The AI Boom Is Making Your Bills More Expensive

You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Townsend. Stand up comedian, political speech writer, many other kinds of writer, and of course, most likely to be carved into Q&A form

and left for generations to come podcast host.

I am joined as always with my panel of experts

up first our expert on foreign policy and the military chat, chat, how's it going? - Going great, Nat. Looking forward to this discussion with both of you. - Me too, this is gonna be a really good one.

And of course, our expert on all things energy, renewable energy, oil, oil markets around the world. You know, Mr. Global, Matt Randolph is here, Matt, how's it going? - Great, it's going great. - We've got a lot to discuss in this episode.

Obviously, the situation in Iran, which we discussed quite a bit on this show is continuing to develop. For the listener, we are recording this around 6 p.m. on Monday, June 1st.

“So if you're listening to it, that's what we know.”

And I also wanna remind our listeners

for viewers who come to us from YouTube that if you wanna get the podcast earlier, it drops in your podcast feed the morning of every Wednesday. I wanna start today's episode with a little bit of an update on the situation in Iran.

Obviously, we are extremely close once again to a solution right around the corner. Obviously, Trump is about to negotiate the perfect deal with Iran, Chad, am I correct? - I mean, it's, you're correct in this.

- This is the 12th time that we have gotten to, like what I would say, the one-yard line of a ceasefire, and just not being able to punch it in. We're just dealing with self-inflicted casualties when it comes to trying to develop this ceasefire.

And a lot of it has to do, not necessarily with Trump wanting the, or having the will to do it. We can get there. It's that every time he comes to the table

“with what looks like a true meaningful ceasefire”

and some sort of memorandum of understanding with regard to what the terms of this, this ceasefire will look like he backs off because it becomes politically toxic for him. Largerly because every time something leaks,

it looks like it's gonna be worse than what was the Obama joint comprehensive plan of action. And for him, he just doesn't want the optics of looking worse than Obama. So right now this quote unquote ceasefire,

it's really not a ceasefire I've said this before. We're not really, the US and Iran are shooting at each other. The Israelis are shooting at Hezbollah and the Lebanon. Just today, Trump said that he had a discussion with Netanyahu and Netanyahu and Lebanon have said,

oh, we're gonna quiet down the fighting a bit. That's not a ceasefire. Just having less fighting means you're still fighting. So we're seeing this really rhetorical battle now. It's not gonna come to anything

where we're gonna see an outcome. We have cargo ships, they're getting through, a lot of them are running either at US permission along the Omani coastline or they're running through on the Iranian side where the US can't touch them

because they remain in Iranian waters too close for comfort for the US Navy. And then they end up moving into Pakistani waters, which we won't touch them because we have sovereign agreements with the Pakistanis.

So the blockade is not really a blockade. So everything is just rhetorical. It's just rhetoric, it's not the reality on ground. Iranian oils getting through, they're making money. And it's interesting because and maybe Matt can elaborate a bit

on this but if we have even, let's just say what we're seeing

is one third of Iranian oil is getting through

because the US has allowed Chinese oil through or Indian oil through or Pakistani. Because they don't want that incident to they don't want to deal with the incident of blowing up a Chinese ship or whatever like that.

And if it's only one third of them are getting through but oil is twice as much. Really, Iran's not losing any money here if my math is roughly correct.

“They may be losing some but what I think the calculus is”

right now is we're looking at some sort of escalation. We'll be required and that's something Trump doesn't want because oil is gonna rise and it's gonna just be politically toxic. So right now we have these frameworks that keep being leaked by frustrating reporters like Barack

out of Axios. I'll say his name this time around. He just keeps dropping these reports that are just wrong and nothing's moving. So it just looks like we're just bouncing

between kind of from bad to worse and then back to bad, then back to worse. And that's just kind of where we're at right now with regard to the Iranian situation. - Well, Mac, could you talk a little bit to the

What Chad was saying like is this actually hurting Iran

“or is Iran actually functioning in terms of oil pretty regularly?”

I would say that the idea that you can starve out Iran from the beginning was a complete fallacy. - Yeah. - I mean, this country's been starving for a thousand years. What are you gonna do to them that had not already been done?

Like this is, you know, starving out Americans and starving out Iranians is two different things. So you can punish Iran a lot and they'll just take it. They are still selling oil. We truth is we really don't know how much.

But even if they're just selling what they can get through rail systems into different parts of China and stuff, that it'll keep them afloat, you know, I mean, yeah, they'll be hungry, but you're not gonna beat Iran by starving them.

That's just not a thing. That's not how it works. - And you think that's a cultural legacy of decades plus of like resilience against Western influence. You're like, they're used at this.

- Well, I mean, a lot of Middle Eastern countries, the identities are tied to being in this situation, you know, being oppressed or, you know, difficulty strife.

I just, I never thought the starving them was a good idea.

It just, especially if you're trying, and forget the idea that they're trying to win the hearts and minds of anyone in Iran, you don't starve a country and win their hearts in mind. It's like that's worse.

You know what I mean? Like, you're only making a ring when people are with enormous difficulty. - Yeah, something. - Right, that's exactly what I mean. - Oh, I guess that does make sense.

- It's really hard to say how much money they're making, but I know how much money they made when we lifted the sanctions, and they were getting full price for their oil there for a month or two, they made enough money then

to probably sustain them for a year. And a lot of people forget how much gold Iran has. Like, they can live off their gold reserve for I've heard up to two years. If that true, I don't know.

But there's always other sources of income.

There's always other countries that are willing to step in and help if they get a slice of the pie later when everything's over like China, probably Russia. Like, I just never thought the idea of starving them out was a serious thing that can actually work.

- Well, it's really fascinating too, because that actually almost parallels with one of the more extreme opposite of that, just let's starve them out. And this idea of let's go back to full military escalation.

And my question is, what would a military escalation accomplish? Because we've already hit like 13,000 targets. What more targets are they're going to be, that the juice is worth the squeeze, so to speak.

I mean, we spent 30 to 40 billion dollars and counting on this war already. So if we ramp back up into the fight, what are we, what is that gonna do? Because we're just going to start hitting

“smaller, smaller, less strategically important targets.”

Or we go the route of where Trump seems perfectly happy to do this, just total war, kind of scorched earth, destroy their dams, their power plants, their bridges. So really, you're left with this option of, if we escalate, what to what end?

What is it going to bring about? And if you're gonna escalate, you're gonna have to escalate in a way that is going to cause immense pain and suffering, or you're gonna escalate in a way

that is just for the headlines. So you can say, look, we're launching sorties, we're blowing up, I don't know, this singular missile battery, but it's really not gonna be that effective for the broader strategy.

- Right, but you're saying that sometimes, this overwhelming force, talking about atrocities on a level that haven't even committed yet, like would be the other option. I'm not saying we can't de escalate,

but I'm saying they're either pushing for essentially narrative wins, like you're saying wins on paper or the other alternative, the fear is that they'll escalate to a level of something, you know, like a full-scale ground invasion or something,

something that we really are not prepared for, but would be some form of overwhelming force that they would attempt to enact.

“- Yeah, and I truly believe what this looks like”

is there's going to be some force. We're gonna do something, Trump is either gonna leave as Matt suggested last episode where he's like, we're just gonna leave, but he can't just leave cleanly. He's gonna have to go in and look like he's the tough guy

and he's gonna blow a couple things up. And then, like, or we actually do go in and start fighting again and try to make it a meaningful escalation to drive some sort of strategy, drive some sort of diplomacy in the future.

Whether the diplomacy in the future is some sort of negotiated outcome that's probably gonna be worse than the joint comprehensive line of action, or it's just Trump being able to go on Fox News and say,

yeah, we conducted another thousand bombings and degraded them and then we decided our mission's done and left.

“So I think that's kind of where we're left right now.”

- It's never a good thing when the president says,

oh, there are a lot better negotiators than I thought they were. - Yeah. (laughs) - And he says that publicly for them to hear that. - I mean, like, let's not embolden them anymore. They already know they have you over a barrel,

like this, no pun intended. But, you know, when you come out publicly and say, oh, they're much better negotiators than I ever thought. - Well, yeah, good job, you know, what are you just going to say?

- You just go down and say they got hammered, they're like, wow, you're really admitting it, huh? (laughs) - It's true that I asked you get there. Wasn't expecting that.

- No, I've got a military person. I'm not an intelligence guy like Chad. Like, I don't know the fine art of negotiating, like international, like peace treaties.

But every time this guy talks,

I'm like, he's making it worse. Like, I wouldn't do this trying to buy a car and he's doing this with a raw, like, and I'm not the expert in that. I just feel like he's really bad at it.

- Yeah, he undermines everyone, that's awful. - I mean, he's a famously good, bad negotiator.

“Like, I think, I hope if this is a tangent,”

but I hope if anything, we can divorce ourselves from this sort of idea that these upwardly failing businessmen are secretly like the greatest dealmakers in the world. So like, this guy, his whole brand was making deals.

He's bad at it. I know that's a side tangent, but I know that we can stop this myth of success where we go, well, this guy must be good at business 'cause he's a rich, like, no, it's not true.

- Yeah, it's funny because, like,

he surrounds himself with a bunch of people

that are like him. So like, he's like, who, again, I will not call Secretary of War. He's Secretary of Defense. He, he will, he has this bro culture

where just let's drop a bunch of bombs high five and like do some push-ups and more cool. And that's, that's his strategy. And but then you have guys who actually are somewhat strategically thinking or at least the one guy

who sits there and has to think about the strategy

“of things which is Rubio, he'll, I just,”

he has to sit in his bedroom every night and just shake his head at the nonsense. He has to deal with because I've seen some of his, like, pre-Trump strategies and sessions and his meetings and how he goes about specifically

with things like Cuba, which that'll have to be a later episode on what's going on there. And he's not a stupid person. Like, he kind of knows what he's doing and it has to be extraordinarily frustrating

for Rubio to watch as everything he does is undermined by a truth social post or Pete Hegseth authorizing a strike that screws up something and it's, that's just the constant we're dealing with in Iran

and it's why we're paying so much more in gas and have no plans for how to remove their new material or get the straight-of-arms open. - And if I'm not mistaken, just to tag onto that, Trump's claim today that they had agreed to no fighting,

that was just a truth social post itself, right? Like, that wasn't that didn't come through official channels at all, am I mistaken? - No. - Because I didn't see anything else written about it,

but it seems like Netanyahu is himself distancing himself from the idea. It doesn't seem like there's any corroboration even within the government that that was happening. So it does seem like he's got his own, like you said,

like, there may be strategy and then Trump goes on and just announces, well, I mean, this is, this is one of the less destructive announcements but announces, you know, where we're gonna rain fire and frame stone down on them

or we're gonna leave no one behind. Whenever his sane claims are making, he's dropping bombs in the negotiations as well. - Yeah, when he said, I spoke to Hezbollah. I was like, "Sure you did."

- You call it? - Get me the red phone that says Hezbollah on it. - I mean, he said he spoke to Netanyahu and then he said he spoke to Hezbollah and they're gonna stop. And then 15 minutes after he posted that,

Hezbollah was bombing Israel again. And Netanyahu, he came out and said, you know, I'll stop when they stopped. And he did say that he had spoken to Trump. But we haven't heard from Hezbollah.

Hezbollah hasn't posted on X. They haven't called anybody. You know, they didn't reach out to News Nation. So he's just saying it's an uncoroperative claim that they had communication.

- Most people believe he just said he spoke to Hezbollah. I don't even know if he would know who to speak to at Hezbollah. - Like, well, no one wants to trust him anymore.

- I don't know if he would know who to speak to.

- I mean, I doubt it. I think he just says things. It's just like his, just, if you go through his true socials, it's just the stream of,

it's gotta be like sundown or syndrome or something like that. Where it's just him next to George Washington and I and him with a new peace prize

“and it's, I think he's just saying things.”

And you look at the serious players in the region, whether it's the Egyptians, the Saudis and now even the Israelis, they're like, don't pay attention to what he says. Even Rubio, I don't know if you notice back

when Rubio had that gap where he's like, "Oh, don't listen to what stupid people are." Or was that percent? Was that Scott Bessant? I can't remember.

He's either one of the two where he said,

"Don't listen to what stupid people say." And it actually was something Trump said. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And so like it was something on a policy and I don't remember who said it. It might've been Rubio or Treasury guy or whatever.

But yeah, so even people within his own administration are like, oh my god, just they just don't, you unfortunately pick up the phone when Trump calls whether you're Saudi or your Oman or Jordan or whatever.

But more than likely they listened to his pitch like this ridiculous, let's expand the Abraham

“of course, not the only way I'm gonna get peace with Iran.”

And they go, yeah, it sounds good. And then they hang up the phone and look at their staff and go, "We're not doing that crap, that's done." So I mean, and that's kind of the world we live in

with the Trump negotiations at this point. - We know, Trump's had zero communication directly with Iran. It's all been done through mediators. So he hasn't spoken to anyone with the IRGC

or within Iran one time. But he expects us to believe that he's just called Hezbollah on the phone.

Like, I mean, basically Hezbollah is what?

Iran, basically. I mean, aren't they a proxy of Iran? So like, it's BS. He didn't call Hezbollah. - I'm gonna zoom.

- Maybe he texted Hezbollah. - There's no group chat. - He's a group chat with Hezbollah, but they haven't marked red yet. So it's like, technically they could see it,

but it's one of them Hezbollah's signal chats. - Yeah, exactly. - Oh yeah. - I was gonna say that this is a friend of mine far more educated of the history of China

than I made it interesting comparison. He said Trump now is a lot like Mao later in his career whereas the party beneath him is kind of scrambling to organize without him, but then he issues these decrees

and they have to, again, scramble to match his narrative and he's still in charge. He's still the leader, but he's detached from the way the people beneath him are trying to figure out how to make the government work

under this figure ahead. Because like you're saying his true social posts are very detached from reality, but he is still very much wielding power over the people who are trying to make sense out of any of that.

- Especially domestically. Like they may scoff at him internationally because there's no, there's just really no dealing with him like in any meaningful manner, but we just saw it recently in the primaries.

Like Trump may be losing power in a nationally and have kind of, like a completely inept way of negotiating with Iran and others, but when it's domestic policy, what he says is gospel and we saw that with Massey

“and we saw that in Texas where I think Paxton”

was got his endorsement and I think that's his name and he's just an awful, awful person. So he's still unfortunately his power within the U.S. and the party and I'm worried that that's gonna carry over after he leaves office in 28,

but when it comes to an national that he thinks he feels like he can carry that power over into Iran and they're like, we're not doing what you say because you haven't meaningfully shown us that you're enough of a threat

that we're gonna stop blockading the straight-of-war moves or even tell you where our nuclear weapon or our nuclear material is. - Yeah, and somehow that massive cult of personality through which he sort of tumourously took over

the entire Republican party, that doesn't transfer to foreign policy. Like the way he was able to consolidate power underneath him and truly just consume anyone who tried to have step or I feel like every three months we go,

there's no non-Trump Republicans left. But then we go, no, there's really no non-Trump Republicans left. But he was effectively able to control that narrative, able to squash anything that wasn't full authoritarian and like that is not that's an autocrat cult of personality,

but it doesn't work in terms of foreign policy. It's not that same strategy that aligns with his straight-up. I mean, I'm not gonna convince words, he's a sociopath. He's a rapist sociopath. Those kinds of people are very good

creating social conditions in which they can seize power. But this is a world in which he has zero social conditioning and zero social conditions that he can control and is yet a person raised to believe that he's received only affirmation to his entire life

and by bullying everyone has always gotten his way.

And it's like he does not know how to act in any other fashion and it's not working. - No, because everyone will call his bluff on the international stage because it doesn't, he has no way to meaningfully hurt them.

- Yeah, he can't just take their hand for too long. - Yeah, exactly, he can't or he can't come out and say, or he actually has the opposite effect. When he goes out and campaigns for the opposition, like if he didn't hungry or he did in Canada,

the opposite happens and his guy ends up getting soundly defeated. So he has power domestically in the US,

“he doesn't have it overseas and I think it,”

it really angers him. So his only way is to lash out rhetorically online. - Can you imagine that Lego said he had his a kid? - Do you think he had the Millennium Falcon? - Oh, he had the phone.

- He was that star physically.

- He was a kid before the Millennium Falcon was a thing.

- That's true. - But he had he had the equivalent. - Whatever, he probably had the... - The Nina of the Pena in the Santa Maria. He probably had that.

I bet that was a huge let go in his day. That was like the ultimate. - Yes, I remember the baby Dram Piano. - We're making assumptions that this dude plays, like, had the patience and confidence.

- That's a good choice. - He feels right. - He's more as a man who's father screamed at him for having imagination at any point. - He's like telling his mates to build his LEGOs once, right?

- Right, right. - You've done it incorrectly. But I do like how you've created three ships of colonizers. - I think he was a Lincoln locks guy. (laughs)

- You there, boy. - Six, put those Lincoln locks together for a match. - Yeah, yeah. - So, we've been talking a lot about Iran. We've been talking about Trump's independence internationally.

And obviously, it's not the... Iran is not the only sphere internationally, which the US is involved right now. It's been a lot of while, since we got a roundup of our military action worldwide.

“Chad, I think it's time for a war check.”

- Yeah. - We do have still several operations taking place. This is just gonna focus on those operations where we are actually engaging in some sort of physical combat. They're not advising roles.

We have advising roles pretty much in every country where the US military is a part of advising, which that's actually a great thing. Where we provide some assistance with their militaries and the training and things like that.

But active combat, we still... This has gone by the wayside. It was a big news story for a while, but we still are still interdicting and engaging drug, quote unquote, drug cartels

in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific. And this is part of that joint task for southern sphere. And they just last month, they conducted another 50 lethal strikes. And we haven't heard anything about it. Because Iran became the focus.

Remember, this was a big deal because we were sitting there listening to this and we were like, "Hey, are these guys actually cartels "to sometimes we heard it was just fishing boat "and they're like waving, "Hey,

"or they're getting double tapped,

“"which is hugely against not only international law,”

"the law of war and US law, "those continue to take place." I mean, as of yesterday, I just wanna jump in, I'm sorry, can you explain double tapping? We mentioned it in an episode.

Yeah, so double tapping is basically when we strike a boat,

completely disabling it. It's no longer a threat. In fact, there's people, what we would call combatants, but people in the water, they're no longer in a combatant status.

They become non-combatant because they have no ability to fight back at that point, the US has an obligation to go into rescue mode. We will go rescue them and we're supposed to

and we're trained to go in and give them the full measure of medical support. A lot of it has to do with the fact that they just become really good intelligence assets when we scoop them up and tear-gate them and things like that.

That's not under the head-seth doctrine. It's not really a doctrine, but his orders, he's just strike him again. Hit him again and kill them. And that's for all intents and purposes, that's a war crime.

And so, you're not allowed to kill unarmed, non-threatening combatants. And so that's what's happening. And are you also in theoretically interfering with a rescue effort if you're doing--

there's also theoretically attacking aid. Well, the aid would be provided generally by the same people that do the attacking. That's kind of how-- Because we're all--

Like, other casualties involved in this kind of thing. No, like what ends up happening is let's say you have-- Usually, it's some sort of helicopter asset. That's loitering-- let's say they strike it with a hellfire missile and blow up the boat.

That helicopter's still there.

that is within kind of an engagement distance for the enemy.

“There's going to be a rescue helicopter.”

That's there. Usually for the combat of helicopter in case they go down to rescue. However, if the enemy ends up completely disarmed and they need help, it is U.S. policy and U.S. and it's just law of war.

And this is something we would train, whether it was the Ukrainians or when I was in NATO, we would train them on. Hey, once you've disarmed them, it's on you to go save them. And there's a reason for that. It's one-- it presents you on a humanitarian high ground,

but also there's intelligence that can be gained from it. So that's what is supposed to happen. That is not apparently what is happening. In southern spirit, we still are having these double tap strikes where we'll strike about, they're disabled,

and then we just kill them.

Frankly, it's just murder them.

That's what it is. We just murder them. And so that's one. We are still conducting-- this is a long-term operation in Ecuador, we're doing joint operations

against the "Narko Terrace" along the Colombian border. We're also in Somalia. This is-- we mostly-- this one's just air strikes. We did-- we've done about 63 air strikes this year as a part of Africa command or Africa.

They're targeting ISIS Somalia. One that I've discussed on some of my TikToks is Nigeria. This is one that a lot of people don't realize we're dealing with in Nigeria. So in Nigeria, we have actual special operations,

forces on the ground, as well as drone forces, as well as air assets, conducting air strikes,

and raids against some of the ISIS factions

that are in Northeastern Nigeria. A lot of this is dealing with counterterrorism operations and to be fair, things like Nigeria, we have been invited by the government of Nigeria to assist in their capabilities, because these groups have gotten

a little bit stronger than they've expected. Civilized situation in Syria. We have about 1,000 U.S. military personnel still in Syria supporting the Syrian democratic forces against ISIS.

People think we're out of Iraq. We're not. We have about 2,500 soldiers in Iraq fighting against the-- not only are we fighting against those kind of counter ISIS that those ISIS operations, but also

that's where we're dealing with Iranian Shea militias. And it becomes a target set for those militias. Whenever we ramp up fighting in Iran, they use those militias to target our soldiers in Iraq. And that's just kind of over once around the world,

obviously I skip over Iran, because we kind of already talked about that. But that is where we are conducting operations. - Oh, thank you for the roundup. - Very expensive.

- It does sound very expensive. I feel like I've mentioned in a previous issue that one of the most popular videos on social media these days is a video of the U.S. Air Force-- I'm sorry, a aircraft carrier and people shooting missiles

and it's just the sticker price for every missiles. - Oh, I saw that. - Or like a plane kick-saw of, okay, we've got it.

“At it's, you know, I think I only mentioned it”

because I do think Americans are, I think, I think, honestly downstream of the genocide in Gaza, now what's happening in Iran and also Lebanon. I think Americans are becoming more and more aware of the cost of wars and as we're talking about,

it's not only driving up the overall spending of our government, but it's driving up our energy costs and our oil costs. And I was hoping that we could talk a little bit about energy prices at home and specifically the rise of data centers because I think that's an issue

that intersects with both of these, both as our military develops the VAI and as our energy costs rise due to the proliferation of these AI data centers. So we're taking a little bit of a pivot here in mid episode,

but I'm just hoping we could talk about the rise in energy costs and just the proliferation of data centers across America. - Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you, Matt, you'll know more about the energy stuff

because I will defer to you because I know there's some great strain taking place across the board and but I don't want to jump ahead with questions. If you already know, I might be able to get them answered right off the bat for me because I know this is a massive problem

for the average American, especially because full disclosure, I'm on eight of county planning and zoning and we deal with this. Like we deal with the data centers coming in. So really interested to see what your take on this is

because it'll definitely inform decisions in the future on that. And if you want to select this, Matt,

“how is this affecting the cost for the average American?”

- The data centers are putting a significant load on our grid which we have failed to maintain

in our conservation and you know those little yellow stickers

“on your like water tank and stuff that tells you how efficient”

your appliances are. You familiar with those? It turns out those actually work really well. People thought they were stupid but over a 20 year period we didn't increase our energy consumption at all

in the United States.

We added 40 million people and 40 million cars

and 20 million homes and did not increase our energy consumption at all. So we got lazy with our grid with maintaining it, with keeping it up and here comes the data centers. They're putting a massive strain on the grid

and people will notice that on their electricity bills. A lot of the rise in their electricity bills are due to distribution fees or service costs or you know it's all tied to the grid itself in the amount of strain that the grid is under

and you have to look at power lines and the grid sort of like a highway system. The more space that is taken up in that system, the more expensive the remaining space cost. It's just like a basic supply and demand scenario.

So when the grid is like almost maxed out, that last little bit of juice that you can put through it

becomes really expensive to deliver to your home.

And that's why people's electric bills are going through the roof. And that's also why gas prices hurt so much more now than say in 2008 when gas was $4. That was bad, but hey, at least my electric bill was 200.

“Now, gas is, I think, for 30 now, somewhere”

on their national average, but my electric bill's 1200. So all these things combined are really what put a strain on people. And it's really, there is a need for data centers, but we're passing a lot of the cost of that on to society. And they're already struggling with everything else,

like health insurance, utility bills, gas, just everything. Yeah, and before we move on to what necessity there might be for data centers, I want to clarify one or two things. One is that, as you've mentioned,

the price of building out these data centers is passed along to the consumers. Often in the form of the distribution or service fee, like we're eating the costs of the construction of strengthening the grid rapidly,

or building out these data centers and they increased use of the grid rather than rather, by not the usage statistic on our bill, but on the other fees, the transmission, and the service. The service is them building out greater capacity.

Whether or not you're personally using a data center, you are still paying for the building of data centers. Am I correct in that? Well, you're paying for the load that the data centers putting on the grid.

So I think it's transmission from the data centers, pardon me. Yeah, and they come out and they're like, all these data centers, they're getting so big. The scale of them is another thing.

There's people don't realize there's thousands and thousands and thousands of data centers across the United States. They started off, you'd have a data center that would maybe use as much power as like a thousand homes. And then they got to the size of 40,000 homes.

And then they got to the size of as much power as 80,000. And now we're hearing some of the new ones

could use as much power as a quarter million homes.

So when you have one facility that is using as much power as a quarter million homes, it puts an enormous strain on a grid that wasn't even supposed to be able to handle EVs just a few years ago.

“That's what we were told, like we can have EVs,”

the griddle collapse. But we can build all these data centers that uses much power as 250,000 homes. I think that blew that argument out of the water. But it's an extraordinary tool.

There's not money for something that increases health or quality of life. Well, it's unrealistic, but when we need to rapidly invent money for data centers or the military, somehow it exists.

Yeah, and it's another example of big corporations putting a strain on what should be public services. Sometimes it's roads, sometimes it's other resources. This time, it's the grid. So that's where we are.

We've talked about this again, but a previous episode, there's no reason that we shouldn't consider energy to be essential. You know, of course, it's a utility. But it's a right, I don't mean to say

if to write in that it's naturally occurring. We create these things, but it is a right and so far as you need it to participate in society and withholding it is inhumane. So therefore it should be available in a affordable price.

And if it's a pretty simple calculation, but of course, we've structured our society essentially the inverse of that priority. But I want one small tangential note 'cause I want to tell our listeners,

if you don't follow Matt, Mr. Global,

you put out a great video this week called Death by a thousand cuts, essentially about disappearing American middle class in the affordability crisis and essentially how... - Oh, you saw that. - Oh, you saw that. - Well, it was redistributed to the,

but you were speaking my language. - You watch my YouTube? - You know? - I'm wishing.

“- What I have to tell you, what I have to tell you?”

- Yeah, I've seen some of that, yeah, I've totally what. I watch it all the, yeah. What's you tell me your favorite one first though, and I'll say what I thought of it. Now, I really did, I loved your video.

I think it just came out today. It's such a good breakdown as to why, this thing that we're talking about all the time and I think that a lot of the, you know, we're talking in our Democrat autopsy episode last week,

a lot of them are frozen in this reality from 35 years ago where working hard could buy you a house, and you did a really good breakdown of explaining why that's not the reality for Gen Z and Millennials, for example, in America.

And Americans in general are just financially less self at now, but how the middle class wealth was retransfered over, you know,

not that many years to the top one percent, top 10 percent.

And yeah, it's a really, it's a really interesting breakdown. And I recommend our listeners go and go to Mr. Global's YouTube, making sure you've already subscribed to find out media, of course, on YouTube.

“And check out his video, a death by a thousand cuts,”

because it ties into what we're talking about here, which is that like over and over again, the refrain you keep saying in that video is corporatism was prioritized over quality of life, but over, not only quality of life,

but financial security for American citizens. - Yeah, and now we're seeing another step of that. People don't know that like 50 years ago is not that long ago. No, it's really not.

It's a blink in time, but 50 years ago. And I don't know if you know this chat, if you saw my YouTube video, you would know this. But over 60% in Russia, over 60% in Russia. - I don't subscribe in.

- I'll just play the idea, I'll just play it.

No, just how massive it is that over 60% of Americans had a pension 50 years ago. And now we're gonna have an entire generation of people that don't have pensions, and most of them don't have a retirement, and they're going to destroy

the social security system, like, we're gonna have an impoverished, we already have an impoverished, what do you elderly group, whatever you want to call them. The older people in the United States, when 50 years ago, 60% of everyone had a pension

that would have secured them for the rest of their life. - It's mind blowing, how much of the money has gone to the top and stolen from the middle class. - You look at the politicians even who doubt the, I'm for the middle class in the lower class,

they don't care, they will rightly take that wonderful data center money. I mean, data centers have hit something like, a little over a thousand terror watt hours, or something like that.

That would put them at fifth, if they were a country. Somewhere between Japan and Russia, they are the fifth largest consumer of electricity, if they were a country. That's wild to me.

There are 600 data centers in Virginia alone, and they consume something like 40% of their entire state's electricity. And maybe, you could tell me this, I'm hearing some of these power generators,

whether it's like PJ and I'm or some of these other ones, are coming out and saying, hey, we're gonna be short, if this continues, we're gonna be short power. And even as early as 2027, and I have concerns that who are they gonna prioritize?

They're not gonna prioritize us. We're gonna end up with brownouts and blackouts. I mean, what do you think about that specifically? Because that's kind of what I'm here. I'm fortunate that we're secure somewhat in our power

because of, we're very hydroelectric centric, which, and we have it over a bond, and we actually sell a bunch of it to California stuff, but when you say, we, though, you mean, I don't? - I don't. - I don't, I don't.

So I know specific, the Pacific Northwest is very lucky that we have a lot of, my power is actually quite cheap, so I feel bad when everyone complains about it, but I'm hearing from the East Coast, specifically, they're gonna run out of energy, frankly.

So, there's actually, those grid operators like PJM that you're talking about, they actually have the power now to throw data centers off their grid during periods of-- - Oh, good strain.

- Which is typically really hot temperatures, really cold temperatures, extreme weather, let's just remind everyone that all of these problems but brought about by climate change, you know, that's something we miss,

but all the extreme weather, so that was actually done through an executive order. So, if, you know, if it gets to be 120 degrees in the upper Midwest the summer and PJM, if their grid can't manage it,

it's the data centers that they can actually throw off the grid,

“and that's why so many of them are building up backup systems”

and like diesel generators and anything they can for when the day comes, where they get booted off the grid,

It's absolutely gonna happen.

“It may be just for a few days, you know,”

it'll be for short periods of time during extreme weather when the grid can't keep up and everyone's running air conditioners or whatever, but it's gonna happen. It's absolutely gonna happen.

- I was gonna say that in our grid here, we have these peaker plants that only fire when the grid is like essentially avoiding a brown out. - Yeah. - When the grid is stressed in New York,

you see it mostly in the hottest months of summer when everyone's running air conditioning, like usually afternoons in August is when it happens, but they fire up these peaker plants that, you know, burn oil and create more,

create extra supply for the grid. And I imagine we've gotten into this board

with tomorrow, or next week,

but they are also in New York almost exclusively in working class, black and brown neighborhoods where the air quality is historically way worse than anywhere else. So I'm curious, like when other,

let's say data centers are privately building out their own diesel generators and stuff like that, what's the environmental impact look like there? Like are these people just then creating more oil- burning energy plants?

- Yeah, I mean, it's a large environmental impact for sure. You're talking a big data center would use four to five thousand barrels, not gallons, but barrels of diesel a day,

so that, you know, five thousand times 42, 200,000 gallons of diesel a day. So I don't know much about the economics of data centers, but I do have a factoid that the IEA recently came out if all of the new air conditioning systems

that had been purchased and installed since 2019 were sort of the most energy efficient ones that are available. That energy savings would offset all of the power used by data centers in the United States.

Isn't that crazy?

“That's how big energy conservation and efficiency is.”

That's why I'm such a big fan of energy efficiency. Everyone thinks it's stupid and it doesn't work, but it's just like Obama's fuel efficiency standards. If it wasn't for those standards, global demand for oil today would be nearly two

and a half million more barrels of oil at the earth,

not oil, but gasoline, which would put it near five million barrels of oil a day, we would need to have right now if it wasn't for just those simple fuel efficiency standards that were implemented by Obama.

That's like, I'm a huge efficiency guy 'cause it's where you make your biggest improvements. Well, I have a side question because like, so as I kind of alluded to that, we don't pay a lot for power, but water is a big problem

in Idaho because we're high desert. And so these data centers, that's the biggest concern is the water tables and something like Microsoft alone consumed like 6.1 billion gallons of water

and it's seen, and that's just Microsoft. And they're not even close to the biggest data center operators.

“I think Amazon probably is with their web services”

or whatever, I might be around maybe Google. Either way, that's kind of the big thing that a lot of these communities are coming forward to the planning zoning where I'm a commissioner. They'll jump on and they're worried.

And the argument that is given to us and let me know if this is complete bullshit, Matt. They'll come and tell us the industry. They said, oh, we're renewable. All of our cooling systems are on this closed loop

and we just are gonna use our own water consumption and things like we'll reduce the water consumption which if you read further into the packet, actually causes them to have to use more energy, but they say we will use renewables

and what ends up happening is I guess they instead of them building like solar, like we would think, they just use renewable energy certificates, they buy renewable energy off the market and they're still polluting in our zone,

but across America, it just means somewhere else. I mean, what are your thoughts on this idea that these data centers come out and they tell us, flat out, oh no, everything's gonna be cool and all of these, unfortunately, uninforming communities

which is where they wanna put these things, this is out in the middle of nowhere and farms, they start to buy it and they're like, oh, it will maybe help our impact fees, but it ends up ruining a lot of things

and our water table gets wrecked. What do you thoughts on that stuff? - I can tell you as someone who worked at a fairly high level for a big oil company, don't ever believe anything, big corporations say.

Like, that's, I mean, there are no different than the guy that used to knock on my grandma's door trying to sell her vacuum cleaner in 1970. It's the same thing, it's a spill, it's a sales pitch. Now, the recyclable thing and the renewable thing,

a lot of that is a ton of that is purchasing carbon credits and using money to kind of buy their way to, as far as the overall water usage,

about it to speak intelligently about it.

I've heard so many different stories

“and read so many different opinions on that.”

I don't really think I have an opinion on it, but it's obviously a massive concern for a lot of people. I just don't know how much of it is hype, how much of it is real. In the oil and gas industry,

we have water recycle systems that are highly efficient and work, but they're extremely expensive. So if data centers were using something like that, that would be a good sign. I don't know how much of a good sign,

but is a data center gonna use all your water? I don't know, I honestly don't know. And the fact that I don't know that is concerning to me is what I'm saying. - Yeah, and the Trump administration is denying it,

so I have to assume it is bad for clean water. I'm basing this initially on, I mean, there's a lot of research around clean water supply,

this, but this isn't all in farmland,

I was just thinking of when X formerly Twitter instituted GROC, their competitor to ChadGPT, competitor attempted to competitor to ChadGPT, but it's put it generously, but they built this, I think it was called

Colossus data center in Hawkston, which is a neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, and there's massive water supply problem there, people are the local water supply, the quality has gone way down.

And that's a relatively urban area where that was set up, I know that some of these data centers are in the middle of farmland, but some of them are a lot closer, and of course, again, it's in your black community.

- Yeah, and they also lied about other things, regarding that facility, like the emissions

“from their natural gas turbines, I remember that story,”

they were lying about everything. - Yeah, they had a few civilizations.

- Yeah, they were directly,

they used thermal, environmental groups used thermal imaging to find 33 gas turbines or something, and in the Colossus facility, which they had worried about. - They were running one of 'em.

- They were running one of 'em. - But the thermal imprint was on the island. - Yeah, yeah. - Which is running another one. - Again, why would you have a trust crock or,

or it's, that's, sorry, you love Musk company, but-- - Almost found news though. - You can't take it when they say seriously, as the fact, and that's why this is so hard to talk about.

We need good investigative reporters to find this stuff out for us, sorry. - Well, I said, they bait and switch you to, because this is what we found, specifically as they'll say, "Oh, well, we'll return the water to the aquifer,

but it won't be the same aquifer." Like, it'll be like the poll and from an aquifer in one location, like, for instance, meta has pledged to be water-positive across the US by 2030. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean water-positive

for a singular community. It means they'll pump a lot here, but they'll put the same amount somewhere else, but it means that we are, like, let's say, in Q&A Idaho or the meta data center,

it is, they might pump a bunch of water. That's a huge farming community. They need water badly, and we're not a great water state. Idaho just doesn't have a lot of water. So what'll happen is, they'll say,

we're going to be, if you look at our whole perspective, we are going to be water-positive by 2030, and it sounds amazing. But then when you really start to look into it, they're like in places where there's huge amounts of water,

like they're trying to get rid of it, like place like Louisiana and Florida, that's where they're pumping it back, because, and that's where they're like, oh, see, we are net across the U.S. water-positive,

and meanwhile, the community and the desert communities are getting screwed over. And so, I mean, the sad thing is,

“I think the solution technically exists.”

Like, we can probably solve this. Technically, they don't want to pay the extra, I don't know, 100 to 150 bucks per square meter of operation to make sure that the communities are sound.

The communities that are going to have the 20 or 50 workers that go work in that that's just, they just don't care, is what ends up happening. - So, I mean, what we've got Liz Elden and how to the EPA now,

trying his best to strip away any standards that would be, that previously existing standards, but what we need is new standards. This is a emerging technology that's using the grid in a very different way than we're used to,

and the idea that we can just build recklessly with nothing to offset that is, we're kind of in the worst hands when it comes to the environmental impact of that. - Yeah, for sure.

- Kind of scary. - What do we need 'em? - Right, what data center? - We need the data centers. - Tell me what?

- Talk and speak extensively on this. - Why do we need data centers? I'm being open-minded, I'm just asking. - Yeah, I'll tell you that, even though I've kind of hammered data centers

for like the last 15 minutes with you guys, I'm actually on the fence about it, because as a member of my community, as a commissioner on a planning and zoning commission for a county that is quite,

this is the largest county in the state of Idaho, I do have those concerns. There are very real concerns about water and power,

and that is the military implications

of falling behind in the AI race.

“And I think, specifically when you look at countries”

like China, I'm not as worried as about Russia, they're just not great, they're good at faking AI, but China really is very good at it. And it's this idea that when you look at countries that lead the way in AI, you have the US, you have China,

and their autonomous weapon systems that can identify and track and engage targets faster than any human decision cycle can respond. And we started to get into this, we all kind of joke, ha, sky, net, but now we're like,

oh man, this is getting really spooky out there, we have drones, swarms, that coordinate real time across hundreds of units simultaneously, they can overwhelm air defense systems that were designed to track individual threats,

and they're being overwhelmed because AI worked faster and more efficiently than human beings. And so we have logistics networks that will become predictive instead of reactive, and so you can replenish well before any kind of munitions.

And this is something that has been impracticed with many countries. I mean, China is accelerating AI development to gain this, Xi Jinping himself said we want to competitive advantage because that's the only way

we're going to be able to counter the United States. He came out and set it flat out. We are building out our AI specifically so we can beat the United States. And so unfortunately, it becomes a problem

where if we don't continue to advance this, we fall behind and so you're robbing Peter to pay Paul to be harming communities because that need these data centers, or that don't need these data centers and it's taking their power and their water,

but if we don't do it, then we're in a geopolitical a massive problem where they might be able to do things that truly hurt us in the future. And so you look at countries like Ukraine who have the most advanced real world AI battlefield laboratory.

I mean, we're watching drones evolve in real time. And then you see Russia trying to catch up, but like I said, the people's liberation army is pursuing AI across every domain of warfare simultaneously, whether it's logistics, targeting.

They're even doing things we're not doing like command and control. We have a separation where a human is still making decisions. China is unfortunately getting to this point where they're letting the decision cycle be made.

The kill cycle be made by AI. Like, we are not comfortable with that yet as Americans where an AI decides to press the actual fire button. Usually it's a targeting system like, hey, we've identified this target.

AI said, this is the specific target. This is what munition we suggest you use, et cetera. Do you want to execute?

And then a human goes, yes or no, basically.

They, China's moving to a place where they are saying having a machine decide. And they don't care about the collateral damage. They don't care about any kind of damage that comes. And so the Chinese defense industrial base

is integrating these private AI firms directly into their military. And the United States is trying to do some of the things they have project maven, which is an AI system to process battlefield

imagery and sensor data so that they can automate a target tree.

“But if we fall behind, I think there's a massive detriment”

and I hope that we can come to some level of understanding with the Chinese kind of like how we did with the Soviets. I think this is the next quote unquote nuclear option where we're going to ask, is there a de-escalation option? Yeah, we come to AI.

And that's, we need to find a way to de-escalate or at least put the gates on it.

We never really de-escalated nuclear weapons

because we de-escalated the growth and numbers, but we never really got rid of the capability to completely destroy the entire world several times over. It really was just the gates and communication, the gates in understanding

how they can be employed, and we don't have that for AI. We have one specific agreement with China on AI, came out in 2023, and that agreement was, both China and the US will not allow AI to touch the nuclear weapons chain.

From end to end, a human decides that. There's no AI integration whatsoever to completely separate system, and that's very good. I mean, again, that becomes that sky net problem as a war games problem specifically.

Yeah, exactly. And so China and the United States now mind you rushes on a part of that. Now, I take solace in the fact that Russia sucks at all things technology for the most part right now.

So they're not super concerned about it, but eventually, five, 10 years from now, they will break out into a point where they're with us.

“And we are, that's why I sit there and say,”

I completely understand the problems with data centers

But I also worry that even if we come to an agreement

with China, nothing says they could lie about it and not, and just continue doing what they want to do, or they just say, we don't want to agree to that. Because the Chinese right now are playing a game to, they want to, they want, they see it as a thousand-year fight

to defeat the United States. And they will take all measures possible to get there, which, unfortunately, means that we will, as Matt said, we will need these data centers in some capacity. So we can keep our, not only are domestic technological edge,

and also these data centers do great things in the health world and things like that, but I hope we can find some sort of happy medium where we aren't hurting communities, but we are advancing in a way that we can provide for our defense.

- I think the main message is dirty. - Yeah, I agree.

“And I think the big, missing piece of information here,”

that was what percentage of these new data centers

that have cropped up in the past four years are being used for military or medical engineering applications and what percentage of them are being used that you don't have to read an email without getting it summarized. Like, we are normalizing the use of AI

for all these things in society, for which it's drastically costic. Like, I do think we should be using it for protein sequencing and seeking your, like obviously we don't have like a big, there hasn't been like the big killer app like cure for cancer,

but they've already been medical at the answers. That's a good use of AI. But I regret not knowing the statistic coming in, but I would certainly wonder what percentage of the new data center usage and data center construction

is for consumer use versus applied medicine,

versus, I'm sorry, medical research versus military research.

Because I do think, as you said, to some degree as a matter of national security without some form of deep proliferation, if such a thing were securely possible, I don't know the degree to which you can see a data center

“from space the way you can a nuclear reactor, right?”

But if there were some form of effective deep proliferation, aside from that, it is probably going to be necessary to have some privately or federally owned data centers, like that's not something that we can avoid, but I feel like the strain that we're talking about on the grid

is an order of magnitude or more larger than what's necessary in order for that. And that comes, and I'm interested to what you think about this because I think it comes with a secondary concern of mine. It's sort of the imperial boomerang of it all,

which is if we are using AI to use facial recognition to find targets from space abroad, what's to stop them from doing that domestically, and from using it to enforce, let's say, are increasing autocratic regimes,

punishment of their enemies, and will someone like say, Pete Hexeth, care if the AI being used to target civilians arrest the wrong black guy, as has often happened already with private facial recognition software at stadiums,

“that Amazon and other corporations sell to security firms, right?”

So I worry about it being used in perial boomerang, by the way, that phrase just means the way that we treat people abroad is eventually the way our citizens will be treated at home. You saw it happen to anti genocide protesters about the British genocide in Gaza.

You see it happen all the time. And I think I worry about that increasing, the other reason I worry about that, I'm curious what you think, is because let's say, like a lot of recent tech bubbles, like NFTs, like some parts of crypto,

this bubble also bursts, because it's actually not profitable, no one likes Sora, no one, people watch AI videos, people use chat, DBT, but a lot of this does not generate a profit, right? So let's say this bubble does burst because no one has ever paid

for an AI-generated movie, yet to watch right? Let's say, let's say, hypotating that bubble burst, we're left with this massive data structure, data infrastructure. The thing I imagine is that that can immediately be repurposed to accelerate America's security apparatus.

And we know that these tech giants are already selling security software security capacity to the government, to private corporations. Are we not setting ourselves up to live in a surveillance state if we create this massive capacity to surveil people,

both domestically and abroad? - Well, I would argue that, yeah, I mean, when you build the hammer, you're gonna be looking for a nail. Say, it's a similar concept as our defense budget. We continue to build out our defense budget at some point,

like having a trillion dollar defense budget, if you're not using the weapons, you can't justify having that large of a budget. And so you have a lot of contractors that come out and are like, all right, well, why don't we lobby,

or not lobby, but support a bunch of really hawkish candidates that hate Iran or, but that matter Cuba. And maybe we can get some of these munitions reduced in the stockpiles so that we can build some more. And so it's a similar situation.

it's kind of like how the internet came out

“when DARPA initially was kind of the big wing”

of the internet with Berkeley and University of Utah and stuff like that. Eventually there was this explosion into the private sector and everyone thought that the internet was gonna be the catch-all solving problem.

And then we saw the bubble burst on that. And thankfully people were kind of had enough ingenuity to restructure how the internet works. I don't think there's that capability with AI

because AI is basically just like a human assistant.

It's not like it doesn't showcase a product like the internet does. It doesn't facilitate transactions. But what it does is it's an efficiency machine. And when those efficiencies run out

or when the people who've lost their jobs to AI and or the argument is they're job has been enhanced so much for the by AI that they don't necessarily need three other people to help them. That's when that bubble burst and yeah,

we're stuck with this bill of massive data centers in those companies. It's just like the Ford's in the, the shavies of the 2008 crisis, the too big to fail. When Palantir has a massive contract with the US government,

the US government's not gonna let them go under. So you're right.

“I worry, the only intention, frankly, is I think the only way”

is through human beings creating policy.

And that's a scary prospect. If we're relying on humans to go, okay, we people as law-abiding citizens want to create gateways on this technology, usually some catastrophic things happen before it happens like similar to child pornography.

It took really bad situations throughout the 90s and early 2000s for laws to really be enacted. And I think that's what's gonna happen. It's gonna be reactionary. What do you think, Matt?

I think we need something similar to the nuclear proliferation treaty with AI, that's what I, and, but how do we know everyone's following the rules? 'Cause I'm concerned about it. I wanted to bring up the fact, though,

'cause we were hammering on data centers that from a national security perspective, we would be crazy not to have them. Because if we just said, well, this is costing us too much money,

“you know, if you look at all the negatives”

and then, you know, we're talking about China just could literally destroy us. Like, this is that big of a thing. So there's a ton of problems, but this is just another example

where, you know, everything in this country that is needed, the basic things needed for survival, like we treat those things. I don't know if I've said that before on here, but we treat it no different than a Netflix subscription.

Like, oh, your gas is $5, well, sorry. Like, or, you're like a ghost. You can't afford the basic survival things you need just to continue to live, because we treat it like everything else.

Like, it gets no special treatment whatsoever. And you're completely exposed to the whims of corporations for the things that you need just to survive. And I feel like this is the same thing with data centers, this is what I'm saying.

It's no different. We may need them for something, but we need missiles, right? I don't need missiles to be in downtown of every town in America.

Like, right now, yeah. We need some amount of this thing for national security. Doesn't mean we need to let the free market go wild with it and repurpose it to sell to consumers. That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah. No, I'm agree with you. Like, it's this weird argument where we go, well, we need, we have to have this. It's like, yeah, but my neighbor doesn't have to have it.

Like, no, military has to have it. Well, that's, yeah, it's, my concern is one of our, the great things about what I would say just Western civilization civilization, quote unquote, broadly is our humanitarian focus.

And that has to be a part of this data center discussion. My biggest fear, though, is our geopolitical and strategic foes do not care about humanitarian. China will plop thousands of data centers and destroy their energy infrastructure

to build this out just so they can defeat the United States and Russia's no different. And that is why I get concerned. I absolutely believe that within the United States, we can find a way through solid legislation

to have this happy medium of, yeah, put a data center out in the middle of nowhere. And unfortunately, you folks just got to kind of commute to our sort of middle of nowhere. Doesn't, where we've done all the water studies and things

and whatnot. And we can maintain that status quo

like we always have with our energy grid

But understand that China and Russia they do not.

“And you brought something up really, really great”

about having some sort of non-proliferation treated like we, like with nuclear, we don't have those anymore. The last one expired last year, unfortunately. So that's how fragile it can be. Yeah, our nuclear non-proliferation treaties no longer exist.

The last one died last year because Trump and Putin decided they did not want to renew it. So just understand that we can have treaties on paper. We may have agreements.

But that isn't always rock solid either.

Even though it was rock solid for several decades, whether it was salt or start, whether it was the, in the arms trees that all the week dating back all the way back to Eisenhower all the way through Joe Biden, trying to re-up the treaties and they don't exist anymore.

And so we're now in a duly scary place where we have no treaties on nuclear weapons and we haven't really started focusing on what AI. I will say that, my kind of my final thought

“on the scariest of AI is China realizes the scariest as well”

because mythos, I don't know if you guys know what that is, it basically discovered a bunch of zero-day exploits, who's an anthropic technology as part of their opus or whatever. Their AI tech and they kind of just released it and they found huge amounts of data discrepancies

and problems and all kinds of websites.

And them being thankfully benevolent about it,

they told everyone like, hey, we discovered all this. You can fix it. That really scared China. They understood that the US could weaponize that and maybe we have and I don't know.

But I do know anthropic pushed back against the US government's attempt to try to weaponize its AI. But China recognizes that that's a capability the US has and they have decided in the near term, probably the best bet for them is to start to come to the table

and China has started to come to the table on AI discussions with the US. So hopefully it turns into something but when it comes to US China/Russia/NATO Western relations, it's so precarious.

It's really scary. But the thing about China is the people in China, their electric bills are $30 a month. Yeah. Like you know what I mean?

So China already has an advantage because the things they're trying to do aren't having huge negative impacts on their society. So we're trying to compete with them in a way that does have a huge negative impact on our society

and could that in itself result in an ultimate failure. If society starts rejecting all of this data center hate is a huge rejection from society, right? And it's because people are seeing their electric bills and they're seeing how much they're paying for gas.

They're seeing their total cost just to survive. If that's not happening in China, then they already have a massive competitive edge over us in that respect because their society is fine with it, where ours isn't. And that's got to be a huge consideration.

Yeah, and it's fascinating because China's actually leveraging that. There is legitimate grassroots opposition to these data centers. And they have valid points, but now China's leveraging that.

And they're using that, for instance, there was this report funded by the Bitcoin policy institute, which tells you it's going to be just a stellarly, like they're very peer-reviewed and just--

but basically they have a vested interest in ensuring

these data centers move forward. And they're just talking about how anti-data center hate is Chinese propaganda. It's the grassroots aspects of it or not, but understand that China is now subverting that.

They're finding ways to get in. And I know it's one of the targets. I see these AI-generated, which is ironic, because their AI-generated data center hate, and I'm like, you're just-- and what it is,

is you're seeing these-- they'll even attach to politicians that are like-minded. So Bernie Sanders, rightfully, comes out and talks about the problems of AI-data centers and he had a federal moratorium that he pushed out

and China latched onto that. And then ECHO and this expanded it and talked about,

“yeah, data centers are terrible, and you should never have them.”

And their reasoning is they do it. They just don't want us to build them. And so that they can get that competitive advantage. And it's unfortunate, because as we saw with Russia in 2016, those types of influence campaigns from other countries

do work. So it's trying to bound, like I said, as a commissioner on a planning zoning commission, very concerned about the citizens, concerns, and the real problems come with data center, balancing that as a foreign policy,

national security expert, is really difficult for me,

I'm just hoping we find a good balance.

China won't, they won't care.

“They'll just build them and kill people, they don't care.”

- I take slide issue, or I'll pick a bone with you here, which is that I don't think our country has a much of a reputation as being humanitarian at this point, but, but, you are correct that the Chinese government is willing to punish its citizens

at a higher pain point than the American government is still. We are used to a level of comfort that is not to like standard in some of these countries. - We still have elections. - You still have elections, yes, and Americans are big babies.

We are very much willing to endure a lot of pain and cost to maintain what we think is the status quo. We will let the screws get tightened over and over again to not threaten our image of individuality. However, we are big babies about comfort.

And we'll go into debt for it. We're going to massive debt for comfort, but you're right, that our government can't punish us without us complaining to the same ways as many closed societies can't.

Like we do still, like you said, we still have elections, and we still have a populist that wild, docile will complain if you threaten their comfort. And, obviously, because we still have elections, that's hopefully still important.

You know, I'm actually really excited that we got to talk about this so much this week, because I'll announce it right now. We have a guest on the show next week, Patrick Robbins, from Spring Street Climate, we'll be joining us,

that they are an energy affordability expert and specifically talking about how we can move towards publicly owned utilities and energy affordability for Americans. So I'd love to get their perspective next week,

and we'll be sure to talk to them about the proliferation of data centers, and how do we, you know, is there an environmentally conscious way of building the necessary amount of AI development

for medical, military, or other applications that are, you know, for our safety and the proliferation of humanity?

“And so I think it'll be really interesting to get into that”

when that is, is there this middle ground that we've been talking about, because as you said, we can't avoid escalating to some degree, but we can't do it as recklessly as we are right now because it's already hurting us and the bubble will collapse.

So I'm really looking forward to talking to Patrick Robbins from Spring Street Climate next week about that. Let's get our questions ready. Before we get out of here, I want to do a little segment that we do at the end of almost every show,

where we look back at one of the more positive stories from our week or at least one of the least negative stories from our week, it's called the least worst part of my week. Matt, do you have a least worst part of your week? You'd like to share?

- I do. - Hit me. - It's a fascinating story. We'll see if Chad's heard of this. Barnacles.

Have you heard about the Barnacles?

- He always starts out so good.

- Now listen, the barnacles are like, this is like a metaphor, this is like the locus from the Bible. There's these barnacles that are collecting on the ships that are trapped in the straight-of-formers

and the Persian Gulf. Now if you don't know, the Persian Gulf is a very warm water. And I have seen photos of these barnacles and these ships have been setting for so long and the buildup of barnacles on these ships

and within the props and like the cool water intakes on the bottom of the ships where they pull water in to cool the engines and everything. Some of these ships are gonna be incomparable by the time we get the straight-of-formers open

and they're literally trying to figure out what they're gonna do with the barnacles. It is the craziest thing I've ever seen. I saw some photos.

If you've never seen a giant propeller,

that's like, I don't know, 20 feet tall and you can't even see it because it just looks like a ball of barnacles.

“That's what's happening in the Persian Gulf right now.”

And it's, there was a huge report put out on it by this maritime association. I can't remember the name of the group, my apologies. But barnacles are gonna be a huge thing. When we get the straight-of-formers open,

the ships that can run are going to have to go very, very slow until they can get somewhere and get, what do they call 'em founded or whatever to where basically they're fixed. They get all the barnacles off of 'em.

So the barnacles are like the locus in the Bible and they're in the middle of the Persian Gulf and they're gonna wreak havoc on the 2000 ships in the 20,000 sailors that are sitting there. - I feel like there's a great opportunity.

- Yeah, we missed. - We totally didn't have like, barnacles. (laughing) - The car is on the car over the features. - God, if only I'd been on the predictive markets

three months ago. You know, Polymark is gonna pick that up. They're gonna be like, chances for barnacle removal within 30 days. - You've accidentally made dollars and bets.

- It's wild. - Some insider in the military is getting tipped off and making all that barnacle futures money. - Just to go barnacles in the story, okay, my, but it's actually a really big story.

- I guess a lot of competitive barnacle stories

- No, there's not a team of cool stories, you bring it.

One thing I wanted to add here before too long, I'm not gonna give it a date, but I'm actually headed to Washington DC to sit with the Senate, the Energy and Natural Resource Committee in the Senate. I've been invited, we're gonna host a round table,

where I'm gonna be a panelist, and we're going to discuss policy, energy policy, and specifically ways to help with gas prices and alleviate gas prices. I kind of low key, hope all of this is still going on

when I get there that way we can focus on that 'cause there's just be fascinating. - It will. - Well, that's where I'm gonna be. - Yeah, I know. - I hope in zero casualties, it's still the case.

- Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. I'm going for things to happen in the future, but, yeah,

“fortunately I think, I don't know what day you're gonna be there,”

but you're in the clear front. - Yeah, oh yeah, it'll be in June, I'll just leave it there. - Yeah, so Mr. Globo will be hanging out in the Senate. - Working on power. - I really look forward to you getting your message across to them,

and I'll give you some barbs, if you need some zingers or some, you know, just some jokes to open with, make sure, we'll talk to Pam body book, the burn book. - Yeah, I'll give you a little burn book, I'll give you a, just some roast jokes to get started with,

you know, one thing, one thing I'm a little concerned about is they would have a meeting with me about what I'm gonna say. - Oh, really? - That's, that's standard. - Yeah.

- Okay, yeah, they used to do that with a military guys too, when they were NATO coming, they don't like surprises, but you could still surprise them, 'cause screw 'em. - So I'm just gonna get invited back. - So every panel, I don't know how many panelists are gonna be there,

but each one of us have to give a three to five minutes speech, like an introduction type thing, and they want to have a meeting with me about what I'm gonna say there, and I was, they sent me that email today, and I was like, they must have seen my TikTok channel.

- Well, you know, it can be like, "Oh, God, are you vetting me?" But it's also like, if you're gonna hit someone with it, do you know how many this thing is this?

“Like, they, sometimes you should be like,”

these are the things I'm gonna hit you with, I wanna talk to you about, so be prepared, 'cause then they can't be like, "Look, I don't know, "I don't have the sister's six in front of me." You know, like, you're actually kind of kind of used that,

so that they can't be like, "Well, you're talking about a bill "from three years ago. "I don't know what that is." And you be like, "Well, I told you I was gonna talk about it." - I'll use AI to look at it. - Okay, yeah, yes.

- Thanks for making sure you keep the exact, you can, the exact carbon footprint at the bottom. - Okay, sure.

- Just like, you know, here's what I use for this.

Chad, do you have a least worst part of your week? - Yeah, so speaking of, I guess, kind of the, the locus of our time, we have, we have a great news on a really deadly virus malaria. So for the first time in history,

we have real world confirmation that the malaria vaccine is saving children's lives at scale.

“And there was a four-year study that was published in the Lancet.”

And it shows huge amounts of reductions in children's deaths in places like Ghana, Kenya, Malawi. And it's not just, it's not just the Lancet's publication. We've, you see, like, the World Health Organization is in on it. Several peer-reviewed journals,

Gabby, the vaccine alliance is a part of it. And it's showing that these vaccines have been so effective that 30, something like 30 million deaths have been prevented from that. And it's a huge amount since this program started.

They've delivered 39 million doses. This came out of a report from Hopkins, represent. And so it was, I just, it was something that's really good,

because one, I'm always a big proponent of fighting back

against the anti-vaccine on-sense with real data that shows, hey, these things save people's lives. I mean, the cost here is, these are $3 a dose for these things. And to save 30 million people, that's a huge benefit. And so, now we're seeing 47 countries have achieved malaria

of free status. And some of these countries are surprising. Like, you never would think that malaria is a problem for what is kind of an advanced Middle Eastern nation like Egypt. They just recently achieved malaria free status.

And so, I just thought it was a great, great story, because we've seen a massive reduction in two decades, especially in children under five. And a lot of this trains the health care system, it pulls the parents out of the world force.

If you have a massive malaria outbreak, it can actually drive a regional economy into the ground, so it becomes as vicious cycle. So, and just from a child's perspective, you don't get malaria.

I mean, you can grow up healthier. You can go to school and enter the economy and help these African nations. So, I do, I do like, I just wanted to highlight that. It's a, I think that's a good thing.

because of my, my line of work,

“but whenever I see great health care news,”

I always enjoy talking about it.

- That is great news. I mean, vaccines work. The backslide on that. I mean, public health is one of the major hallmarks of a functioning civilization.

And, you know, the elimination of disease specifically, was one of the, I don't know, humanities largest goals of the 20th century. And the fact that we've backslit on public health knowledge is one of the more depressing developments

of the past decade or so, but you're totally right. Like the argument against this sort of thing is hard knowledge. It's facts. It's data that shows the saves children's lives.

These are kids, you have kids. Maybe you don't have kids. You have a modicum of empathy, like, the facts are facts. And if you are listening to this, and you say, I don't know what's in that vaccine.

You don't know what's in anything, man. Relax. Vaccines. So, don't do your own research. You wouldn't know where to start.

- What's in your Coke Zero, bro? - Yeah, what's in your Coke Zero refrigerator work. Just tell me that. I'll start with that.

“- I think one of the worst, why am I just dealing?”

No, I was just gonna say, why don't I get the feeling and a few years, the United States is gonna be the only country that has malaria. - Yeah. - That's it's trending that way?

- It's just with all the anti-bexers. - Oh, because of the high rise of cured diseases, that's probably why if I had to guess, but I'm not in your side. - I'm not that ched. No, it's just one of the veins of my existence

is hearing people tell me they did their own research. No, you know what I'm doing? - I'm there. - I went to a doctor who got all kinds of degrees and did all the research and is really super smart.

That's who I asked. I don't need to go to some internet douchebag to tell me what to do up. - Really? If you are a person who's doing their own research,

find me online and share your screen. That's all I want to know. I just want to watch for 15 minutes while you do your own research. Like, where are you starting?

I want to know. - What peer-reviewed journals are you allowed to read? - Yeah. - Anyway, you're totally right. - I have a story, it's okay.

My story is going to be a slightly self-promotional, but I'm going to lead into it by saying, I make no money off of any of this since free. But mine-- - We don't either yet.

- No, no, the podcast. - I think I'm about to-- - I don't make any money off of it. - Advertisers, please sponsor our podcast. - No, I'm getting a load of this podcast,

but how do you think I forward that hoodie? This month in New York, summer programming has started, and that's true in cities, and municipalities all across America. We have a really great robust free public programming schedule here,

where there's movies in the park, and there's activities, and all sorts of events out of parks, and libraries, and also we have these open streets and plazas, which are places available to the public, blocked off from traffic.

I'm not just bragging about what we have in New York,

“but I think I would really encourage everyone,”

wherever you are in the country, if you're listening in a national event, to get involved in outdoor publicly funded events, not just because they're free. I think a lot of the times people think

of these things as the opportunity for parents who can't afford to bring their kids to something that costs money. And I will say that some of the free public events and parks have been the most rewarding things I've ever done,

and have connected me to people

who I never would have known how to meet before in my life.

And last year, I got to start a show in Riverside Park, part of their summer on the Hudson program, called Riverside Comedy Club, and we did two shows right there on the water, and as again, like I said, it's totally free,

and I'm not trying to sell tickets to anything right now, and it fills up every time. So I'm merely saying this to not to get people in the room, but to say it was such a rewarding experience, I quite frankly took it because it was a job,

and I wanted to do a comedy show. But I ended up performing for people who'd lived in the city their entire lives and never seen comedy before. I ended up performing for people who said they couldn't afford to go to a show.

I ended up performing for people who'd never seen stand-up comedy, and had bike to town from another neighborhood, not knowing it was there, and then said, wait, I like this now. I'm gonna look for more of it. And people who met their neighbors,

they were literally people who hadn't seen each other in years who both happened to come to the show. And these things feel like these kind of little magical New York moments, but I know that these exist everywhere.

So for me, the summer always haralds,

it's not only good weather, schools out playing in the sun, and hitting the beach, which I will absolutely be doing, but it means community to me. And I'm really excited that all these community events are starting, and so if you're listening to this,

I would encourage you to, you know, if you're in New York, you can go to NYC.gov/summer. If you're somewhere else, look at your city's website for local resources. They might not be through the government,

but look for free, look for mutual aid, look for community organized events. I promise you it's a lot more rewarding than getting scared and angry on the internet. So that's my least part.

So that's the least worst part of my week. - No, that's awesome. - That's really cool. We do, in my community, we have a massive park and the city comes and puts up a huge screen,

and we just have movie nights.

We do that too.

“And all the kids come and just lay out on the grass,”

and it's almost like a driving theater,

but it's all three. The city pays for it. You just go out there on your blanket or your lawn chair, and we do all kinds of stuff like that around here. So I love that stuff too, it's cool.

- Yeah, we don't stress about the cost of it, or are you being quiet enough? One of the most rewarding experiences I've had in Brooklyn is I lived in a Mexican neighborhood for a long time, and our summer movie series,

screened Coco by the Pixar movie Coco. - That's cool. - And I sat and watched it with about 100 Mexican families and it was pretty cool. - It was the best experiences of my life.

Everyone was so into it. It was a really, really beautiful.

But I never would have had that community moment

if I'd gone to the theater to see that. And that was amazing. - I love those community stuff, like the markets getting out, shopping local at the markets that always come out in the summer,

and then the evenings go to fun stuff in the parks and stuff, 'cause those parks, you never really realize what they have, even in medium sized cities like Boisea, they're just such cool things to do.

- There's so much more than you realize.

“I mean, I think that's the thing is we get so atomized,”

and we get so, oh, I'm gonna purchase the perfect experience, and we are not to get, that would too get anti-corporate and anti-capitalist, but I don't know, no caveat there. But to be anti-capitalist about it,

we're all sort of trained to think that that individualism and curating my perfect little world in my headphones is what we want. And then we go, why am I still not happy? And it's like, because we're evolutionary,

we're a social animal. You gotta be around other people. So if you're listening to this, I'm gonna encourage you not only to go to a community event, I'm going to encourage you to talk to one person

you've never met before. Go out and talk to a single person and it doesn't have to be long, to go to an event and talk to someone. It's gonna be a lot more rewarding

than starting a fight on truth social. Yep, yep. This has been American Power. We will be back next week with energy affordability, expert Patrick Robbins.

I'm very excited for our talk. Thank you so much for listening. For Mr. Global and Shad Scott, I'm Nat Tousen. This has been American Power.

“And remember, power corrupts, but American Power corrupts,”

American League.