Foreward

By Dr. David E. Martin

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Few people ever bother reading one of the most acute, honest, and let’s face it, a bit terrifying reports prepared by the U.S. Government. The Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) is the Department of Homeland Security's statutory strategy document, which is updated every four years. In 2018 in Melbourne Australia, I hosted the Centre for Innovative Technology at Melbourne Polytec’s conference covering this material with several of its contributors. Across the two-day conference, we discussed the global challenges facing a world that was increasingly drawn toward endless expansion of technology without the commensurate concern for power generation, load balancing, grid hardening and shielding and the like. Eight years later, little changed.

Few people study the events of September 1 and 2, 1859 when a coronal mass ejection – the Carrington Event – took down the fledgling original “internet” in the form of telegraph. With the rapid development of the point-to-point technology, no one had considered that the infrastructure built to link points was not capable of handling an event that, because of the lack of context, could not be understood. After several speeches in which I raised this issue, Lloyds of London and the Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) organization in the U.S. collaborated on modeling a Carrington Event and came to the estimate that the immediate economic consequence of a similar event would be as much as $2.6 trillion in 2012.

What do these anecdotes have in common, you might ask? Well, great question. And the answer is chillingly obvious and universally ignored – almost. When the world embraces technology – as is happening in today’s mad rush towards data aggregation, analysis, and dissemination centers humming with HVAC systems and GPUs – “the point” is often misunderstood as the chip, the processor, the cooling systems and the like. And while these are of inestimable value to be sure, they are massive paperweights if the energy that is their lifeblood is disrupted or destroyed. A brief pursuing of the QHSR gives numerous scenarios which chill the blood of the most ardent technologist if taken seriously. And power management – as highlighted in the QHSR – is the world’s Achilles heel. Until now.

In his accessible book, 2027: The American AI Crisis, Sean Walsh serves as not only the oracle alerting the world to the challenges before us but, unlike Delphi or Siwa, he’s got more than a voice worth the listen. Because Sean’s been through the whole life-cycle of the problem – as a pioneer in data mining and data centers as well as the creator of a Solution to the problems he’s identifying. In an engineering schematic that would make the Tennessee Valley Authority look like child’s play, Sean takes the reader on an important journey from articulating the woeful inadequacy of the world’s infrastructure and then unveils a tried, tested, and fully operational approach that can be deployed AT SCALE to mitigate the certainty (not risk) that is looming.

I’ve had the honor of working with people who inhabit the vanguard of thought for nearly 4 decades and I’m honored not just to advocate for this book but I’m honored to work with Sean and his remarkable colleagues as we defuse a crisis of our own creation before...

Well, you were warned.

Dr. David E. Martin

Fellow

Darden Graduate School of Business Administration

University of Virginia

December 2025

Introduction >

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