Machinepower Index / Dossiers / United States
United States
Total Sovereignty — Own every layer — energy, fabs, frontier models, talent and the rules they run under. Only two nations can afford the attempt, and neither reaches true autarky.
Score = the average of Watts, Weights and Will, minus a bottleneck penalty of 0.2 × the weakest axis's distance from 10. Potential = the average alone. The gap between them is what fixing the bottleneck is worth.
The three layers
Energy, grids, data centres and silicon — the physical capacity to run models at scale.
Models, alignment capability, standards influence and the talent that produces them.
The capacity to wire AI into the state and the economy while holding public consent.
Where the score comes from
Each axis is the straight average of its four measured sub-dimensions. Nothing is weighted inside an axis; every number below is a rubric-judged 0–10 assessment against published sources under twelve months old.
| Layer | Sub-dimension | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Watts | Planning & Permitting | 7.8 |
| Firm Power Capacity | 8.9 | |
| Sovereign Compute | 10.0 | |
| Hardware & Silicon Access | 10.0 | |
| Weights | Frontier Model Output | 10.0 |
| Alignment Capability | 8.8 | |
| Regulatory Standing | 8.2 | |
| Talent Density | 9.8 | |
| Will | State Procurement | 8.8 |
| Public Sector Adoption | 9.3 | |
| Workforce Transition | 7.6 | |
| Public Trust | 5.2 |
Bottlenecks
The weakest axis sets the penalty. These are the constraints that hold the United States below its Potential.
Assessment
The global leader in intelligence power, the US maintains a dominant position through its control of the primary model weights and semiconductor design. However, bottlenecks in energy grid permitting and domestic state diffusion remain key challenges to total sovereign capacity.
The art of the possible
Fixing grid interconnection queues is the single highest-leverage move available to any nation in the Index: the US already leads on models, chips and capital, and every megawatt it unlocks compounds an existing lead. Faster federal permitting plus public-sector adoption would push the leader further from the pack.
Strategic play — Total Sovereignty
Own every layer — energy, fabs, frontier models, talent and the rules they run under. Only two nations can afford the attempt, and neither reaches true autarky.
The play is editorial, not scored: it names the game the United States's measured position supports. Eight plays run across the Index — Total Sovereignty, Strategic Autonomy, Chokepoint Leverage, Diffusion Advantage, Compute Rentier, Specialist Power, Sovereign Capital and Siege Autarky.
Open United States in the live Index → — full provenance cards, source dates, comparison tool and CSV export.