In 1956, President Eisenhower launched one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in history: the Interstate Highway System.
It cost $114 billion at the time, roughly $634 billion in today’s dollars, and it transformed the United States forever. It connected cities, created millions of jobs, and unlocked an entirely new era of commerce and mobility.
The highways didn’t just move people. They moved economies. They powered the suburban boom, enabled national logistics, and became the foundation of modern America.
Today, we stand at a similar turning point. But the infrastructure we need is no longer concrete and asphalt. It is compute and energy.
AI infrastructure is the new highway system. Data centers are our interstates. Fiber networks are our railways. GPUs and power grids are our bridges and tunnels. Without them, there is no AI economy.
The private sector already understands this. In 2025 alone, companies like Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon plan to invest more than $370 billion in data centers and related infrastructure. That is more than half the cost of the entire Interstate Highway System, adjusted for inflation.
And yet, there is no unified national plan. No coordination, no shared vision, no modern Eisenhower moment.
That is why we need The AURA Project — the Advanced Unified Resilient AI initiative — a new public-private partnership designed to build the physical and digital backbone of the intelligence age.
AURA would expand energy generation and strengthen the national grid.
It would build dedicated AI compute zones and power corridors.
It would incentivize domestic chip and fiber manufacturing.
It would train a new generation of engineers, scientists, and operators.
And it would create millions of high-quality jobs across technology and infrastructure.
AI is not just another tool. It is the foundation of the next economy. But it cannot exist without the infrastructure to support it — the power, the compute, the connectivity, and the human capital.
The Interstate Highway System built the 20th century.
The AURA Project can define the 21st.