US President Donald Trump’s sensational announcement of the US$500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure project has grabbed headlines and stoked markets, diverting attention from the less glamorous news about the start of production at TSMC’s first chip factory in Arizona and overwhelming the more complicated debate over the future of America’s high-tech revival.
On January 21, the day after his inauguration, Trump appeared with Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison, Softbank chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to announce what promises to be an enormous investment in artificial intelligence – “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history… creating over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately,” as Trump put it. The video went “viral” – an appropriate description considering some of the reactions it has generated.
