James D. Durso, the Managing Director of Corsair LLC and a former Chief Executive Officer of AKM from 2013 to 2015, argues that the United States has entered a period when energy security must sit with national security and military readiness. “That era is over.”
The core of his case is a nuclear reactor strategy built around Small Modular Reactors. He says the country faces unprecedented energy demand while the electric grid is at capacity, and he argues that resilient baseload electricity now sits alongside industrial output and military power as a strategic requirement.
Durso and Corsair LLC
Durso’s argument starts with the competition he says is unfolding between the United States and China. He ties industrial capacity, technological dominance, AI, semiconductor manufacturing, and defense production to the same electricity system that must keep those sectors running without interruption.
He says America’s future military superiority will depend in part on whether the country can generate enough resilient, secure baseload electricity. In his view, that makes deployment of Small Modular Reactors a top national priority rather than a distant energy debate.
China and grid capacity
He also says intermittent energy sources alone will not meet the scale or reliability requirements needed to sustain the United States’ strategic position. That leaves the grid under strain at the same time the country is trying to support more industrial load, more digital infrastructure, and more defense production.
The complication is the one he identifies most directly: the electric grid is already vulnerable to cyberattacks, physical sabotage, transmission bottlenecks, and extreme weather events. In that setting, adding demand without adding secure local supply keeps defense installations, logistics hubs, shipyards, semiconductor fabrication plants, weapons production facilities, and command and control infrastructure exposed to centralized transmission failures.
Behind the-meter SMRs
Durso points to behind-the-meter deployment as the practical shift now gaining attention in the SMR sector. In his description, that means placing reactors next to mission-critical facilities instead of relying exclusively on long-distance transmission infrastructure.
He says SMRs are smaller, factory manufactured, and more flexible in deployment than traditional large-scale nuclear plants, which makes them suitable for specific industrial facilities, defense installations, AI infrastructure, and remote or constrained environments. He also argues that distributed advanced nuclear generation could provide dedicated power to defense installations, industrial corridors, AI campuses, and manufacturing hubs without competing for electric power with civilian communities.
The reader’s practical takeaway is simple: the argument is no longer about whether the electricity system matters to security, but where secure power can be placed first. Durso’s case puts the next question on deployment scale, and on which mission-critical sites would get reactors when the priority shifts from debate to buildout.
