The commander of the joint U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) says “immediate actions” are already being taken to implement the Trump administration’s executive order directing the creation of a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield for North America.

Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, who wears two hats as the head of U.S. Northern Command as well as head of NORAD, testified Wednesday to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces that he envisions the Golden Dome as multiple overlapping defense domes capable of defeating everything from high-altitude ballistic missiles to lower-flying threats such as cruise missiles and unmanned aerial systems.

The first “dome” will focus on the area from the seafloor to space, said Gen. Guillot, who characterized that area as “the most critical priority for deterring and defeating missile threats to the homeland.”

U.S. national laboratories and several American universities that are engaged in Pentagon-funded research are using Chinese supercomputers in ways that endanger U.S. national security, according to a former Air Force intelligence analyst.

L.J. Eads, now a specialist on China security matters, uncovered the links in research from more than 100 scientific studies between 2016 and 2024. The studies revealed that American researchers were using China’s TianHe-series supercomputers located in Tianjin and Guangzhou.

The systems are part of the Chinese national supercomputer center and were used in papers produced by researchers at the Argonne, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos national laboratories. The labs are involved in sensitive defense work, including nuclear weapons. Mr. Eads said the systems “serve as critical infrastructure” for the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party in “advancing military technology, hypersonic weapons and AI-driven defense capabilities.”

Trump administration officials and a bipartisan cadre of lawmakers gathered this week at the Hill & Valley Forum with executives from companies such as Nvidia, Oracle, Google, Anduril, Palantir and OpenAI to discuss major issues in tech and jump-starting American manufacturing. 

Jacob Helberg, a top Palantir adviser, said the technologists, manufacturers and policymakers were assembling to develop plans for top tech to be made in America again. Mr. Helberg is also a pending nominee for a State Department position. “We live today in a mostly deindustrialized world — China and Chinese-controlled companies dominate the lion’s share of the world’s production capacity. That cannot continue,” he told reporters. “When the history of this decade is written, I believe the organizing principle of the 2020s will shift from globalization to reindustrialization.”

AI and America’s rivalry with China were major topics of concern at Hill & Valley, an annual gathering that drew hundreds of attendees to speeches and panels this year, featuring remarks from House Speaker Mike Johnson and Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Democrat; Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat; Mike Lee, Utah Republican; and Jim Banks, Indiana Republican, among several others.

Nvidia’s Mr. Huang is urging Washington to prepare for AI to fundamentally upend the global economy. “New jobs will be created, some jobs will be lost, every job will be changed,” Mr. Huang told the Hill & Valley Forum on Capitol Hill, asserting that the disruption caused by AI advances will be both creative and turbulent.

Fears about AI adoption are not limited to labor upheaval but to misuses and abuses by governments and criminals. Nvidia said last month it would produce AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S., at manufacturing sites in Arizona and Texas.

Mr. Huang said such manufacturing will create a range of jobs beyond those typically associated with AI, including construction workers, steelworkers and plumbers. Eventually, all workers will need to grapple with AI, but will not be replaced by it, according to Mr. Huang, who said: “It’s not AI that’s going to take your job, it’s not AI that’s going to destroy your company, it’s the company and the person who uses AI that’s going to take your job.”

Google said this week it wants Washington’s help to speed up nuclear permitting and create domestic nuclear fuel supply to expand U.S. energy resources that will support power-thirsty AI projects.

The Big Tech titan announced a new agenda for fueling its AI ambitions, authoring a series of policy proposals intended to update America’s energy system to power tech breakthroughs. The steps required to energize AI development are within reach, wrote Google’s Ruth Porat, Thomas Kurian, James Manyika and Kent Walker.

Google is pushing “the world’s first corporate agreements to purchase advanced geothermal and advanced nuclear from small modular reactors (SMRs), among other technologies,” they wrote in a paper urging policymakers to focus on workforce development because a “shortage of electricians may constrain America’s ability to build the infrastructure needed to support AI, advanced manufacturing and a shift to clean-energy.”

• May 1 — Gambling on Armageddon: Costs and Risks of Nuclear Modernization, Stimson Center

• May 5-7 — EmTech AI, MIT Technology Review

• May 5-7 — Think 2025, IBM

• May 5-8 — SOF Week 2025: The Asymmetric Strategic Option for a Volatile World, U.S. Special Operations Command & Global SOF Foundation

• May 6-7 — Brainstorm AI, Fortune

• May 14 — The Spy and the State with Jeffrey Rogg, International Spy Museum

• June 2-4 — AI+ Expo, Special Competitive Studies Project