I always try to cultivate an optimistic mood. Not only because optimism feels good, but also because it helps get things done. However, I’m not an optimist by nature and at times I let my inner Cassandra speak freely. This is one of those times.
There is a palpable energy in the United States and across parts of the West right now - an actively optimistic, can-do spirit of big thinking and big science and technology projects that has been rare in recent decades.
Today’s push toward big & bold projects in space, energy, AI
In artificial intelligence (AI), frontier models are advancing at a pace that has leading researchers and executives openly discussing the approach of artificial general intelligence (AGI), with some timelines clustering in the late 2020s. Private and public investment pours into scaling compute, refining architectures, and exploring recursive improvement. In space, NASA’s Artemis program has already returned astronauts to the vicinity of the Moon: Artemis II completed its crewed lunar flyby in April 2026. Plans now target demonstration flights of human landing systems in 2027 and a crewed landing on the surface of the Moon as early as 2028 - the first since Apollo.
In energy, the Department of Energy has released a finalized Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap aimed at commercial fusion power on an accelerated timeline, supported by more than $10 billion in private capital, AI-driven design tools under the Genesis Mission, and companies racing toward pilot plants. Nuclear, advanced computing, critical minerals, and materials science are receiving coordinated national attention. This is not incrementalism. It is the language of ambition: Manhattan- or Apollo-scale efforts reframed for the age of AI and abundant energy.
This gives me optimism and makes me happy. After years of institutional caution, regulatory thickening, and cultural hesitation about large-scale technology projects, the willingness to pursue hard, high-upside problems feels good. Watching engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs treat nuclear fusion, the return to the Moon, and AGI as solvable engineering challenges rather than distant aspirations restores a sense of agency. Progress is visible. Private capital is moving. National laboratories, universities, and companies are coordinating in ways that suggest genuine momentum.
But can it last?
Yet I cannot shake the fear that this vitality may be something like the sudden burst of energy sometimes seen in people who are about to die. History offers unpleasant parallels in societies that briefly rediscover purpose, launch grand projects, and then fracture under the weight of their own internal divisions. The current American surge feels real, but it also feels contingent - tied to a particular political alignment, a particular set of priorities, and a temporary window of political will.
Many people in the U.S. are opposing AI data centers near their home. Bernie Sanders wants to “Pause AI Development NOW” and prevent AI “from being developed anywhere around the world” (read China, and I wonder how on Earth he plans to do tha)t. Misled environmental activists still oppose nuclear energy, and can only be expected to continue opposing it. There are calls to redirect funding from space to other programs. This has always been the case, and of course public funding must be balanced, but it’s difficult to have reasonable discussions and negotiations in a polarized political climate.
Political polarization and widespread hatred have become the dominant forces in American public life. Voters increasingly cast ballots less on shared policy goals than on anger, identity, and the desire to punish the other side. Trust in institutions has eroded. Media ecosystems reward outrage. The result is short-lived administrations that struggle to sustain multi-decade projects. Continuity becomes the exception rather than the rule. Policies that require patient capital, regulatory stability, and bipartisan tolerance are especially vulnerable. When every election is framed as an existential contest, the incentive is to reverse the previous administration’s signature efforts rather than build upon them.
For these reasons I am afraid the U.S. administration will change in 2028. Many factors seem to indicate probable turnover, with polls and prediction markets already leaning that way.
I am also afraid that the next administration will abandon, dilute, or reframe this actively optimistic can-do phase of big thinking and big projects. New priorities will emerge. Climate framing may reassert itself in ways that constrain nuclear and fusion pathways. AI safety rhetoric may shift from acceleration to heavy restriction. Space ambitions may be slowed by budget reallocations or safety-first reviews. The Genesis Mission’s emphasis on AI-enabled scientific discovery and energy dominance could be reoriented or starved of funding.
I realize that my implicit assumption, that a new Democratic administration in the U.S. would be automatically hostile to big technology projects in AI, energy, and space, is unfair to many good people in the Democratic camp - the progressives in the truest sense of the word. Also, it is not supported by history, as there have been periods where the Democrats - not the Republicans - have advanced an aggressive sci/tech agenda. For example, don't forget that the Apollo program in the 1960s was started by a Democratic administration and killed by a Republican one. But in this particular moment in history, the leading voices in the Democratic Party sound like Bernie Sanders and the extremist wing of the Party.
Make no mistake: I am not an unconditional fan of the current U.S. administration. Of certain aspects, I am strongly critical. Actually, when it comes to most (not all, but most) current policy issues I lean toward the opposition. Criticism of excesses and rhetoric that deepens division is, I think, entirely consistent with valuing the technological and scientific momentum now underway.
Add to this that I am, and always have been, honestly persuaded that alternance - alternation in government - is good. With the possibility of alternance, a new administration can correct some excesses of the previous one and, at the same time, is incentivized to refrain from introducing excesses that would be punished by the voters at the next elections.
Still, I lament the likely end of this short-lived burst of vitality. The projects now underway - returning humans to the lunar surface, driving fusion toward commercial viability, pushing AI toward systems capable of accelerating scientific discovery itself - are precisely the kinds of efforts that reshape civilizational possibilities. They require sustained investment, tolerance for risk and occasional failure, and a culture that still believes hard problems can be solved. When political cycles truncate such efforts every four or eight years, the cumulative effect is lost momentum, wasted capital, and the quiet transfer of leadership to more patient competitors.
Meanwhile in China…
The United States may well be the first to land astronauts on the Moon again. It may achieve the first viable commercial fusion demonstrations or the first systems that meaningfully approach AGI. Yet I fear it is China that is likely to benefit in the long term. Beijing operates with longer planning horizons, greater continuity of purpose, and fewer internal roadblocks once a strategic direction is set. While American administrations turn over and reverse course, Chinese programs in space, energy, computing, and advanced manufacturing continue. Talent, capital, and intellectual property that cannot find stable homes in the United States will find them elsewhere. The first mover advantage is real, but it is not decisive if the mover then pauses, fragments, or abandons the field.
What we are witnessing may therefore be less a renaissance than a final, bright flare. The optimism is genuine. The progress is measurable. The fear that it will prove temporary is, unfortunately, rational. In a polity organized around mutual loathing, the capacity for sustained civilizational ambition is itself a scarce and perishable resource.
I hope my inner Cassandra’s fear proves unfounded. But I am afraid it will not. However, I continue to hope that, eventually, reason and openness to negotiation will prevail in both the Right and the Left, in the U.S. and the rest of the Western world. The lesson to learn is that bipartisan support is always needed for big projects to be sustainably successful, and achieving bipartisan support is almost impossible when polarization and mutual hatred reach today’s toxic levels.