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Tesla cofounder: "We should be really worried" about the U.S. losing power race to China

Jun 18, 2026
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At Fortune Brainstorm Tech, Tesla cofounder and CEO of Redwood Materials JB Straubel warned that China's pace of infrastructure development is moving at a scale and speed that's difficult for many Americans to grasp. As AI drives growing demand for electricity, he argued that access to energy is becoming a key competitive advantage. “People will move around the planet to find where the energy is available,” he said. “If that's not the U.S., that to me is a failure.”