Co-Authored by Kelly O’Brien, MPA and Harris Eyre, MD, PhD
America’s AI Action Plan, recently announced by the Trump Administration, aims to achieve U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence but overlooks a key force multiplier: investing in the American people’s human brainpower. From design to deployment, AI systems reflect and rely on the cognitive capacities of the people who build and use them.
American ingenuity—what Lincoln called ‘the fire of genius’—has long been the engine of our productivity and progress. From the space race to Silicon Valley, it’s not just natural resources or industrial capacity that set the U.S. apart, but the cognitive, creative, and entrepreneurial capacity of our people – our brain capital.
The Administration’s stated aim of “powering a new age of American leadership in science, technology, and global influence” will not be achieved by silicon and data infrastructure alone. It must be accompanied by investments in a different kind of infrastructure – our national brain infrastructure.
Just as AI relies on chips, cloud networks, and compute power, its success ultimately depends on the human intelligence that shapes, governs, and applies it. The World Economic Forum has identified the capabilities most essential in the AI era: analytical thinking, resilience, creativity, empathy, and curiosity. These are not technical upgrades – they are human ones. Failing to build brain infrastructure means our most powerful tools may evolve faster than our capacity to direct them.
Despite enormous advances in neuroscience, the brain remains one of the least understood organs in the human body. We know that brain health and performance is shaped by everything from genetics and inflammation to early life experiences and social connection, but we lack a full understanding of how these factors interact—or how to intervene most effectively across populations. Rising rates of mental and neurological health conditions are eroding America’s cognitive resilience – threatening our nation’s capacity to learn, work, innovate, and lead. Further, we know very little about how AI itself may reshape our ability to do these things.
While the U.S. is slashing strategic investments in science, education and health, other nations are doubling down. China, for example, has dramatically expanded its national brain science agenda—accelerating brain-computer interface trials, funding neuro-AI innovation, and integrating neuroscience into its economic and defense strategies. If America fails to act, it risks ceding not just scientific leadership, but the very foundation of AI competitiveness.
To compete with China and lead the next era of innovation, the U.S. must go beyond chips and deregulation. As many European nations already are developing, the United States needs a national brain capital strategy – a Human Intelligence “H.I.” Action Plan – that will enable us to fully flourish and lead.
Any strategy to power a new age of American leadership must expand the aperture beyond the technology that aids us – to include us. This involves prioritizing early child development and strong education systems, and embedding neuroscience-informed learning in schools. It also requires us to address the health and social risk factors that hamper cognitive resilience, scale cognitive capacity across the workforce through tools, culture and design, incentivize brain health innovation across sectors, and address rising rates of mental and neurological health conditions that plague Americans at all ages.
There is no doubt that AI holds the promise of augmenting and accelerating human productivity and scientific discoveries. But we must remember this is a collaboration. Investing in AI without equally investing in human capacity, ethics, and well-being risks collapsing the very foundation we aim to build. By nearly every meaningful measure – life expectancy, happiness, living standards, equality, cognitive resilience – Americans are falling behind. Our technological ambition must be matched by a human one.
The bottom line: we cannot build intelligent systems without fueling human intelligence. The countries that win the AI age will be those that invest not only in machines – but in the cognitive, emotional, and creative capacity of their people.
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Co-authors:
Harris Eyre, MD, PhD is Lead for Neuro-Policy and Harry Z. Yan and Weiman Gao Senior Fellow in Brain Health and Society at Rice University and Non-Resident Fellow for Neuro-Policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy
Kelly O’Brien, MPA is Vice President of Prevention at UsAgainstAlzheimer’s and Executive Director of the Business Collaborative on Brain Health
