{
  "slug": "ai-capex-and-public-priorities",
  "title": "AI capex and public priorities",
  "subtitle": "AI infrastructure spending against major science and wartime mobilization comparators, normalized to 2025 dollars",
  "chart_type": "comparative-bar",
  "x_label": "Comparator",
  "y_label": "USD (2025)",
  "units": "usd_2025",
  "scale": "",
  "title_note": "",
  "thesis": "AI is not just a story about models. It is a story about where civilizational-scale capital is being concentrated.",
  "caveat": "These comparators are not morally interchangeable budgets. The chart shows the scale of resource mobilization, not the social desirability or historical meaning of each program.",
  "caption": "The point is priority and mobilization: infrastructure capital now arrives at state-project scale.",
  "annotations": [
    "The large-technology-company capex bar is almost seven times the Apollo peak-year comparator in 2025-dollar terms.",
    "The Manhattan comparator is annualized on purpose: the chart compares yearly mobilization pressure, not total historical program cost.",
    "CERN appears here as a standing public-science institution, which makes the gap between ongoing public research and AI infrastructure spending especially legible."
  ],
  "method_summary": "All bars are normalized to 2025 dollars. Current-year rows stay nominal; historical rows are shown as normalized annual comparators and explicitly marked as such.",
  "method_notes": [
    "This chart compares annual mobilization pressure, not total historical program cost.",
    "Historical comparator rows are intentionally labeled as normalized comparators so they are not mistaken for current nominal budgets."
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "label": "International Energy Agency synthesis of large-technology-company capex in 2025",
      "detail": "Used for the contemporary AI/data-centre infrastructure spending anchor."
    },
    {
      "label": "CERN annual budget round figure",
      "detail": "Used as a standing public-science institution comparator."
    },
    {
      "label": "Historical Apollo program peak-year spending normalized to 2025 dollars",
      "detail": "Used as an annual mobilization comparator."
    },
    {
      "label": "Historical Manhattan Project total annualized across wartime build years and normalized to 2025 dollars",
      "detail": "Used as an annualized wartime-industrial comparator."
    }
  ],
  "alt": "Horizontal bar chart comparing 2025-dollar values: large technology company AI and data-centre capex at 400 billion dollars, Apollo peak annual spend at 58 billion dollars, Manhattan Project annualized spend at 31 billion dollars, and CERN annual budget at 1.7 billion dollars.",
  "rows": [
    {
      "label": "Large technology company AI and data-centre capex",
      "comparison_group": "ai_infrastructure",
      "year": 2025,
      "amount_usd_nominal": 400000000000,
      "amount_usd_2025": 400000000000,
      "source": "IEA synthesis of large-technology-company capex in 2025",
      "row_status": "observed",
      "method_note": "Current-year infrastructure capex comparator."
    },
    {
      "label": "CERN annual budget",
      "comparison_group": "science_institution",
      "year": 2025,
      "amount_usd_nominal": 1700000000,
      "amount_usd_2025": 1700000000,
      "source": "CERN annual budget round figure for 2025",
      "row_status": "observed",
      "method_note": "Current-year annual institutional budget comparator."
    },
    {
      "label": "Apollo peak annual spend",
      "comparison_group": "historical_mobilization",
      "year": 1966,
      "amount_usd_nominal": 2967000000,
      "amount_usd_2025": 58000000000,
      "source": "Historical Apollo peak-year spend normalized to 2025 dollars",
      "row_status": "normalized_comparator",
      "method_note": "Peak annual NASA Apollo-era spend shown as an annual comparator, not as total-program cost."
    },
    {
      "label": "Manhattan Project annualized spend",
      "comparison_group": "historical_mobilization",
      "year": 1944,
      "amount_usd_nominal": 550000000,
      "amount_usd_2025": 31000000000,
      "source": "Historical Manhattan Project total annualized across wartime build years and normalized to 2025 dollars",
      "row_status": "normalized_comparator",
      "method_note": "Annualized historical comparator derived from total wartime project cost rather than a single appropriations year."
    }
  ],
  "row_status_values": [
    "normalized_comparator",
    "observed"
  ]
}