At a recent White House dinner, Mark Zuckerberg pledged that Meta would pour hundreds of billions into U.S. investments. Moments later, a hot mic caught him saying he “wasn’t sure what number [the president] wanted to go with.”
The clip quickly spread, with speculation and conspiracies flying as they are wont to do in the era of social media. But it underscores a larger truth: headline numbers often get tossed around before the hard infrastructure is actually in place. And Meta in particular is spending a lot on infrastructure, and you're very likely to see other major tech companies following suit (some already are).
Meta’s Giant Bet in Louisiana
Meta is pressing ahead with what it calls its largest data center ever in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Originally announced as a $10 billion project, the facility will anchor Meta’s artificial-intelligence ambitions, including training future Llama models.
Power is the other half of the story. The Louisiana Public Service Commission approved Entergy’s plan to build three new natural-gas plants to meet the center’s staggering 2–2.3 gigawatt demand. That approval passed on a 4–1 vote and has fueled debate about ratepayer risk, long-term costs, and the irony of tech giants touting sustainability while locking in fossil-fuel generation.
Adding to the confusion, President Trump referenced a $50 billion price tag, far above Meta’s original $10 billion figure. To date, Meta has not confirmed that revision, but it seems to fall in line with the more recent report on the "hot mic" moment—Meta is spending more than previously thought, and building a lot of infrastructure.
A National Buildout: Chips and Cloud
The Louisiana story is part of a nationwide buildout:
Semiconductors: The CHIPS Act has unlocked billions for domestic fabs. TSMC in Arizona is now planning three facilities. Intel’s “Ohio One” has seen schedule slips into the 2030s, while Samsung’s Texas fab faces delays and rising costs. Micron is investing in New York and Idaho, though those timelines stretch over decades.
Cloud & AI: Microsoft is converting the long-troubled Foxconn site in Wisconsin into a $3.3 billion data-center campus. Google just announced $9 billion for new facilities in Stillwater and Pryor, Oklahoma. Apple has pledged over $500 billion in U.S. investment over four years, though some of its North Carolina projects have paused.
AI demand is colliding with grid realities, however. Across the country, utilities are proposing new natural-gas plants to meet 24/7 load from hyperscale campuses. Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Louisiana are just three examples where tech promises of “clean energy” are bumping up against the need for firm power. But where the government pushes "clean energy" and fails, this is the private sector pushing it on its own.
What we're seeing is the next big shift in the American economy. Yes, the Trump administration is trying to onshore previously lost American manufacturing, but we are also increasingly seeing the rapid advancement of tech services and products that fundamentally change the game in the American marketplace and the American economy.
What It Means
This is another major shift in the nation's industrial sectors, and it has the potential to bring in some big numbers that economists and industrialists like to pay attention to:
Jobs: These projects create thousands of construction jobs up front and a few hundred high-paying permanent jobs after build-out.
Rates & Risk: Local ratepayers shoulder some of the costs as utilities expand capacity. Regulators are being forced to weigh economic development against rate stability.
Timelines: Many headline projects face delays due to labor shortages, power constraints, and equipment lead times. Announcements grab attention, but actual capacity takes years to come online.
If the numbers can be made to add up, we're likely to see an economic boom and the next major industrial revolution start right here in America.
The Bottom Line
Zuckerberg’s hot-mic moment is a reminder: it’s easy to float investment numbers, but harder to deliver steel, concrete, and megawatts. The U.S. is in the middle of a genuine tech-infrastructure wave, from Louisiana bayous to Arizona deserts. But the story that matters most isn’t the headline figures—it’s the permits, transformers, turbines, and workers that make it real.
This is a big reason why the Trump administration is better-suited for this new era than the Biden administration was or the Harris administration could have been. Their support of the regulatory state would make this new wave of tech infrastructure much harder to accomplish. Worse yet, it could have very well given a permanent and crippling advantage to global enemies like China.
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