Musk’s warning is brutally simple: software isn’t the real bottleneck for AI—electricity is. Training and running advanced models already devour staggering amounts of power, and doubling national grids is not a weekend infrastructure project. He argues that Earth’s political, environmental, and logistical limits will choke AI just as it’s poised to explode. In orbit, though, solar panels drink uninterrupted sunlight, no clouds, no night, no batteries, multiplying usable energy and slashing costs.
That vision carries a quiet, unnerving twist. If the “cheapest place to put AI” really is space within a few years, the center of technological gravity shifts off-world. The most capable systems humanity creates could end up circling above the very societies they transform, driven by corporations and governments that own the launch pads. Musk’s prediction isn’t just about power generation; it’s about where power—of every kind—will ultimately live.
