There's an old saying: If you're not on the crest of the wave, you're underwater. And nowhere does that apply more than in emerging technologies. In this case, fusion power.
Fusion reactors for electricity generation have, for many decades, been one of those technologies that's always a decade or three in the future. But there has been serious work done in this field, with a few interesting breakthroughs; while smart money won't probably vote on a working, commercial fusion reactor this year or next, it's closer than it has ever been. And the United States isn't the only nation looking into this; China would love nothing more than to beat the United States to a working, commercial-scale fusion reactor, and you'd better believe it.
Now, a bill introduced into the House of Representatives is proposing to spend billions to keep that from happening, and to, hopefully, jump-start fusion energy here in the USA.
The U.S. was the first country to achieve fusion ignition, but China was the first to aggressively scale up the engineering and infrastructure needed for commercial deployment. From 2023 to 2025, China is estimated to have invested $6.5 billion in advanced fusion research facilities and technologies. Its BEST project is targeting a demonstration of fusion electricity generation around 2030, alongside plans for a “Fusion City” integrating research campuses and industrial clusters. Private capital is following. Chinese fusion companies recorded no meaningful private funding before 2022; they have since attracted $6.3 billion, much of it state-linked, and out-raised the Americas in 2025, according to FusionX. The Americas pulled ahead again in 2026, but China is putting resources behind its ambitions.
Now, granted, China's track record on things like this isn't the greatest. The Middle Kingdom's current communist government, under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a long track record of fakery. But we can't count on that forever.
But is this enough of a worry to spend $16.4 billion in the taxpayers' cash on?
On September 24, 2026, House Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Congressman Jay Obernolte (R-CA) introduced a bipartisan bill, the American Leadership in Fusion Act, containing $10 billion in direct appropriations for fusion energy and another $6.4 billion in total authorizations over fiscal years 2027–2031. The legislation would help the U.S. compete for leadership in commercial fusion energy markets and build supply-chain ecosystems for decades to come.
The U.S. has recognized quantum computing, fission, fusion, and AI as strategic priorities through the Genesis Mission. It is well past time to match that ambition with sustained investment in the facilities, manufacturing capabilities, and workforce needed to bring fusion energy to market.
The bill in question, you'll note, has been introduced by two Californians, Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Republican Jay Obernolte. Democrats tend to go all-in on solar panels and eagle-killing windmills for electrical generation, and they love to subsidize those as well. But is this something we want to spend tax money on? Let's look at the pros and cons.
Pro: The first nation (or alliance) to achieve a grid-scale, commercial fusion electrical plant will have a big technological advantage. Fusion power is everything everyone claims to want, when it comes to electrical generation: It's clean, reliable, and fusion power has even greater energy density than fission reactors. As I'm continually pointing out (and will continue to do) every major advance in human technology has been accompanied by a major advance in the energy density of our primary energy sources, starting with wood and dung and moving up to today's coal, natural gas, oil and fission power. Now we are seeing this next major advance in technology — artificial intelligence, or AI. Could fusion power be the next energy upgrade that accompanies it? If so, can we afford to let China take the lead on this?
Con: That's a lot of money out of the taxpayers' pockets, and while there have been some interesting advances in fusion reactors, it still seems as though if this looked to be an imminently viable technology, the private sector would be more involved. There are some private sector fusion projects, and they are even signing contracts for the delivery of electricity from fusion reactors, but it hasn't happened yet.
The outlook is still as it has been: Fusion power is tomorrow's technology. Now, it may be five years away instead of 20 years away, but it ain't here yet.
But, we solve today's problems with tomorrow's technology. And fusion power will, eventually, have the bugs worked out of it.
AI and the big data centers that it requires are only going to make our technological society more and more energy-hungry. Right now, the obvious answer is fission power. There are newer, safer, more versatile designs being built almost by the day, from pebble-bed reactors to lithium salt reactors to portable and small modular reactors. Those, too, are part of the energy picture of tomorrow. But when it comes to energy density, fusion is the endgame — at least, until someone makes a matter-antimatter reactor, and that's probably not tens of years away; more like thousands.
Which brings up another point: Has anyone spoken to Elon Musk on this?
Editor's Note: This article was updated post-publication to note that Rep. Obernolte is a Republican. We apologize for the error.
