Critical Infrastructure
Assets necessary for vital societal functions.
How the laws define this
Both frameworks recognize critical infrastructure as encompassing physical and technical or virtual assets essential to artificial intelligence operations. However, they diverge fundamentally on whether the computing resources supporting artificial intelligence constitute the critical infrastructure itself or merely interact with it. Under the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2024-2025 Action Plan, critical infrastructure refers directly to the compute resources required for artificial intelligence training and inference, explicitly highlighting data centres, processors, and cloud resources as targets for investments, interoperability, and secure access frameworks. In contrast, the Ohio Right to Compute Act defines critical infrastructure as vital physical and virtual United States systems whose incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health, or safety. Rather than classifying computing resources as the infrastructure, the Ohio bill specifically addresses artificial intelligence systems controlling such vital assets.
Synthesised from the 2 statutory definitions below. Each one is quoted in full, with its source.
Definitions (2)
Critical infrastructure covers the physical and technical resources necessary for AI training and inference—such as data centres, processors and cloud resources—and is a focus for investments, interoperability and secure access frameworks in the Plan.
Refers to systems and assets, both physical and virtual, that are so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof. The bill specifically addresses AI systems controlling such infrastructure.
Related Terms
critical information infrastructure
Information systems whose compromise endangers national security....
High-impact AI
Systems in critical sectors with potential for substantial harm....
Critical Infrastructure Facility
Vital assets whose incapacitation would severely impact national security, economy, public health, or safety....
High-risk settings
Contexts where harms are hard or impossible to reverse....
critical information infrastructure (CII)
Systems whose disruption would critically harm national functions....