For the last decade, the United States military has been building an increasingly interconnected national security ecosystem that combines edge technology with domestic manufacturing muscle and a highly skilled workforce. Central Texas has played an important role in that effort, expanding research and industrial capacity in technologies that will shape the next generation of American defense and economic competitiveness.
Across successive presidential administrations, Pentagon leaders have prioritized American leadership in frontier AI, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, commercial space and other emerging technologies. These capabilities are increasingly interdependent. Better chips enable more capable AI. AI makes robotics and weapons systems more effective. Energy powers the compute and factories behind them, while talent and industrial capacity turn breakthroughs into technologies that can be produced and deployed at scale.
Bringing those capabilities together is becoming one of the defining national security challenges of the next decade. The Chinese Communist Party is pursuing many of the same capabilities with strategic intent. The CCP has made AI a national priority, pairing large-scale research and state support with an aggressive push to build a domestic technology ecosystem less dependent on American hardware. The Chinese company Huawei, for example, is rapidly expanding production of its Ascend AI chips as China seeks alternatives to US-based Nvidia hardware restricted by U.S. export controls. American frontier models still lead on capability, and Chinese chips still trail Nvidia’s best hardware on raw performance, but technological advantages are not permanent.
The AI competition will not be determined by who builds the best model alone. It will also depend on the industrial base needed to continuously develop and deploy advanced AI at scale. A new report from Build American AI, The Texas AI Machine, examines what that industrial base looks like and the infrastructure and workforce needed to support it.
Central Texas demonstrates what that looks like in practice. The corridor from Austin through the Brazos Valley has been called an “American Shenzhen” for its concentration of technology, advanced manufacturing, capital and research. Today, the region is assembling many of the capabilities the United States will need to sustain our technological advantage.
The U.S. Department of War recognized Austin’s national security value years ago, establishing its first Defense Innovation Unit outpost here in 2016. The Army followed with Army Futures Command in 2018 and now its successor, the U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM).
Texas A&M currently anchors the Brazos Valley on the corridor’s eastern edge, where the Army conducts combat modernization testing through the George H.W. Bush Combat Development Complex at RELLIS. Nearby, Texas A&M is building a nearly 80,000-square-foot Semiconductor Institute to advance research and prepare workers for an industry with growing national security importance.
In neighboring Grimes County, Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are planning Terafab, a massive semiconductor manufacturing complex that would add a huge new piece of the advanced technology supply chain to this mega region.
Austin anchors the west with the capital, research and defense-tech ecosystem that has made it a magnet for dual-use startups. Companies like Firefly Aerospace, Aeon, Allen Control Systems and CesiumAstro are building alongside established technology partners such as Samsung Austin, AMD, Valkyrie and Strangeworks. Texas State University and UT-Austin, alongside multiple community and technical colleges power the research labs and mint new founders.
Together, Austin and the Brazos Valley are developing industrial capacity increasingly important to maintaining America’s technological edge.
Much of the national conversation about AI and China happens in Washington and Silicon Valley, far from the communities building the physical infrastructure behind that competition. Yet across Central Texas, from Austin to the Brazos Valley and the towns between them, investments being made today are helping build the industrial capacity the United States will need in the years ahead.
Central Texas cannot meet that challenge alone, nor should it. But the region has many of the assets America needs for the next phase of this competition and room to build on the foundation already in place.
Reaching that potential will require our elected leaders and the public to understand what is being built here, why it matters and what is needed to sustain it. The investments Central Texas makes in research, infrastructure, manufacturing and talent today will help determine whether America can maintain its technological advantage tomorrow. Texas has an important role to play in that effort, and Central Texas is already building the foundation.
Drew Scheberle is the Executive Director of Texas’ National Security Innovation Council.