Four Executive Orders to Go Nuclear: Inside the White House Push to Solve America’s Power Crisis

Four separate executive orders were signed to fast-track nuclear energy development across the United States. Former CIA and Pentagon advisor Jim Rickards says the speed and scale of the push signals something most Americans haven’t grasped yet — the country is running out of power.

Baltimore, MD, May 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Four executive orders. All focused on a single objective: accelerating the development and deployment of nuclear energy across the United States.

It’s the kind of concentrated policy action that doesn’t happen unless something urgent is driving it. And according to Jim Rickards’ recently released presentation — an economist, best-selling author, and former advisor to the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House — what’s driving it is a power crisis that’s already here.

“We’ve never seen this kind of increase in demand before,” Rickards said. “And we’re not producing enough electricity. Our power grid is already at capacity.”

A Deficit That Can’t Wait

The U.S. electrical grid was built for a different era. It was designed to handle steady, predictable growth in residential and commercial consumption. What it was not designed for is the simultaneous arrival of two of the most energy-intensive forces in modern history: a massive reshoring of American manufacturing and the explosive buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure.

On the manufacturing side, nearly $9 trillion in new domestic investment has been committed in under a year. Apple, Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor, Eli Lilly, Hyundai, GE Aerospace, and dozens of others are building facilities that will need to be powered around the clock.

On the AI side, the numbers are even more striking. A single ChatGPT query uses 10 times more energy than a standard Google search. Boston Consulting Group estimates that by 2030, AI data centers alone will consume the same amount of electricity currently used by roughly two-thirds of all American homes.

Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are now collectively spending about $400 billion a year on data center infrastructure. Each new facility that comes online adds another layer of demand onto a grid that’s already straining.

That’s why four executive orders landed focused squarely on nuclear energy. It wasn’t symbolic. It was a signal that the administration views the energy deficit as a national priority.

Why Nuclear — and Why Now

Solar and wind are part of the energy mix, but they’re intermittent — they generate power only when the sun shines or the wind blows. Natural gas plants can take years to permit and build. Neither can deliver the kind of reliable, high-capacity, around-the-clock baseload power that a new generation of factories and AI data centers demands.

Nuclear can.

It’s the only proven energy source capable of running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at the scale required to close the gap between current grid capacity and where demand is heading. And Rickards’s presentation says the policy push reflects a growing recognition at the highest levels of government that there is no realistic alternative.

“That’s why President Trump has taken several measures to promote the development of new energy sources,” Rickards said. “Including nuclear energy.”

The Market Has Already Started Moving

Companies positioned at the center of the nuclear buildout haven’t waited for the rest of the market to catch on.

Oklo, a nuclear energy provider, has jumped as high as 1,000% over the past year. Bloom Energy has given investors the chance to 10x their money over the same period. And Nuscale, which manufactures small modular reactors — a newer, more flexible class of nuclear technology — has surged as high as 2,500% in under two years.

Rickards’s presentation points to sees these moves as early signals of a much larger shift. As more data centers scale up and more manufacturing facilities come online, he believes the demand for nuclear energy will continue to accelerate — and with it, demand for everything in the supply chain underneath.

The Chain Reaction Underneath

Every new reactor needs fuel. And that means uranium.

Uranium prices have already reached the highest levels since 2008, with analysts expecting further climbs as the nuclear pipeline expands. More reactors mean more sustained, long-term demand for the raw material that powers them — a dynamic that Rickards’s presentation says most investors haven’t traced all the way through.

But the supply chain doesn’t stop at uranium. Nuclear facilities require steel, concrete, specialized components, and critical minerals. The broader manufacturing reshoring requires copper, lithium, rare earth elements, and iron ore. And after decades of neglecting domestic production, the U.S. now relies on China for 100% of 15 key minerals.

“You cannot have an industrial boom without energy from coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear power,” Rickards said. “And you cannot have an industrial boom without metals like copper, iron ore, rare earth elements, lithium, and silicon.”

A Government That Isn’t Just Regulating — It’s Investing

The nuclear push is part of a broader federal mobilization that Rickards says has no modern precedent. An executive order titled “Immediate Measures to Increase American Mineral Production” has directed federal agencies to ramp up mining on public lands — lands the Financial Times estimates hold as much as $100 trillion in untapped mineral wealth.

Mining permits that once took a decade are now being fast-tracked through a program called FAST-41, with some approvals coming in as few as 89 days. The stated goal is to push that timeline to 28 days.

And the government isn’t just clearing the regulatory path. The Pentagon has taken a $400 million direct equity stake in MP Materials, a rare earth producer, becoming the company’s largest shareholder. A $5 billion mining investment fund is being created to take stakes in companies producing critical minerals domestically.

“The company now basically has a guaranteed buyer for its products,” Rickards said of the MP Materials deal. “The best kind of buyer you can ask for — a buyer with unlimited spending power. The U.S. government.”

Rich Nolan, the CEO of the National Mining Association, has called the scope of what’s happening “the New Deal for minerals.”

Why Rickards Believes This Is a Generational Moment

Rickards’s presentation points to a historical parallel he’s been studying for years. In the early 2000s, China’s state-backed industrialization consumed twice as much steel between 2000 and 2020 as the U.S. used during the entire 20th century. That demand triggered a supercycle in natural resources — a sustained, multi-year boom that produced extraordinary gains for those who recognized the pattern early.

He believes the same forces are converging now in the United States — with an added accelerant that didn’t exist two decades ago: an AI industry that is layering unprecedented power demand on top of an already historic industrial expansion.

“I honestly never thought I would see another supercycle in my lifetime,” Rickards said. “But here we are.”

Adam Rozencwajg, who manages a natural resource hedge fund, has reached a similar conclusion, calling this “the best opportunity that I’ve seen probably in the 150-odd years that we’ve been studying these markets.”

Four executive orders focused on nuclear energy wasn’t a routine policy gesture. Rickards sees it as a starting gun — and says most Americans haven’t yet heard the shot.

Rickards has published his full analysis through his research service, which is followed by thousands of readers nationwide.

About the Presentation

Jim Rickards' full video presentation is free to watch and available for on-demand viewing at no cost. To access the complete session, click here.

About Jim Rickards and Paradigm Press

Jim Rickards is an economist, best-selling author, and former advisor to the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House. Over nearly five decades, he has operated at the intersection of global finance, intelligence, and economic policy — from helping resolve the Iran hostage crisis to working with the Federal Reserve during the Long-Term Capital Management banking crisis to building predictive threat models for the U.S. intelligence community after 9/11. He correctly forecast the 2008 financial crisis, both of Trump’s presidential election victories, and the recent surge in precious metals to all-time highs. His work is published by Paradigm Press, an independent research firm whose readers have given it a 4.8-star rating on Google across more than 1,900 public reviews.

Derek Warren
Public Relations Manager
Paradigm Press Group
Email: dwarren@paradigmpressgroup.com

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