Artificial intelligence is often imagined as a weightless miracle, a stream of answers appearing from thin air. Yet as Dawn reported on October 28, 2026, every prompt typed into a chatbot rests on something far heavier: data centres, specialised processors, cooling systems and, above all, electricity. The intelligence of the machine has a body, and nations that forget this will watch others decide their fate.
The finding carries a direct warning for Pakistan. A country that cannot keep its own lights burning will not command a seat at the table of the next industrial age.
Brain and muscle: the two halves of AI power
According to Dawn, AI has both a brain and a muscle. The brain is the algorithms, the software, the researchers, the engineers and the companies that build the models. The muscle is electricity, computing infrastructure, minerals, manufacturing capacity and reliable networks. The first phase of the global AI race concentrated on the brain. That phase is ending.
Now the muscle is becoming impossible to ignore. The International Energy Agency expects electricity demand from data centres to more than double by 2030, with artificial intelligence as a major driver. The challenge, as Dawn notes, is not simply producing more power. It is producing reliable supply and expanded transmission networks capable of feeding vast data centres. Oil and gas beneath the ground are not the same as electricity delivered to a server. A resource becomes strategic only when it can be converted into dependable infrastructure.
The physical foundations of AI also run through the earth. Copper, aluminium, silicon and rare-earth materials all feed the advanced semiconductor supply chain, and mining and refining remain concentrated in a small number of countries. An algorithm can cross a border in milliseconds. A power plant, a mine or a factory cannot. Geography has not surrendered to the digital age; it has merely changed its uniform.
A new geopolitical equation
This reality redraws the map of power. Countries with the strongest research ecosystems may still depend on others for energy, minerals and manufacturing. Resource-rich states may hold the muscle of the AI economy without the universities, capital and software needed to turn it into computing strength. The long-term advantage, Dawn argues, belongs to countries that can connect the two.
No nation controls every link of the chain. The United States commands research, capital and advanced computing. China pairs rapidly advancing AI with industrial scale. The Gulf states possess energy and capital in abundance, while Australia and Canada hold substantial mineral reserves. Interdependence will remain unavoidable, but the states that connect more stages, from energy and minerals to computing and applications, will carry the greater strategic weight.
What this means for Pakistan
Pakistan illustrates the challenge with painful clarity. It is not a frontier AI power today, and it faces serious constraints: unreliable electricity, limited advanced computing and thin research funding. Yet the country is not without gifts. It holds a large young population, growing software and IT-services sectors, universities, engineering talent, hydropower and renewable-energy potential, and significant mineral resources, as Dawn's analysis sets out.
The strategic task is not to gather more resources or write more algorithms in isolation. It is to bind Pakistan's physical assets to its scientific and technological capabilities. That means moving beyond the old model of exporting raw materials and low-value services. An AI-era strategy would use reliable energy, connectivity and minerals to support data centres, cloud services, local research, advanced applications and value-added manufacturing.
Artificial intelligence could then act as an industrial multiplier across agriculture, textiles, logistics, mining, health, education and public administration, rather than remaining another narrow software sector. This is the difference between a nation that consumes the inventions of others and a nation that produces. For a country of 240 million, most of them young, the stakes could not be higher. A population without industry is a burden; the same population with capability is a force no rival can ignore.
Resources alone guarantee nothing
Resource wealth, however, guarantees neither technological independence nor prosperity. Natural resources cannot substitute for universities, skilled workers, capital, innovation and capable institutions. Dawn frames the relationship between AI's brain and muscle as multiplication rather than addition. A country with excellent algorithms but unreliable power will struggle to scale. A country with abundant energy but weak research capacity will remain a supplier of commodities, selling its birthright cheap while others refine it into power.
The lesson for Pakistan, and for other resource-rich nations, is immediate. An AI strategy cannot stop at applications, start-ups or glossy policy statements. It must address reliable electricity, data-centre infrastructure, digital skills, research institutions, mineral value addition and industrial capacity. The next phase of the AI race will not be decided solely by who builds the smartest models. It will be decided by who can power them, supply them and apply them productively.
Building the national capability
For Pakistan, the path forward demands discipline and faith in its own people. The country's young engineers and graduates are its true strategic reserve, greater than any mineral deposit. Machine learning and deep learning, the techniques behind modern AI, are not mysteries beyond our institutions; as Google Cloud explains, these systems learn patterns from data, inspired by the structure of the human brain. Pakistani universities can master them, given funding and seriousness.
Research institutions abroad are already probing how intelligent systems and physical capability interact. At EPFL, researchers supported by a Meta challenge developed new reinforcement-learning approaches to model how the brain and muscles coordinate, work reported by ScienceDaily on October 23, 2026. The frontier is moving from pure software into the mechanics of the physical world, and Pakistan's engineers belong in that conversation.
AI has a brain. But without muscle, even the most brilliant brain cannot move. Pakistan must build both, or watch the next age pass it by.
Frequently asked questions
Why does artificial intelligence need physical infrastructure?
Every AI response depends on data centres, specialised processors, cooling equipment and electricity. The International Energy Agency expects data-centre electricity demand to more than double by 2030, with AI as a major driver, according to Dawn.
What mineral resources does AI depend on?
Advanced semiconductors require copper, aluminium, silicon and rare-earth materials, and their mining and refining remain concentrated in a limited number of countries.
What should Pakistan's AI strategy include?
Reliable electricity, data-centre infrastructure, digital skills, research institutions, mineral value addition and industrial capacity, alongside software and applications development, according to Dawn's analysis.