The AI boom’s greatest problem isn’t advanced chips. This WWII story reveals AI’s greatest bottleneck.

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The AI boom’s greatest problem isn’t advanced chips. This WWII story reveals AI’s greatest bottleneck.

Europe was under fire, the clock was ticking… and its safety rode on a small group of Norwegian commandos who had one mission:

Shut down a Nazi power plant or die trying.

At first glance, Vemork looked like the sort of industrial site you'd expect to find near a river in a mountain valley. However, this chemical-and-power-plant combination was responsible for a crucial ingredient in the German war effort during World War II.

Vemork produced something called heavy water, which can cool nuclear reactors better than normal water and facilitate nuclear fission more efficiently.

German scientists needed heavy water to create an atomic weapon. The Allies knew that if Germany succeeded, they'd likely lose the war.

The Allies had already tried to invade Vemork once before.

British soldiers took gliders right to the front entrance. They rode in on bikes, armed with heavy weapons, aiming to punch straight through and destroy the facility.

While the entrance offered the most obvious path in, it also offered the clearest point of resistance. The Nazis stopped them with ease. The heavy water kept flowing.

This time, the Allies were determined to succeed at any cost. Norwegian soldiers armed themselves with skis, bombs, and suicide pills. Instead of charging at the front door, they treated the surrounding wilderness like the real access point.

10 of their strongest skiers parachuted into the mountains and forests around the target area. There, they met up with a Norwegian spy and climbed the cliffs to Vemork completely undetected.

Once inside, the team used a map provided by resistance workers. They found the part of the plant responsible for heavy water and stuffed the plant full of timed explosives.

The guards stayed at their posts. None of the 30 Nazis on the premises realized anything was wrong until the team was already 20 meters out the door.

… and that's when the plant exploded.

Without Vemork, Germany fell months behind on its atomic research.

That delay gave the U.S. enough time to pull ahead with the Manhattan Project—turning the tide of the war.

Wait a minute…

We’ve waxed poetic about a World War II-era military operation… but what does that have to do with today?

Well, “Operation Gunnerside,” as it came to be known, was one of Germany's most devastating losses in World War II. 

… and according to  Professor Joel Litman, Chairman and CEO of  Valens Research  and Chief Investment Officer of  Altimetry Financial Research, the momentous event offers a lesson that's just as applicable today:

“Energy is everything”

The AI Boom’s Massive Energy Problem

America and the rest of the world is in the midst of an entirely different energy war these days. The AI revolution requires more energy than the world is currently capable of producing.

Professor Litman says utilities and municipalities are facing a giant to-do list. According to him, the real constraint often shows up before the first shovel hits the ground in engineering, permitting, and design.

It takes years to complete the planning and physical infrastructure needed to get a new power plant on line.

AI data centers and advanced factories (those that manufacture semiconductors and batteries for the AI build-out) are all lining up for the same energy. As a result, power companies are scrambling to expand the grid.

The bottom line?

Professor Litman argues that in today's power war, the energy bottleneck is a matter of national security.

This is because nations that can’t power their AI infrastructure will fall behind, not only in the field of technology, but also in matters such as defense capability and economic output over the next decade.

Ultimately, he says the winners of the AI boom will be the ones that clear the path for energy sources before the demand for power skyrockets to never-before-seen levels.

Hope you’ve found this week’s insights interesting and helpful.

Stay tuned for next Wednesday’s The Independent Investor!

The warning signs are rarely loud.

Learn more about  the hidden chance in this behind-the-scenes boom  in next week’s article!