US is winning the AI buildout. One blind spot could cost us the race

Washington is getting very good at counting the artificial intelligence buildout. The Trump administration has made “super intelligence” a national priority. Amazon just announced a $1 billion program for communities around its data centers after President Donald Trump pressed technology companies to make the buildout popular. The country can see the new campuses, megawatts, chips, investment commitments, and computing capacity coming online. That is useful. A country cannot lead in AI without infrastructure.

But a buildout is not yet a payoff. America needs a second scoreboard, one that measures when all that capacity begins to make the work of the economy meaningfully more productive.