Among the first, most urgent, orders of business for President Donald J. Trump should be to create a Maganomics "Manhattan Project" to develop a nuclear fusion reactor superior to China's tokamak.
Communist China, which has a head-start, has just helped place a tokamak in Thailand.
This century's great clean-energy revolution is science's newest frontier: producing inexpensive, unlimited energy through nuclear fusion. It is done in containers, called tokamaks, giant nuclear reactors to make and store it. Smaller reactors "barely 3 feet across" are already being developed in the US, including one in Idaho and two in northern Nevada.
Nuclear fusion consists of heating two electrons at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, forcing them to fuse, producing clean energy similar to the Sun's:
"When the nuclei of small atoms fuse, the resulting nucleus is slightly lighter than the components that went into making it. The lost mass is released as energy. By the famous equation E=mc2, a very small amount of mass becomes a great deal of energy. When four hydrogen atoms (or two deuterium atoms) fuse to become one helium atom, the mass loss is so tiny, the energy released is still small. However, if you can manage to fuse a steady supply of atoms, the energy released becomes immense."
Communist China's leader Xi Jinping has already stolen virtually all of America's intellectual property and technology -- for which one can blame hapless former US administrations -- and used it to build his extended military, including cyber and space capabilities. Xi lied in assuring the US that he would not militarize the artificial islands he was constructing, then straight away militarized them. When the US declined to build hypersonic weapons out of concern that other countries might then feel compelled to build them too, Xi set about completing hypersonic missiles.
The US, if it cares to retain its position as the world's most powerful global leader, urgently needs to catch up. We are already seeing trusting Americans, mostly under 30, seduced into thinking it might be preferable, "cool," to live under the grip of Communist China. Supposedly are protesting against what they see as abuses of mind-control and censorship by the Biden administration, in collusion with tech companies. Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, admitted to having knowingly fed the public misinformation -- a euphemism for lies. Replacing the US as the global superpower appears just what both Communist China's leader Xi Jinping -- as well as up to 170 million American fans of TikTok spyware and bolters to RedNote spyware, which is totally part of the Chinese government – have in mind,
A Trump Maganomics Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear fusion reactor superior to China's could be private or public -- or both. Fortunately, entrepreneurs are already working on just that. In the US, Sam Altman is already exploring the possibility, along with at least ten other private companies.
For Trump, prioritizing a Maganomics Manhattan Project to produce nuclear fusion for clean energy -- before China beats the US to the finish line -- is a crucial investment, well worth making.
Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
