Fusion, we’re told, changes everything. Limitless energy. Abundant growth. A century rewritten.

It’s a claim that’s been around since the bomb still felt like progress.

It’s survived oil shocks, cold wars, climate summits, and venture cycles. Each decade finds a new reason it is finally ready. Each decade also finds reasons it remains just out of reach.

So it’s worth pausing before joining the parade.

Not to dismiss it. Not to sanctify it either. Just to look at it from the angle history prefers.

(From the mezzanine, behind a support column, where the sound is awful but the exits are visible.)

Trump Goes Nuclear

On December 18, Trump Media & Technology Group agreed to merge with fusion developer TAE Technologies in an all-stock deal valued at more than $6 billion.

TAE is an interesting choice, because it’s not the obvious choice. If the goal were speed, headlines, or near-term spectacle, it would not be the first call.

Founded in the late 1990s, TAE took a contrarian path in fusion, favoring a harder, cleaner approach over quick demonstrations.

It spent years operating quietly, building successive machines, learning through slow iteration, and avoiding hype while many rivals came and went.

A turning point arrived in the 2010s with machine-learning–driven plasma control. This accelerated progress and made the long bet begin to look a bit more credible.

It has real scientists, real reactors, real incremental progress.

That alone sets it apart from many fusion press releases that evaporate after the pitch deck.

Trump’s involvement adds something else: gravity.

The kind that changes who pays attention, who resists, and who quietly repositions.

None of that guarantees success. It might even worsen the odds in some ways. But it does guarantee motion.

Energy and the Shape of Power

Energy systems sit beneath everything else.

Prices, wages, geopolitics, living standards—these orbit energy density and reliability whether anyone acknowledges it or not.

Cheap energy expands margins everywhere. Expensive energy concentrates control.

That relationship predates climate debates, nationalism, and cable news. Rome understood it. Britain understood it. The United States built its century on it.

Fusion, if it ever escapes the lab, rearranges that map. A reactor that doesn’t require sprawling supply chains dulls leverage. The implications extend beyond electricity bills.

This explains the interest. It also explains the resistance.

Institutions built around scarcity adapt poorly to abundance. Their tools lose edge. Their narratives lose urgency. Managed decline stops managing.

Fusion embodies a different wager—the idea that the ceiling isn’t fixed, that energy constraints are technical rather than moral, that growth doesn’t require apology.

That idea frightens some people. It excites others. It remains unproven, but it invokes a reaction either way.

Nothing Ever Happens

So what happened this week?

A sitting president placed a high-visibility marker on a long-shot technology with outsized consequences.

Media outlets responded predictably. Supporters proclaimed destiny. Critics smelled conflict and hubris.

Past the noise, there’s one detail that doesn’t go away… 

Serious money continues to flow into fusion. And if fusion works, the world shifts.

Whether that shift leads to abundance or merely rearranges control remains the open question—the one worth watching.

(From the mezzanine, behind a support column, where the sound is awful but the exits are visible.)