The world’s largest economies are all in on the same high-stakes gamble: pouring hundreds of billions into advanced data centers and ever-more-powerful large language models. The United States, China and Europe are placing enormous bets on different strategies—yet the house edge is the same. If the gamble pays off, the winner could reshape the global order. If it fails, the losses could wreck economies and destabilize nations.

For the past 80 years, the global order has been dominated by the U.S. However, technological advances such as AI “could present an existential threat to nation-states—risks so profound they might disrupt or even overturn the current geopolitical order,” writes Mustafa Suleyman in The Coming Wave.

Some believe America’s continued dominance hinges on its AI strategy. The Bible, however, reveals that beneath the surface, a deeper spiritual matter will be the deciding factor.

The American Gamble

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft spending projections for AI infrastructure will boggle your mind.

The American economy hasn’t seen anything like this since the mid-19th-century railroad mania. And this might be even bigger than that.

So it had better work out.

The smartest people in the world think it will. Why? Because these corporations are expending trillions of dollars to make AI a reality in everyday personal, business, government and military life. Would they spend such gargantuan sums unless they were sure? Investors approve: Technology stocks are soaring. Hedge funds, pension plans and mom-and-pop investors can’t get enough of them.

But what if everybody is wrong?

AI companies have been dominating America’s financial markets and now its economy. They have become the world’s most highly valued corporations. nvidia, a company few people outside the tech and gaming worlds knew of five years ago, is now the most valuable company in the world—worth $5 trillion. That’s nearly the size of the entire German economy, which has 84 million people.

Ten years ago, semiconductor companies made up about 2 percent of the S&P 500. Today they account for roughly 18 percent, more than twice their weighting at the peak of the dot-com bubble in early 2000. After that bubble burst and technology companies lost their worth, trillions of dollars evaporated.

That 18 percent doesn’t include tech hardware companies that have also gone parabolic in value, or industrial giants like Caterpillar that have surged because companies are buying more of their products to build data centers. Then there are the utility companies that are preparing to supply all the electricity.

“If you start going through all of these indexes, there is a fascinating difference today from what happened in the tech bubble peak,” said Cameron Dawson, chief investment officer at NewEdge Wealth. When that bubble popped, “you could hide out in emerging markets, value, smallcap, midcap, all indexes that effectively didn’t have the same exposure to the tech bubble.” Not so anymore.As Dawson noted on the Thoughtful Money podcast with Adam Taggart, the AI trade has “infiltrated all of the indexes,” and that means it is much harder for investors to stay away from these investments even if they want to.

If you have a 401(k), an ira or a pension, you are almost certainly an AI investor—and probably a big one. So if this enormous phenomenon is indeed a bubble, when it pops, no one will be able to avoid the shock wave.

American technology companies are set to spend over $800 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. That is about 3 percent of America’s total gross domestic product. In one year.

They plan to spend an additional $1 trillion next year. And billions more the year after.

The Steel and Gravel Boom

America’s economy grew at a rate of 1.6 percent last quarter. Take away the AI spending, and it would have actually shrunk: We would be in a recession.

Yet America’s economic reliance on AI spending might be even greater than the headline numbers suggest. That is because a lot of related infrastructure is being constructed to support the AI build-out.

Consider this: For the past 20 years, America’s electricity consumption has been essentially flat. Now we are adding the equivalent of a New York City every three months, says Robert Thummel, managing director at Tortoise Capital.

Consulting firm icf says America’s electricity demand will grow 25 percent by 2030. Forbes calls it an “energy frenzy.” And it is being driven largely by AI data center consumption.

The electricity utilities know this, and they are building like mad. That means more cement, copper, silver, neodymium and a host of other resources will be mined and processed. It means more natural gas, uranium, solar panels and wind turbines will be manufactured. It means more truck drivers, crane operators, electricians, architects and welders will be needed, as will all the picks, shovels and sandwiches necessary to support them.

“This is the AI boom rendered in steel and gravel,” wrote cnbc. “It is the physical manifestation of a belief—that intelligence itself can be manufactured at industrial scale, and that whoever builds the biggest factory wins.” It quoted an official at Bessemer Venture Partners calling the AI build-out “the largest market in the history of mankind.”

Remember the Railroad Bubble

The last time so much money flooded into new “transformative” infrastructure was during the railroad boom of the 1870s. At the time, railroads revolutionized the world as people knew it, similar to what AI promises to do today. Railroads turned America into a truly connected, dual-ocean nation. They reduced transportation times and costs. They linked vast swaths of American geography and resources to coastal factories and markets. The funding of the railroads revolutionized finance and popularized investing in stocks.

“The railroads were built with debt. Debt, debt, debt,” said Derek Thompson, who hosts the Plain English podcast. “The whole thing was a tottering Jenga tower of leverage, and it came crashing down.” But before the crash, that financial model was considered to be the genius of the railroad builders: They were building a transformative network, and they were doing it with other people’s money.

The railroads helped turn America into a superpower. They also brought a lot of debt into the U.S. economy. And as Pulitzer Prize-winner Liaquat Ahamed noted, when railroads didn’t earn the promised returns, investors lost their investments, and a series of economic depressions racked the nation for decades.

When the railroad bubble popped, 20 to 25 percent of America’s workforce lost their jobs. It meant unemployment for millions, a stock market meltdown, two depressions and every single railroad but one to go out of business.

Could America’s AI build-out lead to a similar outcome? “I am genuinely frightened,” says Ahamed.

It is true that the Anthropics, Oracles and OpenAIs of the world have promised to fund these massive capital expenditures out of their profits. But that is changing fast.

A Historic Borrowing Binge

In January, the Bank for International Settlements warned that the AI build-out has transitioned from internal cash flows to debt-funded growth and that it is “not only reshaping corporate balance sheets, but also raises important questions about credit standards and financial stability.”

America’s tech behemoths are increasingly relying on borrowing to finance the data center boom and to fund their growth plans. This is what the railroads did in the late 1800s, the investment trusts did before the Great Depression, the tech companies did in the late 1990s, and home builders and lenders did in 2007.

There have certainly been some creative bond offerings lately. In February, Alphabet—Google’s parent company—sold a 100-year bond. Imagine paying interest on a debt for 100 years. In May, Alphabet entered Japan’s bond market for the first time, issuing $3.6 billion in yen-denominated debt as part of a broader borrowing spree to finance AI infrastructure. Like any bond issuer, Alphabet will have to repay that debt when it matures. Also in May, Amazon disclosed that it is selling debt denominated in Swiss francs for the first time, as part of a $32 billion debt deal. In October, Meta borrowed $30 billion for its AI build-out.

Fueling this “historic borrowing binge,” as cnbc called it, is investors’ and governments’ powerful fear of missing out and being left behind. They feel they have little choice but to spend huge sums of money—including other people’s money.

The promise of AI is huge. As our January issue noted, enthusiasts say it “is bigger than the Internet, more disruptive than railroads, more transformative than electricity.” But as we wrote, there is always a catch. “The strategic and economic pressures driving this venture are profound and irresistible” (theTrumpet.com/32941).

What if these amazing promises—and actual profits—take longer to realize than investors hope?

Ask the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad workers. Or all the land speculators and oil service employees who lost their homes and livelihoods during the 1980s oil bubble. Or maybe the investors in WorldCom or Global Crossing, who spent billions laying fiber-optic cables for anticipated Internet traffic that took longer to materialize than hoped.

When bubbles this big pop, a lot of people get hurt. Is AI a bubble?

In its annual report in June, the Bank of International Settlements said the AI-spending boom, forecast to reach $2.5 trillion worldwide this year, may prove unsustainable. Supply shortages, intense competition and complex financing deals could lead to overinvestment and a sharp pullback if expected payoffs disappoint, it said.

AI is clearly a world-changing technology. However, many businesses are still investing in it without clear ways to measure financial returns, making these supply shortages especially risky.

The bis warned that these investments could burst like the dot-com bubble, which inflated Internet-related stocks to a $3 trillion valuation by March 2000 before they lost 78 percent of their value. Of the hundreds of Internet companies that went public in the late 1990s, about half were out of business or delisted by the end of 2002. The Internet did indeed change the world, but the investing frenzy resulted in catastrophic financial losses that affected more than just investors.

If this history repeats itself with AI businesses, some economists estimate the U.S. gdp could drop 1 to 3 percent. Yet the bis is warning of three other economic risks—inflation, fragile bond markets and soaring government debt—that could make the AI bubble’s burst more painful than the dot-com bust.

The U.S. national debt is more than seven times bigger than it was during the dot-com bust.

America is entering a dangerous time. The economy has been swelling more than it otherwise would, largely pumped up by the greatest spending binge ever known. When the bills need to be paid, will the hoped-for AI profits materialize? Or will America’s financial strength prove to be artificial?

Debt-Fueled Greed

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The wisest king who ever lived warned against the kind of risk-taking now inflating the AI bubble. In Proverbs 22:26-27, Solomon wrote, “Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee?”

This verse does not forbid investing outright. Rather, it cautions against foolishly pledging what you cannot afford to lose, such as guaranteeing debts or investing heavily with borrowed money.

Despite this ancient wisdom, Morgan Stanley estimates that roughly half of the $3 trillion needed to build AI data centers will come from borrowed funds rather than internal cash flows. That means many could literally lose their beds if the AI boom fails to deliver. Such reckless leverage is not just foolish—it is sinful.

Elsewhere, Solomon warns, “He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough. A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent” (Proverbs 28:19-20).

In other words, real wealth comes from diligent work and developing your own resources. Loading up on debt to “get rich quick” eventually backfires. At its root, this mindset is covetousness: an intense desire to possess what you did not earn. It breaks the Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet …” (Exodus 20:17).

Today, many people are coveting a share of the AI boom and letting this covetousness motivate them to take on debt to invest in unproven technologies. You can never go bankrupt if you only invest what you can afford to lose, which is why the Trumpet’s Solve Your Money Troubles! booklet wisely advises, “If you can’t afford to lose the money you are investing, then you probably shouldn’t put that into the market.” This is more than common sense; it is biblically based instruction.

Borrowing someone else’s money to invest in an emerging technology is extremely risky; you could even make a case that it is immoral. History shows that much of America’s economic turmoil has stemmed from debt-driven speculation.

A Warning From the Past

The late Herbert W. Armstrong predicted that America would suffer a massive financial crisis far more dramatic than the ordinary “boom-bust” cycle. He said it would be nation-destroying.

Why? At a time when the average American paid little attention to the economy, Mr. Armstrong understood the importance of national and international banking. But there was a deeper spiritual reason behind his analysis. He never forgot a lesson learned early in his professional career.

In 1920, at a conference of businessmen, he heard economist Roger Babson forecast that the nation was about to enter a bitter business depression. Babson was largely laughed off and ignored. But within a year, the depression hit. At the following year’s conference, Babson returned. This time the faces in the room were sober and grim, and his words carried far more weight. His message remains a stark warning for America today.

“It is now mid-winter,” Babson said. “If I want to know what the temperature is now in this room, I go to the wall and look at the thermometer. If I want to know what it has been up to now and the existing trend as of the moment, I look at a recording thermometer. But if I want to know what the temperature in this room is going to be an hour from now, I go to the source which determines future temperatures. I go down to the boiler room and see what is happening down there.

“You gentlemen looked at bank clearings, indexes of business activity, stock car loadings, stock market quotations—you looked at the thermometers on the wall; I looked at the way people as a whole were dealing with one another. I looked to the source which determines future conditions. I have found that that source may be defined in terms of ‘righteousness.’

“When 51 percent or more of the whole people are reasonably ‘righteous’ in their dealings with one another, we are heading into increasing prosperity. When 51 percent of the people become ‘unrighteous’ in their business dealings with their fellows, then we are headed for bad times economically!”

Where is America today on the righteousness scale? Do you hear that question asked by any analyst on cnbc?

The Biggest Bubble

There was a still deeper reason Mr. Armstrong emphasized the importance of the American financial system, the causes of its failings, its hidden vulnerabilities—and the ultimate consequences.

“The present economic crisis threatens the very existence of the United States of America,” he said in an August 14, 1984, World Tomorrow broadcast. “Now, that statement ought to be thundered in banner headlines. But this crisis, the financial crisis, is more serious than the world understands.”

Mr. Armstrong described meetings with heads of government during an economic summit in London and the realization he reached as they discussed the world’s economy. He warned that the crisis could suddenly force a unification in Europe, a United States of Europe that would produce a new world power, perhaps larger than either the Soviet Union or the U.S., formed for the very purpose of challenging America. That development, he said, is foretold in Bible prophecy.

Mr. Armstrong had warned for decades that America’s seemingly invincible economic might was, in effect, a bubble. Despite the nation’s mines, factories, highways, harbors, fields, crops, herds, and banks, its failure to keep God’s financial laws created a fatal vulnerability. So did its deep interconnection with the banking systems of other nations.

The massive expansion of funding and risk now pouring into the AI sector, combined with America’s disregard for God’s financial laws and its financial ties to Europe, fits directly into those same biblical prophecies. And those prophecies involve tens of trillions in funds, billions in losses, and millions of lives.

Take what personal lessons you can from this enormous and risky gamble. You are about to witness the painful consequences of flaunting God’s laws, which He gives us for our protection, our prosperity, and our spiritual health!