Transmission is the backbone of America’s energy future, securing national defense, powering AI and industry, and ensuring resilience against economic shocks and adversarial threats.
The United States faces an energy demand shock with clear national security consequences. After decades of flat demand, the rise of hyperscale artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, the electrification of heavy industry, and the reshoring of critical manufacturing are driving electricity needs upward at a pace unseen in modern history.
These assets are not just economic engines; they are strategic infrastructure. AI supporting data centers power next-generation intelligence and defense capabilities, while smelting and refining provide the materials for aerospace and defense platforms, and resilient electricity delivery underpins homeland security and critical infrastructure during extreme events. A grid incapable of meeting these demands risks undermining both economic competitiveness and defense readiness. Only by upgrading the existing grid footprint and investing in long-lived, high-capacity transmission can the United States secure the energy foundation necessary for its strategic posture.
Aging Infrastructure and Lagging Transmission Buildout
Current grid planning is largely reactive rather than proactive, and investments in high-voltage interstate and interregional transmission are lagging. Last year, America built only 322 miles of new high-voltage (345 kilovolt [kV] and above) lines. More than 70 percent of transmission lines are at least 25 years old and nearing the end of their operational life. And progress on many interregional lines has been stymied by political, regulatory, and permitting upheaval. Accelerating transmission buildout requires new policy urgency.
To achieve grid dominance—defined by resilience, energy stability, and economic strength—the nation must focus on delivering on a dual imperative: maximizing the use of the existing grid footprint through advanced technologies while also rapidly investing in a high-capacity, long-lived transmission backbone. This will require accelerating the deployment of high-performance conductors and grid-enhancing technologies to upgrade the existing system and a long-term strategic energy plan that puts American industry in the strongest position to compete economically while reinforcing national security.
Enabling these investments would yield not only an economic advantage for American businesses and civil society writ large, but it would also help deliver the industrial self-sufficiency and strategic technological leadership necessary for national security.
AI, Data Centers, and Strategic Industry as Security Assets
AI is uniquely electricity hungry. Estimates suggest that the power required to run AI models could grow demand up to 50 times current supply levels within the next decade, depending on adoption rates.
These facilities are not just commercial operations; they provide the computing backbone for intelligence, cyber defense, advanced weapons development, and homeland security planning at all levels of government, state, local, municipal, and federal. The uninterrupted operation of these facilities requires a grid with both capacity and some redundancy for resilience, since even minor outages could compromise mission-critical operations. Similarly, industries such as aluminum smelting, electrolytic refining, and electrified heat manufacturing for steel, cement, and chemicals are critical for both civilian infrastructure and defense applications.
These processes are impossible without reliable, stabilized large-scale electricity delivery. Relying on imports for these materials, when the United States has the capability to produce them domestically, creates an unacceptable and critical supply chain vulnerability to national security and the greater US economy. A resilient transmission backbone will not only enable domestic production of these essential resources but also help decouple US economic and defense supply chains from foreign adversaries who control much of today’s energy-related critical minerals and manufacturing capacity.
Transmission as the Backbone of a Secure, Long-Lived Grid
The current US grid is highly balkanized, and more geographic diversity is needed to ensure a power supply where no single cyberattack, natural disaster, or regional shortfall can disable critical defense and industrial loads. More high-capacity, high-voltage interregional transmission lines, designed as 50 to 60-year assets, can serve as the backbone of a secure grid that can withstand both natural and adversarial threats.
A 765 kV transmission line delivers power at up to 75 percent lower cost per megawatt-mile than lower-capacity alternatives, while also providing the redundancy necessary for military bases, aerospace hubs, and secure data centers to remain operational during grid stress events. This type of backbone would also translate directly into economic resilience. When hurricanes, wildfires, or polar vortex events occur, outages can cost the economy billions of dollars per day in lost productivity, food spoilage, medical risks, and emergency response costs.
The avoided costs of blackouts and the stability they provide for critical infrastructure make transmission investments not only cheaper than the economic damage of disasters but also an essential form of economic insurance. Building for resilience ensures both a stronger economy and national defense.
Maximizing Ratepayer Value by Strengthening Critical Infrastructure Security and Industry
Well-planned transmission investments deliver exceptional returns, saving consumers billions annually while simultaneously strengthening US industrial capacity and national security. National studies show that high-capacity transmission could save residential consumers $6.3 to $10.4 billion per year, with total annual benefits across all customer classes reaching as high as $27.7 billion.
More importantly, these savings are not abstract. To the benefit of the average American household, a more resilient and interconnected grid reduces monthly costs by lowering congestion charges, stabilizing volatile energy prices, and minimizing the risk of blackouts that lead to costly disruptions. In fact, for every $1 invested in transmission, consumers receive nearly $5 in benefits, a ratio that reflects both immediate cost reductions and long-term reliability.
Grid development has been fragmented, reactive, and short-sighted for too long. To compete in a world where AI, electrified manufacturing, and advanced defense production will define global leadership, the United States must adopt a forward-looking strategic energy plan that includes permitting reform to accelerate deployment, emphasizes the need for interregional transmission, and invests in advanced transmission technologies to upgrade the existing grid. Treating transmission as strategic infrastructure, much like the interstate highway system or the defense industrial base, ensures that US energy availability is never the limiting factor in technological innovation, industrial capacity, or military readiness.
Upgrading and expanding a grid focused on high-capacity, long-lived transmission corridors is more than an economic asset; it is a deterrent against adversaries, a guarantor of industrial independence, and the foundation of American power in the twenty-first century. The stakes are clear. By investing decisively in interregional transmission and grid upgrades necessary to maximize cost savings, the United States not only builds a vital economic asset that the energy ecosystem of the future can depend on but also secures its enduring advantage in the global order.
About the Author: Fred Bailey
Fred Bailey is a cybersecurity and national security leader with over 20 years of experience in protecting critical infrastructure and securing the U.S. energy landscape. He has directed strategies countering nation-state threats across the energy, transportation, and communications sectors. A U.S. Army veteran, Fred recently retired from federal service where he has led intelligence operations, risk mitigation, and resilience planning for Homeland Security to safeguard industrial and energy supply chains, ensuring both economic security and national defense readiness.
Image: dongfang/shutterstock
