Theo Saville, March 2026
The AI industry mapped its future in tokens, parameters, and floating-point operations. It did not map its future in atoms. When you trace the physical supply chain of a modern AI datacenter, you find something that should alarm everyone who takes the intelligence explosion seriously. A two-part series on the invisible constraint beneath the trillion-dollar buildout.
The intelligence explosion has a supply chain. It runs through CNC machines. And CNC machines are running out of operators.
America's surge capacity is broken. The reshoring math doesn't work. Unless you change one variable that most people haven't thought about.