President Joe Biden this week issued one of his last executive orders, addressing the race to build domestic data centers and clean energy plants in order to retain America’s leadership in artificial intelligence.

President Joe Biden has signed an ambitious executive order on artificial intelligence that seeks to ensure the infrastructure needed for advanced AI operations like data centers can be built quickly

The order calls for leasing federal sites owned by Defense and Energy departments to host gigawatt-scale AI data centers and new clean power facilities - to address enormous power needs on a short time frame.

Under the new rules, the departments of Defense and Energy will each identify at least three sites where the private sector can build AI data centers.