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Compute Follows Power, Talent Follows Clusters: Scarce Inputs and the AI Build-Out

The AI build-out is driving an infrastructure super-cycle requiring roughly $3 trillion in investment by 2030, but electricity grid constraints — not GPU supply — have become the primary bottleneck, with over 2,060 GW of US generation capacity stuck in interconnection backlogs and Ireland already imposing a moratorium on new data center connections. Meanwhile, AI talent remains stubbornly concentrated in a handful of clusters, salaries have surged past $200,000 with 500,000+ positions unfilled globally, and Huawei's Ascend 910C is closing the capability gap with Nvidia faster than export-control policy assumes. The central unresolved tension is whether Western-style permitting reform and market signals can relieve these bottlenecks faster than state-directed coordination models in China, India, and the Gulf — a question the briefing raises but cannot settle, partly because the underlying evidence skews heavily toward sources outside the market-oriented and structural-inequality traditions that would most sharply contest each other's answers.

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