The New Map of Civilization

The New Map

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Let me tell you something that’s easy to miss but impossible to ignore once you see it:

The borders that matter now aren’t on land—they’re in compute. And they’re shifting. Fast.

Not in theory. Not in the metaverse. In steel, in silicon, in megawatts. The world is being redrawn in real time, and the lines are being etched by the placement of data centers.

This isn’t speculation. This isn’t metaphor. This is a real-world transformation happening at a scale that’s hard to wrap your head around.

The U.S. now houses 5,381 data centers out of a global total of ~11,800. Let that hit: one country holds nearly half the world’s cognitive infrastructure.

That’s not a flex. That’s a signal. Because what that map shows isn’t just distribution—it’s dominance.

And it’s not even the most shocking part. Harvard economist Jason Furman found that 92% of all U.S. GDP growth in the first half of 2025 came from AI-related data center buildout. Without it? Growth would’ve been 0.1%. Basically flat.

We’ve passed the threshold. We are now living in an economy powered—and propped up—by cognition infrastructure.

Let’s call it what it is: The U.S. economy has become a data center. Not figuratively. Literally. And we’re still early. Painfully early. The concrete is still curing. The transformers are still being delivered. The silicon’s still warm from the fab.

And yet we’re already seeing trillions flowing into this new geography. $100 billion in a single quarter. $1.1 billion per day. Not on products. Not on apps. Just on capacity.

We are laying down the bones of a world that doesn’t exist yet—but will define everything that comes next.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Massive campuses rising from empty land. Rack after rack of compute pulling more power than small cities. Warehouses built for one purpose: to host thought.

These places aren’t “tech infrastructure.” They are the territory of tomorrow.

And make no mistake—territory is what this is about. We’re not just talking about tools. We’re talking about cognitive borders.

What land was to empires, what oil was to industry—compute is to intelligence. Whoever holds it, controls the flow of innovation. Controls the value chain. Controls what’s possible.

So let me be blunt: This isn’t a product wave. This is civilization re-architecture. You can’t vibe your way through it. You can’t no-code it into existence. This is a trench-digging, megawatt-routing, grid-stabilizing effort. It’s physical. It’s geopolitical. It’s generational. And most people are still looking in the wrong direction. They’re squinting at chatbots. Arguing about prompt tricks. Waiting for a new gadget to drop.

But the real story is being written in rack units and latency maps, in fiber loops and cooling density, in the very real physics of what it takes to make intelligence live somewhere.

Because here’s the truth: AI isn’t just a set of features. It’s a shift in where capability resides. And that shift is not virtual—it’s architectural.

It lives in megacampuses. In regions with the power and bandwidth to support it. In supply chains that can move from chip to deployment in months, not years.

And here’s the part that still gives me chills: This is the moment before it gets good. Before we’ve even optimized the stack. Before cognition becomes ambient. Before we figure out what to do with all this infrastructure we’re building.

We haven’t hit “magic” yet. This is still just normalizing intelligence. And that—even that—is already enough to carry the entire economy.

So yeah. I’m in awe. Because I see what’s being built. And I know what it takes to build it.

I work with the people laying cable and designing power systems and configuring racks. I’ve watched them scale what most execs still think is “just another software tool.”

But this isn’t software. This is sovereignty. It’s economic posture. It’s identity.

And it’s all happening quietly—beneath the surface, behind NDAs, under fans and cooling systems and “authorized personnel only” signs.

But the results? They’re shaping the next 100 years.

BTW...I work with the team at Data Power Supply. We build the systems that keep this whole thing running. Power, infrastructure, support. If you’re building the future, we’re already in your corner.

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