Fundamentals in the next 20 years

alberty111 | Jan. 4, 2026, 8:43 p.m.

Drawing from Will and Ariel Durant’s The Lessons of History, the fundamental cause of war has historically been the competition over the control and relocation of resources. The nature of these resources evolves with human progress—shifting from arable land and food to petroleum, and eventually to the "future fundamentals" that fuel global civilization. Over the next twenty years, that fundamental resource will be electrical power.

The AI Energy Surge

As the AI revolution accelerates, global electricity consumption is skyrocketing. This demand is driven primarily by the massive energy requirements of GPU/TPU clusters for model training/inferencing and the vast infrastructure required for data center memory storage. We are currently in an era where the average individual consumes several hundred megabytes of data daily—whether through storage or active reference. Given the rising global population and the deepening integration of digital technology, this consumption rate is poised for exponential growth.

The Efficiency Gap

While advancements in power optimization are ongoing, they are failing to keep pace with the sheer speed of consumption. This creates a critical bottleneck: for at least the next two decades, reliable power will be the primary resource over which nations compete to ensure their economic and technological survival.

The Evolution of the Energy Mix

There are currently three primary pillars of power generation: petroleum, solar, and nuclear. As fossil fuel reserves inevitably dwindle, the geopolitical focus will shift toward a struggle for dominance in solar and nuclear energy.

• Nuclear Fission: We have seen a recent resurgence in fission's share of global power generation as nations seek stable baseload energy.

• Nuclear Fusion: While fusion represents the "holy grail" of energy, it remains largely in the experimental stage. It faces immense engineering challenges in maintaining the sustained, controlled reactions necessary for commercial use.

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