The Asia-Pacific is quietly becoming the engine room of the next industrial revolution, as private capital rushes to build the power and storage that will run generative AI for the world. Billionaires who made their fortunes in the free market—men like Masayoshi Son and Mukesh Ambani—are not waiting for permission slips from bureaucrats or failed government programs; they are writing the checks and getting the job done. This is the sort of bold, risk-taking investment America used to celebrate and should mimic rather than demonize.
SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son has leaned into that bet with staggering ambition, anchoring the Stargate initiative alongside major U.S. tech players to pour hundreds of billions into AI-ready data centers and compute. That public-private scale effort underscores a simple truth conservatives have always known: large-scale national projects succeed only when guided by entrepreneurs and partnered with the private sector, not when strangled by endless regulation.
Son’s playbook is clear and unapologetic — secure the processors, the racks, and the power to train tomorrow’s models. SoftBank’s acquisition of Ampere Computing and other chip, energy and data center moves show he’s building the supply chain end-to-end so his partners and customers aren’t at the mercy of geopolitical chokepoints or slow-moving incumbents. That kind of vertical, strategic thinking is what wins global competitiveness, and it’s being executed by capitalists who put skin in the game.
Across the subcontinent, Mukesh Ambani is doing the same for India—partnering with Google and Meta and combining Reliance’s massive network with foreign cloud and AI talent to build onshore AI capacity at scale. Reliance Intelligence and dedicated cloud regions tied to Jio’s fiber and energy assets will let Indian companies and government agencies run AI workloads domestically, reducing dependence on foreign clouds and hostile states for critical infrastructure. Ambani’s push shows that when national champions and private investors align, economies transform fast and decisively.
Ambani hasn’t been shy about the numbers either, with plans and analyst estimates pointing to multi-billion-dollar commitments and AI-ready data centers coming online across India, including a flagship retrofit in Kolkata. This is not philanthropic theater; it is hard-nosed industrial policy executed by private capital and commercial partners that understand both market opportunity and national strategic needs. Conservatives should cheer domestic capacity-building, not reflexively fear big business — especially when it bolsters national resilience.
The strategic consequence is obvious: Asia is building sovereign compute and storage that will shape AI development for decades, and that’s a wake-up call for Western policymakers. If America wants to remain the leader in AI without relying on friendless regimes, Congress and statehouses must stop the regulatory sabotage, stop chasing virtue-signaling investment policies, and instead unleash private capital with tax relief, permitting reform, and clear energy policy. The world rewards those who build, not those who litigate and legislate projects to death.
This moment should remind patriotic Americans what free enterprise can achieve when government gets out of the way. Let Masayoshi Son and Mukesh Ambani be examples of what happens when bold vision meets patient capital—and let Washington copy the playbook of growth rather than export control theater and bureaucratic posturing. Our leaders must choose: enable builders and secure American tech leadership, or watch other nations’ capital fill the vacuum.
