Discussions of U.S.-China competition in artificial intelligence (AI) tend to focus on chips, but AI also runs on electricity, and here the two countries diverge sharply. China generates roughly twice as much electricity as the United States, and its capacity continues to grow rapidly. The United States leads in AI laboratories and chip technology, but interconnection backlogs and equipment shortages limit how quickly its grid can expand, even as electricity demand from data centers is projected to more than double by 2030.
In an interview conducted on October 23, 2026, Baruch College’s Gang He and Johns Hopkins SAIS’s Jeremy Wallace join the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Kate Logan to discuss what grid capacity means for AI development in both countries, how China’s “East Data, West Computing” strategy is reshaping where data centers draw their power, and what is at stake for electricity costs, emissions, and grid reliability.
