By INCOMPAS CEO Chip Pickering
Decades from now when historians discuss the AI race, they will talk about AI models and the new companies that entered the marketplace. But more importantly, they will write about whether America built the infrastructure fast enough to matter. The transmission lines, the fiber routes, the data centers and the permitting systems that either enabled deployment at scale or became the reason America fell behind.
That reckoning is not a future problem. It is happening now, in committee rooms, regulatory dockets and local permitting offices across the country. The decisions made in Washington this year on grid modernization, broadband deployment will determine whether American AI leadership holds or erodes.
INCOMPAS represents the companies building and maintaining that infrastructure. Our members are laying fiber, constructing gas pipelines and transmission lines, building data centers and negotiating agreements, all while unpredictable timelines for transmission siting and interconnection slow down their progress to deployment. What we see from that vantage point should concern every member of Congress who believes America has to win the AI race against China.
Innovation Must Scale with Rising Energy Needs
As debates rage on Capitol Hill on the best path forward with regulations, the stakes are constantly climbing. Data centers are projected to increase U.S. power demand by 160% by 2030, while transmission costs have also increased. The United States will need at least 100 gigawatts of new power capacity in the next five years, more than current projections suggest we will bring online. That gap is the difference between American companies having the power to train and run next-generation AI models domestically, or having to look elsewhere.
Legislation like Representative Fedorchak’s High-Capacity Grid Act corrects that by directing FERC to establish a best-available transmission conductor standard. Utilities seeking to recover transmission costs from ratepayers would be required to use the highest-capacity, highest-efficiency and lowest-sag conductors commercially available for new and rebuilt interstate lines. It is a targeted intervention with a clear rationale that notes if ratepayers are paying for infrastructure that will last decades, they deserve infrastructure built to carry the loads of the next decade, not the last one.
The Permitting Problem that Remains Unsolved
Grid modernization and broadband deployment will matter only as much as the permitting system allows it to. This is where INCOMPAS pushes hardest, because our members run into the same walls whether they are building transmission lines or attempting to cross railroad tracks to buildout fiber networks.
Consider what competitive providers face today. Permitting approvals that should take weeks routinely stretch to months or years, long enough that fully funded projects are abandoned and communities that were weeks away from connectivity end up waiting years more. When families in rural towns can’t get online, when students have to sit in parking lots to access Wi-Fi, or when small businesses lose opportunities because broadband stops at the edge of a railroad crossing, we know something is broken.
The same dynamic plays out in energy infrastructure, where projects with completed environmental reviews sit in interconnection queues for years, waiting on permit decisions that cross multiple federal agencies with no coordination requirement and no clock. When a fiber route or transmission line serves a data center that is genuinely part of American AI infrastructure, the permitting timeline should reflect that priority.
Now is the Time to Act
As AI and hyperscale infrastructure drive the fastest growth in electricity and network demand in decades, Congress has the opportunity to accelerate deployment, unlock investment, and ensure the United States leads in the AI era.
INCOMPAS and its members will be at the table for all of it. The companies building America’s AI infrastructure are not waiting for perfect policy. They are building now, against real deadlines, in a global race with a well-resourced competitor that does not share our hesitation to act. Congress should match that urgency.
