The Future Runs on Watts: energy, power, and the new Cold War

Can a society prosper while consuming little energy?

The answer, though uncomfortable, is clear: no.

Throughout history, every major human advancement has been driven by one thing. More than ideals or discoveries, by the ability to produce and harness energy.

From fire to coal. From oil to fission. From muscles to motors. Every civilizational leap has, at its core, been an energy leap. And today, we are on the brink of another one. One that will not just transform industries, but also the way innovation is distributed across the world.

What is unfolding between the United States and China is not a war, nor a conflict. It is a strategic race. A global dynamic that, although guided by national interests, is generating positive ripple effects at a planetary scale: more investment, more infrastructure, more technological advancement.

At the heart of this sustained competition lies a shared engine: energy.

Even if we do not always notice it, many of the decisions we make are shaped by this logic. The cars we choose, the technologies we adopt, the sectors that attract capital, everything is influenced by that shared urge to move faster and go further.

For decades, the United States set the pace for the world. But in recent years, China has been adding energy, manufacturing, and technological capacity at a staggering rate, roughly the equivalent of building a new United States every 18 months. That speed, far from being a threat, works as a wake-up call: it activates reflexes, accelerates decisions, and awakens dormant capabilities.

The U.S., pushed by this competition, is regaining a sense of urgency. And that reaction, inevitably, becomes contagious. What begins as rivalry ends up driving shared progress.

And this is not just about batteries or solar panels. It is about understanding that whoever controls energy, its generation, storage, and cost, will hold a structural advantage in determining which technologies succeed and which do not.

The race for artificial intelligence, for example, is not just about algorithms. It also involves data centers, cooling systems, and available gigawatts. In that space, China moves fast. While one part of the world focuses on software, the other is perfecting the energy hardware that makes it all possible.

Within our portfolio, this relationship between energy and computation is already taking shape. Different but interconnected layers of innovation are showing how the future of grids, storage, space, and AI efficiency can converge. Splight is bringing flexibility to power grids, making it possible for renewable energy to integrate efficiently into systems that were never designed for it. Dynami builds the batteries that allow that energy to be stored and released precisely when it is needed, stabilizing grids and enabling new industries. Novo Space extends this flow beyond Earth, with space computing that strengthens telecommunications and distributed processing on a global scale. VMind tackles the computing bottleneck head-on, with a Virtual Processing Unit software that multiplies the efficiency of generative AI while cutting its energy costs. And Falcomm, from the very core of telecommunications, is reinventing wireless power amplifiers, doubling energy efficiency across 5G, 6G, and satellite networks. Different fronts, but all converging on the same outcome: expanding humanity’s capacity to generate, move, and use energy more intelligently.

These examples show that energy is not just infrastructure, it is the invisible foundation that enables the rest of the transformations.

The U.S., for its part, faces the challenge of moving beyond quarterly calculations and thinking in decades again. The question “how much does this return?” is slowly giving way to “where is this taking us?”. And that shift is already underway.

Meanwhile, China operates with a logic that was once American: fast execution, long-term vision, few restrictions. It brings to mind the golden era of U.S. innovation between the 1930s and 1960s. Today, that drive seems to have moved hemispheres.

While one power builds, the other reacts. While one executes, the other reinvents itself.

At the same time, we are entering a new stage of global reindustrialization. But it looks nothing like the “industry” we knew in the 20th century. This time, it is about autonomous factories, powered by AI, where physical production and computational processing merge.

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, summed it up clearly: “every industrial company will be an AI company.” Every company that manufactures something will also be training models. Every production line is also a data pipeline.

And here lies a profound shift in the geography of production. If factories used to be located where labor was cheapest, now they will be where energy is most affordable.

Today, China does not just produce more cheaply. It produces faster, at scale, and with a clear geopolitical goal. It is not looking to win a contract. It is looking to lead an era. And along the way, it is accelerating transformations that push the entire world to level up. The U.S., in response, is also reactivating its industrial strength and innovative capacity. It is a back-and-forth that, despite its tensions, amplifies collective progress.

Chamath Palihapitiya puts it simply: “we need to create a roadmap to energy abundance as a national imperative.” Perhaps also as a global one.

Because everything, absolutely everything, depends on energy. From electric cars to satellites. From chip fabs to precision agriculture. No AI without energy. No digitization without energy. No transition without energy.

And if the future is going to be played in watts, the very least we can do is pay attention.

‍