As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, one thing is clear. America is doing what America does best: building the future at an unimaginable, reckless and triumphant scale. The press often compares the current AI boom to the internet age. But that misses the sheer physical scale of what is happening. This isn’t the Internet boom; this is the Railroad Era reborn. As in that era, American growth is narrow, propelled by a frantic race to lay down the AI infrastructure. Just as the government and private titans poured everything into the steel rails, today’s titans are pouring everything into silicon and data centers.

I returned to Notre Dame’s campus on January 13, 1991 for the second semester of freshman year. On Thursday of that week, “Operation Desert Storm” officially began. The U.S. started an intensive bombing campaign after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, supposedly because Kuwait over-produced oil. Iraq was deeply in debt and wanted Kuwait’s oil. The US feared that the move into Kuwait and a further move into Saudi Arabia would give Iraq control of 40% of the world’s oil.