"Hey gang, let's make some turbines!"
There are very few organizations that could bring together the engineering and the manufacturing expertise necessary to actually pull this off. Maybe two, and one of them is a country, China where BYD's manufacturing prowess combined with the engineering mavens at Beijing's Tsinghua University could get it done fast.
From Tom's Hardware, August 30:
Fine, I’ll do it myself.
Electricity supply in the U.S. is a limiting factor preventing AI data centers from coming online as quickly as possible. Because of this, many projects are turning to portable natural gas turbine generators to get the electricity they need and bypass long wait times to connect to the grid. This has driven demand for turbines, so Elon Musk said on X that SpaceX will bring turbine blade and vane casting in-house.
Musk was one of the first to deploy “portable” power generators to power a data center, allowing him to bring the Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee, online in record time. Note that these mobile generators aren’t small devices — they’re massive units about the size of one trailer and may also include another trailer or two of other necessary parts and accessories to run it (not including the tank needed for its fuel). OpenAI followed suit a few months later, announcing it will deploy turbines at the first Stargate data center to deliver additional power.
This sudden influx of demand has led to jet engine shortages for data center operators. Beyond the fact that engine manufacturers weren’t prepared for the AI boom, commercial aviation has already been suffering from its own shortages due to supply chain and engine design issues even before data center developers started buying up turbines....
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Sometimes it seems Mr. Musk is China's only competition across a range of industries.
The latest is reusable rocket boosters.
From Space.com:
Private Chinese rocket nails landing after 2nd-ever launch
The Beijing startup LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket on Aug. 18, 2026, becoming the first Chinese company ever to do so during an orbital launch.
And Tsinghua?
From Fortune, November 19, 2025:
Move over Harvard and MIT—this university might be winning the AI race, and you’ve probably never heard of it
...Tsinghua has produced more of the world’s 100 most-cited AI research papers than any other school, and the university generates more AI-related patents each year than MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard combined. Between 2005 and the end of 2024, Tsinghua researchers filed 4,986 AI and machine-learning patents—including more than 900 last year—according to LexisNexis data analyzed by Bloomberg....
....MUCH MORE
It's not just computer engineering and AI. Robots and mechanical and electrical and civil engineering as well. Here's a vignette from January 2019:
In the introduction to "Is China’s plan to use a nuclear bomb detonator to release shale gas in earthquake-prone Sichuan crazy or brilliant?" I mentioned:
After the Three Gorges Dam was completed some very serious problems emerged, I mean beyond the environmental degradation and the slowing of the earth's rotation, some straight-up engineering concerns: shifting, cracking, earthquakes etc
The civil engineers went to a very famous Chinese engineering Professor in search of solutions.
The first thing he told them was: "You are dealing with powerful forces, almost beyond human comprehension."
I met him at his daughter's home, classic little old Chinese gentleman, pants pulled up to his armpits, where he was singing, in German. It was a bit surreal....
The Professor taught and consulted from his perch at Tsinghua.
