America 250 and the Intelligence Grid | Shimmy Says
America is approaching its 250th birthday, and the next great infrastructure build is already underway: the Intelligence Grid.
In today’s episode of Shimmy Says, Alan Shimel reflects on how America’s major infrastructure waves — railroads, electrification, highways, telecom, the internet and cloud — shaped the country and created new opportunities.
Now AI is becoming the next grid. The question is whether it will expand freedom and opportunity or concentrate power behind a few platforms and gatekeepers.
America 250 and the next great build
The timing is hard to ignore. The nation is preparing for its semiquincentennial in 2026. That milestone marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The America250 commission is coordinating the celebration nationally. Once again, the country is debating what kind of infrastructure will define its next chapter.
Earlier grids each rewired daily life and the economy. Canals moved goods. Rail linked cities. The power grid lit homes. Broadband connected everyone. Now a new layer of AI compute, models and data pipelines is emerging. Shimmy calls this layer the Intelligence Grid. Small businesses and government services will increasingly run on top of it.
The Intelligence Grid: freedom or gatekeepers?
That framing raises the central tension of the episode. Every earlier grid eventually faced hard questions about access, ownership and control. The Intelligence Grid is no different. A handful of hyperscalers and frontier-model providers already sit at the center of the AI economy. They control the chips, the cloud capacity and the largest models.
Alan’s commentary angle is not about predicting winners. Instead, he asks a sharper question. Will this concentration broaden opportunity and put powerful tools in everyone’s hands? Or will it quietly narrow the field and let a few platforms set the terms for everyone else?
This is a recurring theme on the show. Shimmy has explored it before in What does freedom mean in the age of AI? The through-line is a familiar American question in new clothes. How do you keep a transformative platform open enough to expand freedom while it still scales? As the country marks 250 years, the answers around open source, model choice, portability and interoperability may matter as much as any product launch. Watch the full episode above for Alan’s take on the next great build.
