How Rural America Can Win the AI Race

Image from Unsplash

When most people hear about the White House’s new AI strategy, Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan, they imagine Silicon Valley startups and billion-dollar labs. But if you read closely, you see that it isn’t just written for big cities. It’s full of opportunities rural America is uniquely positioned to seize.

That’s the part most people miss. The very things small towns and counties already have — land, energy potential, practical industries, and people eager for good jobs — are exactly what the AI economy needs. Which means rural communities are not on the sidelines of this story. They’re at the center of it.

The Big Picture

So, what exactly is the AI Action Plan? At its core, it’s a roadmap to make the U.S. the world’s AI powerhouse. The plan revolves around three major goals. First, to speed up AI innovation by funding research and development, supporting startups, and testing new tools particularly in areas like farming and healthcare. Second, to build the backbone of the AI economy through expanded data centers, clean energy infrastructure, and a skilled workforce. And third, to lead globally by ensuring the U.S. sets the standard for responsible and powerful AI.

Here’s Why Rural America Matters in the AI Economy

Think about what AI requires. Data centers and chip plants can’t exist without space — large parcels of it, close to power and fiber. Rural areas can offer that far more easily than crowded metros. Then there’s energy. AI is hungry for electricity, and rural regions already host the wind, solar, nuclear, and geothermal projects that can supply it.

But it doesn’t stop at infrastructure. Rural life itself creates real-world use cases that make AI valuable. Farms are perfect testing grounds for smart irrigation, soil monitoring, and predictive crop tools. Rural clinics are ideal places to pilot AI scheduling, diagnostics, and telehealth. These are not hypotheticals, they’re probably why the federal plan highlights agriculture and healthcare as target areas for investment.

Finally, there’s the workforce. Training people for highly technical jobs is hard, but training them for AI-adjacent roles like electricians, HVAC technicians, and installers is doable. With the right apprenticeships and certifications, local workers can step directly into the jobs AI infrastructure creates.

Put these pieces together, and it becomes clear that rural America isn’t just eligible for the benefits of the AI plan. It’s indispensable to making the plan succeed.

What Economic Development Corporations Can Do

The opportunity is real. The question is what to do about it. This is where EDCs come in. They’re the organizations that can translate national strategy into local action. To do that well, the following three things matter most. 

• Making sites easy to evaluate: Start with sites. If you want investors to consider your region, you can’t just tell them you have land. You have to show them you’re ready. That means creating a "site-pack": a simple, one-page summary of acreage, zoning, utility access, permitting timelines, and tax incentives. Pair that with a self-guided, immersive virtual tour for Economic Development that lets decision-makers “walk,” and self-explore the site without ever boarding a plane. Together, the pack and the immersive tour make your community legible at a glance which is exactly what busy companies need.

  
  

• Making people easy to hire: Once the sites are visible, the next challenge is talent. A community college or trade school can become the anchor for AI-adjacent skills training, but only if EDCs convene the right players. Employers have to be asked directly what skills they need; schools have to be nudged to create stackable credentials; and workers have to see a path to steady, well-paid jobs. This doesn’t require millions of dollars to begin. Often it starts with a single apprenticeship program or certification that proves the model works.

  
  

• Making stories measurable: Then comes credibility. The fastest way to show your community is serious is to run small pilots and document the results. A farm trying out smart irrigation, a clinic using AI scheduling, or a co-op testing predictive maintenance are all simple examples. What matters is measurement: how much water was saved, how many patient hours were freed up, how many breakdowns were avoided. Those numbers turn stories into evidence, and evidence opens doors to federal dollars.

  
  

Turning Opportunity Into Investment

This brings us to money. The federal plan isn’t just a policy document; it’s a map of where the funding will flow. SBIR grants, CHIPS Act funding, NAIRR pilot support — all of it is looking for communities that can connect local innovators to national goals. That’s where an EDC can have outsize impact. By helping a farmer apply for an SBIR, or by organizing a group of small towns into a consortium, an EDC can pull in resources no single actor could reach alone. In practice, that means acting as a bridge: translating federal language into local action, and local capacity into federal proposals.

Of course, every opportunity comes with objections. People will say data centers waste land or water, or that they don’t bring many jobs. That’s why it’s critical to anticipate these concerns and prepare clear answers with specifics. Point to reusing underutilized industrial parks, shuttered factories, or dormant grain elevators. Point to co-location near solar or ethanol plants that strengthens the grid and keeps energy dollars local. Point to the training pipelines that tie data centers to community colleges and high schools. Point to broadband and power upgrades that don’t just serve AI, but also farmers, hospitals, and schools. Point to the new restaurants, housing, and service jobs that always cluster around anchor projects. Even point to how modern cooling and water recycling systems can leave resources stronger than before. The more you ground your answers in local facts and the more concrete they are, the harder they are to dismiss.

A Practical Starting Point

This can sound overwhelming, but the way forward is actually straightforward. In 90 days, an EDC can:

• Inventory five shovel-ready sites and rank them.

• Build site-packs and self-guided Immersive virtual tours for all five or the top three.

• Convene a workforce meeting between employers and community colleges.

• Launch or expand one stackable certification or apprenticeship.

• Identify two pilot projects and prepare at least one grant application.

By the end of three months, you’ll have powerful portfolio of visible sites, a workforce plan in motion, a pilot story in development, and a funding pipeline open. In other words, proof your community is not waiting for opportunity but actively creating it.

Final Thoughts

The real story here is that rural America holds the keys to the AI economy. Cities don’t have the land, the energy potential, or the natural industries that make AI useful. Rural regions do. The White House plan may have been written for the whole country, but rural communities are the hinge on which it will turn.

EDCs that act quickly (packaging their sites, building talent, running pilots, and telling their stories) won’t just benefit from this shift. They’ll lead it. Because in the AI race, the winners won’t just be the ones who invent the technology. They’ll be the ones who can show the world exactly where and how to build it. And that’s a story rural America is uniquely positioned to tell.

An immersive self-guided virtual tour for economic development by Egents

About Egents

At Egents, we turn shovel-ready sites, services, and assets into an immersive, self-guided virtual tour that drives economic development. Instead of reading about your community or city as the right investment destination, investors, employers, and families get to self-explore it right from your website, brochure, or even a newspaper. Your community has what it takes, now make it visible and claim its place in the AI race, check out our Explorer tool.