Living Between Breakdown and Build: America’s Infrastructure is Being Built in Plain Sight

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This OpEd was originally published in S.C. Media.

February 23, 2026

Author: Cory Simpson, CEO, ICIT and Javier Nater, Associate Director of Operations, Gray Space Strategies

Every day, Americans are bombarded with a continuous flow of information that signals stress. Institutions seem strained. Systems appear fragile. Global competition, conflicts, cyber threats, and climate-related disruptions form the backdrop of daily life. The attention economy amplifies these signals, reinforcing the sense that the world is coming apart faster than can be repaired.

At the same time, the United States is undertaking one of the largest sustained efforts in its history to build and modernize critical infrastructure. Public and private investments are flowing into energy, water, transportation, communications, and digital systems at an unprecedented scale. These projects are quietly reshaping the foundations of modern life, mostly outside the scope of daily headlines.

Both realities exist at once. The tension between them defines the moment. The work of leadership happens in the space between breakdown and build, where pressure and progress coexist, and long-term outcomes are shaped by near-term decisions.

What is being constructed today will define how people live, work, and connect for decades. The defining question is how deliberately infrastructure is designed, governed, and aligned with the needs of the communities it serves.

Historic infrastructure construction and impacts

This historic wave of infrastructure construction carries long-term impacts for American households, particularly the middle and working classes. Investment at this scale shapes the systems that determine whether daily life becomes more stable and affordable over time or more costly and unpredictable.

Infrastructure built with care, coordination, and quality strengthens essential services, supports workforce opportunity, and expands the nation's productive capacity. Infrastructure without these disciplines compounds cost, disruption, and risk transferred down to the people who rely on these systems most.

Infrastructure construction reshapes the conditions of daily life. Energy and water systems absorb new demand, transportation networks influence access to essential services, land-use patterns evolve, and communities assume long-term operational responsibilities.

When this growth is cohesive and well-orchestrated, it increases reliability of systems and spreads costs over time, supporting household affordability. When it is fragmented or poorly coordinated, the strain shows up as higher bills, service disruptions, and reduced local capacity — burdens that fall most heavily on working families.

Outcomes are shaped through decisions made close to the ground. State, local, tribal, and territorial governments, alongside community organizers, shape results through planning authorities, permitting, standards, sequencing, and long-term agreements, as well as building trust in the systems being created.

When communities have the capacity to engage deeply in these processes, infrastructure investment reflects local needs, secures sustainable benefits, and supports long-term affordability. Capacity at the local and regional level enables communities to influence how systems are built and how costs and benefits are distributed over time.

This pivotal moment offers the opportunity to build an enduring legacy of affordability. Infrastructure that is reliably constructed, with people at the center, creates stability that compounds across systems and time. At this unprecedented scale of investment and execution, building well is not simply an engineering choice, but an economic and social commitment to the Americans who will live with the results.

Living with what we build

The attention economy centers on moments of strain and uncertainty. Hidden in plain sight, the United States is engaged in a sustained act of construction that will shape daily life for decades. Infrastructure is being built, expanded, and modernized across energy, water, transportation, communications, and digital systems. This work is long-term and deeply consequential for the communities where it takes root.

Infrastructure, once built, becomes part of the fabric of everyday life. It influences how people move, work, connect, and plan for the future. Thoughtful, well-governed construction strengthens communities, supports affordability, and builds confidence in enduring systems. Cohesive infrastructure investment creates shared benefits designed to serve people where they live, for generations.

The systems taking shape today will define the next generation of American life, and thoughtful planning is key. Decisions about design, governance, and alignment are not easily revisited once construction is complete. Communities will live with the outcomes, both good and bad, long after the attention economy has refocused elsewhere.

Living with what we build requires deliberate and thoughtful contemplation and preparation. It requires viewing infrastructure as a long-term commitment to people and place, rather than a short-term project to be delivered and forgotten.

When infrastructure is built with careful intent, it becomes a source of stability that echoes across generations. Now more than ever, building well is how communities secure an affordable and sustainable future.

Cory Simpson

Cory Simpson is a national security and cybersecurity executive with more than two decades of experience across government, elite military organizations, and the private sector. He leads DC-based organizations that bridge policy and technology, often advising companies across the tech ecosystem—including competitors—to advance modernization, strengthen security, and serve the American people.

Javier Nater

Javier Nater is the Associate Director of Operations at Gray Space Strategies, where he leads operational strategy and execution across the cybersecurity, national security, emerging technology, and critical infrastructure sectors. He oversees daily operations, corporate systems, and client delivery, translating the CEO’s strategic vision into scalable processes, measurable outcomes, and high-impact engagements.

Previously, Javier served as a Senior Associate for Research & Content Development at Gray Space Strategies, delivering strategic research and insights across cyber policy, defense innovation, and geopolitical risk. He brings additional experience from the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at CSIS, where he worked on defense industrial strategy and global technology competition.

Javier holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame and Johns Hopkins SAIS, where his work focused on U.S. cyber policy, 5G security, and transatlantic defense and

About ICIT

The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)3think tank with the mission of modernizing, securing, and making resilient critical infrastructure that provides for people’s foundational needs. ICIT takes no institutional positions on policy matters. Rather than advocate, ICIT is dedicated to being a resource for the organizations and communities that share our mission. By applying a people-centric lens to critical infrastructure research and decision making, our work ensures that modernization and security investments have a lasting, positive impact on society. Learn more at www.icitech.org.