own way. That means footing the bill for direct transmission hookups, dedicated substation upgrades, and closed-loop industrial water systems so everyday residential ratepayers are not stuck subsidizing Silicon Valley profits through higher monthly utility bills. Eliminating preferential tax abatements and cozy backroom deals ensures state policy and elected officials answer to the citizens footing the bills, not corporate lobbyists roaming the halls of the Capitol.
SILICON VALLEY CAN’T OWN THE PENTAGON’S KILL SWITCH
Imposing arbitrary bans is not a conservative solution, nor do they reflect the Texas model of enterprise. Stifling technological growth will not lower electric bills or secure the power grid. It will merely surrender American dominance over the most transformative technology of the 21st century. The conservative solution to surging electricity demand is simple: build an abundance of reliable energy, deregulate, and force corporate developers to bear the full cost of their infrastructure footprint.
Texas has the resources, labor force, and market discipline to anchor continued AI advancement on American soil. We can choose to build the infrastructure that secures the free world, or we can step aside and let China build it instead.
Alfredo Rodriguez III is a high-stakes communications architect and the founder and president of DYCE Communications, a national strategic communications, public affairs, media, and Republican political consulting firm leading strategies at the highest levels of government and politics.