From oil hegemony to electricity hegemony: why Big Tech chose Korea

Big Tech's investment of tens of trillions of won in Korea is read against the backdrop of the electrostate era, in which the basis of global dominance has shifted from oil to cheap, stable electricity available 24 hours a day. A single generative AI query uses 2.9 Wh, about 10 times a search, and AI server racks have grown from 7 kW to more than 50 kW; the US, having stopped investing in its grid, ends up waiting 1–2 years for a power connection even after building a data center, so Big Tech has turned to direct nuclear contracts. Korea was chosen for three reasons: its ability to build nuclear plants fast at about $3,571 per kW, more than 40% cheaper than the US ($5,833); a power-equipment industry that has filled the market for transformers and switchgear opened up by the US shutting out Chinese products (the three main companies' 2025 revenue: ₩15 trillion); and an environment with low heat-wave risk, along with its chip and talent ecosystem. Examples include AWS and SK's Ulsan AI Zone (103 MW initially, about 70,000 GPUs, a 1 GW target) and the roughly ₩26 trillion Czech nuclear plant order, but transmission bottlenecks in the Seoul metropolitan area and KEPCO's debt of more than ₩200 trillion remain problems to solve, and most of the figures need to be checked against primary sources.

This is a note: my own write-up after reading several sources. It has no source link; events checked against a source are kept as records.