The AI Boom Is Making Your Bills More Expensive

Summary

Podcast Summary: American Power – "The AI Boom Is Making Your Bills More Expensive" (June 3, 2026)

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Episode Overview

This episode of American Power digs into the intersecting crises of military escalation, energy markets, and the rise in everyday costs facing Americans—especially as the AI data center boom drives up electricity bills. Hosts Nat Towsen, military strategist Chad Scott, and oil and energy expert Matt “Mr. Global” Randolph examine how U.S. Iran policy, data center proliferation, and global power struggles all converge on your monthly expenses—unpacking the incentives and consequences lurking beneath the headlines.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Update on Iran and U.S. Ceasefire Efforts

• Endless Near-Deals and Political Theater: The hosts recap the ongoing Iran situation, noting that despite repeated announcements of imminent ceasefires by President Trump, no substantive progress has been made. Negotiations keep failing at the last minute—mainly due to domestic political optics and Trump's reluctance to look weaker than Obama ([01:33]).
  • Quote (Chad Scott, 01:33): "We are dealing with self-inflicted casualties…every time he comes to the table with what looks like a meaningful ceasefire…he backs off because it becomes politically toxic for him…he just doesn't want the optics of looking worse than Obama."
• Oil Economics & Blockade Realities: Despite attempts at blockades, Iranian oil continues to reach markets (China, India, Pakistan, etc.) due to strategic U.S. restraint and loopholes in enforcement. Even if exports are down, higher oil prices offset much of Iran's losses ([03:30]-[05:11]).
  • Quote (Mr. Global, 05:11): "The idea that you can starve out Iran from the beginning was a complete fallacy…they’re still selling oil…even if they're just selling what they can get through rail systems into different parts of China…that'll keep them afloat."
• Military Escalation – To What End?: The futility of further military escalation is discussed: targets are exhausted, the conflict becomes a war of optics, and the risks to global oil supply and prices are high ([07:34]-[09:31]).
  • Quote (Chad Scott, 07:34): "We’ve already hit like 13,000 targets. What more are there…that the juice is worth the squeeze? ...If we ramp back up, what is that gonna do? We're just gonna start hitting smaller, less strategically important targets—or go total war, scorched earth."

2. The “Bro Culture” of U.S. Leadership and Foreign Policy Failures

• Trump’s Negotiating Style & Cabinet Dysfunction: The hosts roast Trump’s impulsive, performative negotiation tactics (including outlandish Truth Social announcements), drawing analogies to late-era Mao and noting the chaos it causes for more capable staffers like Rubio Hill ([11:00]-[13:21]).
  • Quote (Nat Towsen, 11:28): "I hope…we can divorce ourselves from this sort of idea that these upwardly failing businessmen are secretly…the greatest dealmakers in the world. This guy…he's bad at it."
  • Memorable Bit: Joking about Trump claiming to call Hezbollah directly: “You call, like, get me the red phone that says Hezbollah on it.” ([14:13])

3. Wider U.S. Military Operations Roundup

• Chad details U.S. combat roles across the globe: anti-cartel strikes in the Caribbean/Pacific (noting war crimes like "double tapping"), air and special operations in Somalia, Nigeria, ongoing operations in Syria and Iraq ([22:26]-[27:53]).
  • Memorable Quote, defining “double tapping”: "We strike a boat, completely disabling it...at that point, the U.S. has an obligation to go into rescue mode. Under the Hegseth doctrine…his orders are just strike them again and kill them. That's…a war crime." (Chad Scott, [23:42])

4. How Data Centers and AI Are Spiking Your Electricity Bills

• A Brief Energy History: For 20 years, increased efficiency (like appliance standards) held U.S. energy consumption flat despite population growth, leading to grid maintenance complacency ([29:59]).
• Current Crisis—Strain from Data Centers: New, massive AI data centers are now overwhelming grids. One facility can use as much power as a quarter million homes, causing increased distribution/service fees that hit everyone—even those who never use AI ([31:59]-[33:02]).
  • Quote (Mr. Global, 31:59): "Data centers are putting a significant load on our grid which we have failed to maintain because we got far too comfortable with our energy efficiency... they're putting a massive strain on the grid…and that's why people's electric bills are going through the roof."
• Who Pays?: Utilities pass the cost of infrastructure upgrades and grid strain directly to consumers through non-usage fees, not tied to actual personal energy use ([32:12]-[33:02]).
• Data Center Scale and Expansion: The proliferation is rapid and enormous—over 600 data centers in Virginia alone, using 40% of the state’s electricity. If data centers were a country, they’d rank fifth in global energy use ([37:41]-[39:00]).
• Grid Reliability and Blackouts: Grid operators have gained the ability to “throw data centers off the grid” during peak strain, but the surge in data center demand means blackouts and brownouts may soon hit ordinary households instead ([39:18]-[40:24]).

5. Environmental and Community Impacts

• Water and Pollutant Concerns: Data centers guzzle water (Microsoft: 6.1 billion gallons), putting agricultural communities at risk and often making misleading promises about “renewables” or “water positivity” ([41:19]-[44:33]).
  • Corporations often game the system by using carbon credits or offsetting water use somewhere else (e.g., pumping water back into unrelated aquifers), which doesn’t help stressed local communities ([47:32]-[49:14]).
  • Quote (Mr. Global, 44:33): "Don’t ever believe anything big corporations say—it's a sales pitch…a ton of that is purchasing carbon credits...I don't think I honestly have enough knowledge [about water], but the fact that I don't know is concerning."
• Case Study – Urban Data Center Fallout: The Colossus Data Center in Memphis (for Musk's Grok AI) is cited—allegedly worsening local water, with additional coverups regarding air pollution from dozens of unreported gas turbines ([45:55]-[47:15]).

6. The Dilemma: Data Centers, AI, and National Security

• Necessity vs. Local Harm: The hosts debate the tradeoff—hurting communities with runaway data center construction vs. risking U.S. military disadvantage if China surpasses America in AI ([49:44]-[56:02]).
  • Quote (Chad Scott, 49:52): "We cannot ignore the other side of this scale and that is the military implications of falling behind in the AI race…China is accelerating AI development to gain a competitive advantage…we are watching drones evolve in real time…"
• Chinese & Russian Strategy: The U.S. remains cautious about “human-in-the-loop” safeguards, while China pursues more automated AI-driven military decisions without concern for collateral damage ([52:00]).
• Surveillance & Civil Risk: If the AI bubble bursts (as with NFTs/crypto), the resulting infrastructure could be re-appropriated for domestic surveillance and repression ([56:02]-[59:28]).
  • Quote (Nat Towsen, 56:02): "Are we not setting ourselves up to live in a surveillance state if we create this massive [AI] capacity…?"
• Policy Parallels to Nuclear Arms: The need for an AI version of non-proliferation treaties is voiced—but trust and enforcement seem even more precarious than in the nuclear age ([62:13]).
  • Quote (Mr. Global, 62:13): "I think we need something similar to the nuclear proliferations treaty with AI…How do we know everyone’s following the rules?"

7. Social & Political Feedback Loops

• China’s Domestic Advantage: Lower utility bills and higher governmental tolerance for suffering gives China a relative edge; U.S. consumers are reaching a breaking point over costs ([67:27]-[68:26]).
• Influence Operations: China is alleged to be amplifying grassroots U.S. opposition to data centers, seeking to hinder American AI resilience ([68:26]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Highlight | |-----------|---------|----------------| | 01:33 | Chad Scott | “We are dealing with self-inflicted casualties…every time he comes to the table with what looks like a meaningful ceasefire…he backs off because…it becomes politically toxic for him…he just doesn't want the optics of looking worse than Obama.” | | 14:13 | Nat Towsen | “You call, like, get me the red phone that says Hezbollah on it.” (On Trump’s claims to be in direct contact with Hezbollah) | | 31:59 | Mr. Global | “Data centers are putting a significant load on our grid…they're putting a massive strain on the grid…that's why people's electric bills are going through the roof.” | | 37:41 | Chad Scott | “Data centers…if they were a country…would be the fifth largest consumer of electricity in the world…There are 600 data centers in Virginia alone, they consume something like 40% of their entire state's electricity.” | | 44:33 | Mr. Global | "Don’t ever believe anything big corporations say—it's a sales pitch…” (on data centers’ environmental claims) | | 49:52 | Chad Scott | “We cannot ignore the other side of this scale…failing behind in the AI race…China is accelerating AI development to gain a competitive advantage…We’re watching drones evolve in real time…” | | 56:02 | Nat Towsen | "Are we not setting ourselves up to live in a surveillance state if we create this massive [AI] capacity…?" | | 62:13 | Mr. Global | "I think we need something similar to the nuclear proliferation treaty with AI…How do we know everyone’s following the rules?" |

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Iran Update & Policy Stalemate: 00:50–08:00
• Military Escalation & Global Operations: 07:34–27:53
• Energy Costs & Data Center Impact: 29:17–41:19
• Environmental Impacts & Community Pushback: 41:19–49:14
• AI, Data Centers, & National Security Debate: 49:44–59:28
• Surveillance State Risks & Policy Proposals: 59:28–64:12
• China’s Competitive Dynamics & Geopolitical Policy: 67:27–70:43
• Least Worst Part of My Week (Barnacles, Malaria, Community Events): 72:44–86:21

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Tone & Style

• The podcast blends sharp expertise (especially on military and energy topics) with sardonic humor; the hosts frequently lampoon politicians, make pop-culture allusions, and riff on absurdities—like barnacles on ships as “the locusts from the Bible” ([72:44]).
• The political commentary is frank, progressive, sometimes biting (“He's a sociopath. He's a rapist sociopath.”), yet remains grounded in pragmatic system-level analysis.
• Memorable running bits: Trump’s “Truth Social” stream, LEGO and Lincoln Logs jokes, the self-inflicted wounds of U.S. policy.

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Takeaways

• Geopolitical dysfunction and data center expansion are raising Americans’ bills—directly and indirectly—through energy strain, climate consequences, and reckless privatization of civic infrastructure.
• Military and autocracy-style “efficiency” come at the expense of local communities, with an ever-thinner veneer of diplomacy and “strategy.”
• The U.S. faces a strategic tightrope: avoid ceding AI dominance to more ruthless regimes, while not cannibalizing its own society to do so.
• Grassroots opposition to data centers is real and growing—but risks being co-opted or manipulated by foreign propaganda campaigns.
• Without robust, enforceable treaties, the AI arms race may spiral out of control with uncertain consequences for both international security and domestic liberty.

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Next Episode Preview

The hosts will be joined by Patrick Robbins from Spring Street Climate to explore public ownership models for utilities, energy affordability, and the environmental limits of unchecked data center growth.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign. You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Town, stand up comedian, political speech writer, many other kinds of writer and of course most likely to be carved into cuneiform 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, Chad Scott. Chad, how's it going?

[B]

Going great, Nat. Looking forward to this discussion with both of you.

[A]

Me too. I think it's going to be a really good one. And of course our expert on all things energy, renewable energy, oil, oil, markets around the world, you know Ms. Mr. Global, Matt Randolph is here. Matt, how's it going?

[C]

Great, it's going great.

[A]

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 contin for the listener. We are recording this around 6pm on Monday, June 1st. So if you're listening to it, that's what we know. And I also want to remind our listeners or viewers who come to us from YouTube that if you want to get the podcast earlier, it drops in your podcast feed the morning of every Wednesday. I want to 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?

[B]

I mean it's, you're correct in that 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, 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, the ceasefire will look like, he backs off because it becomes politically toxic for him largely because every time something leaks it looks like it's going to 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, this quote unquote cease fire. 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 into Lebanon. Just today Trump said that he had a discussion with Netanyahu. And Netanyahu and Lebanon have said, oh, we're going to, 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, we're, we're seeing this, this really rhetorical battle now. It's not, there's, it's not going to come to anything where we're going to see an outcome. The. We have cargo ships. They're getting through. A lot of them are running either at U. S. Permission along the Omani coastline or they're running through on the Iranian side where the U. S. Can't touch them because they, in Iranian waters too close for comfort, for the U.S. 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, it's not the reality on ground. Iranian oil's 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 like 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, of blowing up a Chinese ship or whatever like that. And if it's only. If 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 will be required. And that's something Trump doesn't want because oil is going to rise and it's going to 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, and nothing's moving. So it just looks like we're just bouncing between kind of a. 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.

[A]

Well, Matt, could you talk a little bit to the. About the economic reality of that? What Chad was saying, like, is this actually hurting Iran or is Iran actually Functioning in terms of oil pretty regularly.

[C]

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 going to do to them that hadn't 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. The truth is we really don't know how much. But even if they're just selling what they can get, you know, 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 going to beat Iran by starving them. That, that's just not a thing. That's not how it works.

[A]

And do you think that's a cultural legacy of decades plus of like, resilience against Western influence? You're like, say they're used to this.

[C]

Well, I mean, a lot of Middle Eastern countries identities are tied to being in this situation, you know, being oppressed or, 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 and minds like that. You know what I mean? Like, you're only making a rain.

[A]

You don't win people over with enormous cruelty. Yeah, something.

[C]

Right. That's exactly what I mean.

[A]

I guess that does make sense.

[C]

It's. 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, 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 could actually work.

[B]

Well, it's really fascinating too because that actually almost parallels with one of the more the extreme opposite of, of that, that just, let's starve them out in this idea of let's go back to full military escalation. And I, my question is, what would a military escalation accomplish? Because we've already hit like 13,000 targets. What more targets are there 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 going to 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, their dams, their power plants, their bridges. So really you're left with this option of if we escalate what, what to what end, what is it going to bring about? And if you're going to escalate, you're going to have to escalate in a way that is, is going to cause immense pain and suffering, or you're going to 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 going to be that effective for the, the broader strategy.

[A]

Right, but you're saying that sometimes, you know, this overwhelming for talking about atrocities on a level they haven't even committed yet, like would be the other option. I'm not saying we can't deescalate, but I'm saying they're either, 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, 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, to enact.

[B]

Yeah, I truly believe what this looks like is there's going to be some force. We're going to do something. Trump is either going to leave, as Matt suggested last episode, where he's like, we're just gon leave, but he can't just leave cleanly. He's going to have to go in and, and look like he's the tough guy and he's going to blow a couple things up and then leave, or we actually do go in and start fighting again and try to make it a meaningful escalation to, to drive some sort of strategy, drive some sort of diplomacy in the future. And those are the really the two outcomes, whether the out. Whether the diplomacy in the future is some sort of negotiated outcome that's probably going to be worse than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or it's just Trump being 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, where we're left right now.

[C]

It's never a good thing when the President says, oh, they're a lot better negotiators than I thought they were. Yeah. And he, and he says that publicly for them to hear. I mean, like, let's not embolden them anymore. They, they already know they have you over a barrel, like, no pun int. But, you know, you come out publicly and say, oh, they're much better negotiators than I ever thought. Well, yeah, good job. You know, why don't you just give a damn?

[A]

They got hands. Wow, you're really admitting it, huh?

[C]

It's true.

[A]

How am I asking you there? Wasn't expecting that.

[C]

That does not a military person. I'm not a 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 Iran, like, and I'm not the expert in that. I just feel like he's really bad at it.

[B]

Yeah, he undermines everyone. It's awful.

[A]

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, we can divorce ourselves from this sort of idea that these upwardly failing businessmen are secretly like, the greatest deal makers in the world. It's like this guy, his whole brand was making deals. He's bad at it. Sorry, I know that's a side tangent,

[B]

but I hope that we can stop

[A]

do this myth of success where we go, wow, this guy must be good at business because he's rich. But that's not true.

[B]

Yeah, and it's funny because like you, he surrounds himself with a bunch of people that are like him. So, like Hegseth, who again, I will not call Secretary of War. He's the Secretary of Defense. He, he will. He has this bro culture where just let's, let's drop a bunch of bombs, high five, and like, do some push ups, and we're 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, who sits there and has to think about the strategy of things, which is Rubio Hill. I, 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 he, I, 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, 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 nuke material or get the straight of armies open.

[A]

And if I'm not mistaken, just to tag on to 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, 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, oh, we're, we're gonna rain fire and brimstone down on them or we're gonna, you know, leave no one behind. Whatever his, his insane claims are making, he's dropping bombs in the negotiations as well.

[C]

Yeah. When he said I spoke to Hezbollah, I was like, sure you did.

[A]

You call, like, I get me the red phone that says Hezbollah on it.

[C]

I mean, he's, he said he spoke to Netanyahu and then he said he spoke to Hezbollah and they're going to stop. And then 15 minutes after he posted that Hezbollah was bombing Israel again. And Netanyahu, who, he came out and said, you know, I'll stop when they stop. 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.

[A]

So he's just saying there's an uncorroborated claim that they had communication.

[C]

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, why would he?

[B]

No one, no one trusts him anymore.

[C]

Yeah, nobody ravid he could.

[B]

I mean, I doubt it. I, I, I think he just says things. It's just like his, just if you go through his true social. It's just the stream of, it's got to be like sundowner 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, it's, he'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 noticed back when Rubio had that gaffe where he's like, oh, don't listen to what stupid people. Or was that beset, Was that Scott Bessant? I can't remember. It was 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.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I, and so like, it was something on a policy, and I don't remember who said it. It might have been Rubio or, or treasury guy or whatever. But, yeah, so even people within his own administration are like, oh, my God. They're just, they just don't. You unfortunately pick up the phone when, when Trump calls, whether you're Saudi or you're Oman or, or Jordan or whatever. But more than likely they listen to his pitch like this, this ridiculous, let's expand the Abraham Accords. That's the only way I'm gonna get peace with Iran. And they go, yeah, sounds good. And then they, they, they hang up the phone and look at their staff and go, we, we're not doing that. CR So, I mean, and that's kind of the, the world we live in with the Trump negotiations at this point.

[C]

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, 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, yeah. Aren't they a proxy of Iran? So, like, it's, it's, it's B.S. he didn't call Hezbollah.

[A]

Could have been assumed, maybe. Maybe he texted Hezbollah.

[B]

There's a group chat.

[A]

He's in a group chat with Hezbollah, but they haven't marked red yet. So it's like technically they could see

[B]

it, but it's, it's one of them hexa signal chats.

[A]

Indirect. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. I was going to say that this is a, a friend of mine, far more educated on the history of China than. I made an interesting computer comparison where 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 like, 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, you know, the people beneath him are trying to figure out how to make the government work under this figurehead. Because like you're saying his true social posts are, they're 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.

[B]

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, we just saw it recently in all in the primaries. Like, Trump may be losing power internationally and have kind of in an, 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 we, I think Paxton was, got his endorsement and he, I think that's his name and he's a, like, just an awful, awful person. So he still unfortunately has power within the US and the party. And I'm worried that that's going to carry over after he leaves office in 28. But when it comes to national, he think 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 going to stop blockading the Strait of Hormuz or stop. Or even tell you where our nuclear weapon or our nuclear material is.

[A]

Yeah. And somehow that, you know, massive cult of personality through which he sort of humorously Took over the entire Republican Party. That doesn't transfer to foreign policy like the way to that he was able to consolidate power underneath him and truly just consume anyone who tried to half step or, you know, 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, he was effectively able to control that narrative, able to, you know, squash anything that wasn't full authoritarian. And like that is not that. That's a, you know, that's an autocrat cult of personality. But that 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 mince words. He's a sociopath. He's a rapist sociopath. Those kinds of people are very good at crushing power domestically within them, 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, you know, he's received only affirmation his entire life and by bullying everyone has always gotten his way. And it's like he does not know how to, how to act in any other. In any other fashion. And it's not working.

[B]

No. Because everyone will call his bluff on the international age. Because it doesn't. It doesn't. He has no way to meaningfully hurt them.

[A]

Yeah. He can't just shake their hand for too long.

[B]

Yeah, 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 did in Hungary or he did in Canada, the opposite happens and his guy ends up getting soundly defeated. So he has, he. Where he has power domestically here in the US he, he doesn't have it overseas. And he, And I think it, I think it really angers him. So he, his only way is to lash out rhetorically online.

[C]

Can you imagine the LEGO sets he had as a kid? Do you think he had the Millennium Falcon or wait.

[A]

Oh, he had the full Death Star and everything.

[C]

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

[A]

That's true. But he had, he would have had like.

[C]

Huh.

[A]

He had the equivalent, whatever the, the.

[C]

He probably had the Nina, the Pina and the Santa Maria. He probably had that. I bet that was a huge Lego in his day. That was like the U.

[A]

Yes, I remember.

[C]

Baby grand piano.

[B]

We're. We're making assumptions that this dude plays like had the patience and confidence.

[A]

He does strike me more as a man whose father screamed at him for having imagination at any point.

[B]

Or like telling his maids to build this Lego Swarm suite.

[A]

Right, right. You've done it incorrectly, so. But I do like how you've created three ships of colonizers.

[B]

I think he was a Lincoln Logs guy.

[A]

You there, boy. Mix, put those Lincoln Logs together for me.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So we've been talking a lot about Iran. We've been talking about Trump's ineptness 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 little while since we got a roundup of our military action worldwide. Chad, I think it's time for a war check.

[B]

We do have still several operations taking place. This is just going to focus on those operations where we are actually engaging in some sort of physical combat there. Not advising roles. We have advising roles pretty much in every country where the US Military is, is a part of advising, which that's actually a great thing where we provide some assistance with their militaries and their 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, we're still interdicting and engaging drug, quote unquote drug cartels in the Caribbean Sea in the eastern Pacific. This is part of that joint task for Southern Spear. 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? Because sometimes we heard it was just a fishing boat and they're like waving hey. Or they're getting, they're getting double tapped, which is hugely against not only international law, the law of war and US Law, those continue to, to take place. I mean, as of yesterday.

[A]

I just want to jump in. I'm sorry. Can you explain double tapping? We mentioned it on an episode.

[B]

Yeah. So I mean, double tapping is basically when we strike a boat, completely disabling it, it's no longer a threat. In fact, there's, there's people, what we would call combatants, but people in the water, they're, they're no longer in a combatant status. They become non combatant because they have no ability to. 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, we scoop them up and, and take them and interrogate them and things like that. That's not under the Hegseth doctrine. It's not really a doctrine, but his orders, he's just strike them again, hit them again and kill them. And that's for all intents and purposes that's a war crime. And so we're. You're not allowed to kill unarmed non, non threatening combatants. And so that's what's happening.

[A]

And are you also theoretically interfering with a rescue effort if you're doing like they're, they're also theoretically like attacking aid, right? Like if.

[B]

Well the aid would be provided generally by the same people that do the attacking.

[A]

That's kind of how.

[B]

Because we're.

[A]

There's no like, like other casualties involved in this kind of thing.

[B]

No like what ends up happening. Let's say 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 still there, there's usually right behind, outside of a distance 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, the combative helicopter in case they go down to rescue them. However, if, if the enemy ends up completely disarmed and they need help. It is US policy and us 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 Spear. We still are having these double tap strikes where we'll strike a boat, 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 quote unquote narco terrorists in along the Colombian border. We're also in Somalia. This is. We mostly this one's just airstrikes. We did. We've done about 63 airstrikes this year as a part of Africa Command or africom. They're, they're targeting isis. Somalia. One that I've discussed on some of my tick tocks is Nigeria. This is one that a lot of people don't realize. We're dealing with Nigeria. So in Nigeria, we have actual special operations forces on the ground, as well as drone forces, as well as air assets conducting airstrikes 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, in their capabilities because these, these groups have gotten a little bit stronger than they've expected. Similar situation in Syria. We have about a thousand US 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 2500 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 Shia militias. And it becomes a, a target set for those militias. Whenever we ramp up fighting in Iran, they use those militias to target our, our soldiers in, in Iraq. And that's just kind of a once around the world. Obviously I skipped over Iran because we kind of already talked about that, but where we are conducting operations.

[A]

Well, thank you for the roundup.

[B]

Very expensive.

[A]

It does sound very expensive. I feel like I've mentioned on a previous issue that one of the most pop. I feel like I mentioned on a previous episode that one of the most popular videos on social media these days is a video of U.S. air Force, sorry, a, a aircraft carrier and people shooting missiles. And it's just the sticker price for every missile shot or like, oh, flight and kicks off, okay, we shot it up. And it's, you know, I think I only mention it because I do think Americans are, I think, I think honestly downstream of the, 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, you know, the cost, the overall spending of our government, but it's driving up our energy costs and, 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 via AI 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 mid episode, but I was hoping we could talk about the rise in energy costs and just the proliferation of data centers across America.

[B]

Yeah, for sure. I mean if you. Matt, you'll know more about the, the energy stuff because I will defer to you because I, I know there's some grid 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 from you because I know this is a massive problem for, for a virgin like the average American. Especially because, full disclosure, I'm on Ada county planning and zoning and we deal with this like we deal with the data centers. Coming interested to see what, what your take on this is because it'll definitely inform decisions in the future on that.

[A]

And if you want a slightly cleaner Matt, how is this affecting the cost for the average American?

[C]

The data centers are putting a significant load on our grid which we have failed to maintain because we got far too comfortable with our energy efficiency and our conservation. And you know those little yellow stickers on your like water tank and stuff that you, 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 and the amount of strain that the grid is under. And you have to look at power lines and, 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, are going through the roof. And that's also why gas prices hurt. So much more, you know, now than say in 2008 when gas was $4. That was bad. But hey, at least my electric bill was 200, you know, now gas is I think 4:30 now, somewhere around there on a national average, but my electric bill is 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.

[A]

Yes. 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 cost of the construction of strengthening the grid rapidly or building out these data centers and the increased use of the grid, rather, rather by not the usage statistic on our bill, but on the other fees, the transmission, the service, the services, 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?

[C]

Well, you're paying for the load that the data center is putting on.

[A]

Sorry, the increased transmission from the data centers. Pardon me.

[C]

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. You know, there's. People don't realize there's thousands and thousands and thousands of data centers across the United States. They started off, you know, you'd have a data center that would maybe use as much power as like a thousand homes and, 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't have evs, the grid will collapse. But we can build all these data centers that use as much power as250,000 homes. I think that blew that argument out of the water. But it does seem that whenever we're

[A]

told there's not money for something that include, you know, increases health or quality. Well, it's unrealistic, but when we need to rapidly invent money for data centers or the military, somehow it exists.

[C]

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

[A]

We've talked about this again, but a previous episode, there's, there's no reason that we shouldn't consider energy to be essential. You know, it's obviously, of course, it's a utility, but it's, it's a right. I, I don't mean to say it's a right and that it's naturally occurring. We create these things, but it is a right insofar as you need it to participate in society. And withholding it is inhumane. So therefore it should be available at an affordable price. And that's a pretty simple calculation. But of course, we've structured our society essentially the inverse of that priority. But, and I want to one small tangential note because I want to tell our listeners, especially if you are YouTube viewers, if you don't follow Matt, Mr. Global, you put out a great video this week called Death by a Thousand Cuts, essentially about the disappearing American middle class and the affordability crisis and essentially how middle class wealth was redistributed to the. Buddy, you were speaking my language.

[C]

You watch my YouTube. You know, I'm blushing.

[A]

When I have the time. When I, When I have the time. Yeah, I've seen, I've seen some of them. Yeah, I've totally. What I watch it all the. Yeah. What's. You tell me your favorite one first, though, and I'll, I'll say what I thought of it. No, I really did. I loved your video. I think it just came out today. It's such a good breakdown as to why, you know, this thing that we're talking about all the time. And I thought, 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 like why that's not the reality for Gen Z and millennials, for example, in America and Americans in general are just financially less solvent now. But how the middle class wealth was re transferred over, you know, not that many years to the top 1%, top 10%. 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 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, is corporatism was prioritized over quality of life. Over. Over not only quality of life, but financial security for American citizens.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And now we're seeing another step of that.

[C]

People don't know that like 50 years ago is not that long ago. No, it's, it's really not. It's, it's a blink in time, but 50 years ago. And I don't know if you know this, Chad, if you saw my YouTube video, you would know this.

[B]

But overseas, he didn't watch it.

[C]

Over.

[B]

I don't subscribe to him. No, I'm just playing. I do. I'm just playing.

[C]

No, just how massive it is that over 60% of Americans had a pension.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

50 years ago. And now we're, we're going to have an entire generation of people that don't have pensions and most of them don't have retirement and they're going to destroy the Social Security system. Like we're going to have an impoverished. We already have an impoverished what? Elderly group, whatever you want to call them. You know, 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.

[B]

You look at the, the politicians even who tout the, the I'm for the middle class and the lower class. They don't care. They, they will, they will readily take that wonderful data center money. I mean, data centers have hit something like a little over a thousand terawatt 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, some of these power generators, whether it's like PJM or some of these other ones, are coming out and saying, hey, we're going to be short if this continues. We're going to be short power. And even as early as 2027. And I have concerns that who are they going to prioritize? They're not going to prioritize us. We're going to end up with brownouts and blackouts. I mean, what, 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 are, we're very hydroelectric centric which, and we have an overabundant. We actually sell a bunch of it to like California stuff.

[A]

But when you say we though, you mean Idaho.

[B]

Idaho. Idaho.

[C]

Idaho.

[B]

So Idaho specifically the Pacific Northwest is very lucky that we have a lot of, 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 going to run out of energy, frankly.

[C]

So, 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 strain, which is typically really hot temperatures, really cold temperatures, you know, 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 this 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 because they're going to get booted off the grid. It's, it's absolutely going to happen. It may be just for a few days, but you know, it'll, 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 going to happen. It's absolutely going to happen.

[A]

I was going to 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 we'll tomorrow, but. 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, they're privately building out their own use diesel generators and stuff like that. What's the economic, sorry, what's the environmental impact look like? They're like, are these people just then creating more oil burning energy plants?

[C]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's a large environmental impact for sure. You're talking a big data center would use 4 to 5,000 barrels, not gallons, but barrels of diesel a day. So that, you know, 5,000 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 2 1/2 million more barrels of oil or not. Not oil, but gasoline, which would put it near 5 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 because it's where you make your biggest improvements.

[B]

Well, I have a side question because like, so as I, 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, 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, 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 wrong, 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, they'll jump on and they're worried and the, the argument that is given to us and I'm, 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 can. And so we just are going to use our own water consumption and things like will 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 like renewable energy. Certific buys 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, these data centers come out and they tell us flat out, oh no, everything's going to be cool. And all of these, these unfortunately uninformed farming communities, which is where they want to put these things 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, up ruining a lot of things and our water table gets wrecked. What are your thoughts on that stuff?

[C]

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 they're, they're 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, and you know, using money to kind of buy their way to, you know, as, as far as the overall water usage, I don't, I don't think I honestly have enough knowledge about it to speak intelligently about it. I, I've heard so many different stories and, 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 you know, is a data center going to 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.

[A]

Yeah. And the Trump administration is denying it. So I have to assum. It is bad for clean water. I I basing this initially on. I mean there's a lot of research around around clean water supply of this but you know, this isn't all in farmland. I was just thinking of when. When X formerly Twitter instituted Gro, their competitor to chat GPT. Competitor. Attempted competitor chat GPT. That's putting it generously but they built this, I think it was called Colossus Data center in Boxton, which is a neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee. And there's been a massive water supply problem there. People. The local water supply, the quality has gone way down and that. And that's in a relatively urban area where. 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. You know, of course again, it's near a black community and yeah.

[C]

Elon Musk 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 with that.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

They had to use.

[A]

If I remember correctly, they used thermal energy like environmental groups used thermal imaging to find 33 gas turbines or something in. In the Colossus facility, which they had

[C]

only running one of them.

[A]

But the thermal imprint was of all of them. Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Why would you ever trust Grok or. Or no, sorry, Elon Musk's company, but

[C]

you can't take anything 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.

[B]

Well that's a. They bait and switch. You too? Because this is what we found specifically is they'll say oh well, we'll return the water to the same or to the aquifer, but it won't be the same aquifer. Like it'll be an awkward. Like they'll pull 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. And it means that we are like let's say in Kuna, Idaho where the Meta data center 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 will happen is they'll say we're going to be, if you look at our, our whole prospectus 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, they're in places where there's huge amounts of water like they're trying to get rid of it. Like places 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 US Water positive and, and meanwhile the community and the, 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. It just, they don't want to pay the extra, I don't know, 100 to 150 bucks per like square meter of operation to, to make sure that the communities are sound. The communities that are going to have the, 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 works.

[A]

We've got Lee Zeldin ahead of head of 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. Like this is an emerging technology that's using the grid in a very different way than we're used to. And the, I like the idea that we can just build recklessly with nothing to offset that is, you know, we're kind of in the worst hands when it comes to the environmental impact of that.

[B]

Yeah, for sure.

[A]

Kind of scary.

[C]

Plus we need them.

[A]

What? Data centers.

[C]

We need the data centers. Chad can speak extensively on this.

[A]

Why do we need data centers? I'm being open minded. I'm just asking.

[B]

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 am 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 the largest county in the state of Idaho, I do have those concerns. There are very real concerns about water and power. But we cannot ignore the other side of this scale 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 about Russia. They're always, they're just not great. They're good at faking AI, but they're, but China really is very good at it. And it's, 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, haha Skynet. But now we're like, oh man, this is getting really spooky out there. You have drone swarms that coordinate in 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 works 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 in practice with many countries. I mean China is accelerating AI development to gain this. Xi Jinping himself said we want a competitive advantage because that's the only way we're going to be able to counter the United States. He came out and said 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 because so you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, are we harming communities because that need these data centers or that don't need these Danny 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 Russia trying to catch up. But like I said, the People's Liberation army is pursuing AI across every domain of, 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, this is the specific target, this is what munition we suggest you use etc do you want to execute? And then a human goes yes or no. Basically they, China is moving to a place where they are saying having the 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 doing similar things. They have Project Maven which is an AI system to process battlefield imagery and sensor data so that they can automate 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 ask is

[A]

there a de escalation option?

[B]

Yeah, 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, 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 communic in the gates in, in understanding how they can be employed and we don't have that for AI. The 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. A human, it's from end to end a human decides that there's no AI integration whatsoever. It's a completely separate system. And that's very good. I mean again that becomes that, that

[A]

Skynet problem as a war games problem specifically.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And so China and the United States now mind you Russia is not 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, I'm not super concerned about it but eventually five, ten years from now they will break out into a point where they're with us and we are. That's why I'm, I sit there and say I completely understand the problems with data centers and their energy usage and their water usage. 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, a thousand year fight to, to defeat the United States and they will take all measures possible to, to get their. 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 our 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.

[A]

I mean, I think the national security. Yeah, I agree. And I think the big missing piece of information here though is 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 so 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 caustic. Like I, I do think we should be using it for protein sequencing and seeking cure. Like obviously we don't have like the big. There's, there hasn't been like the big killer app like cure for cancer, but there have already been medical advances. That's a good use of AI. But I, 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 our 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, I don't know the degree to which you can see a data center from space the way that 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'd be 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, our increasing autocratic regimes punishment of their enemies? And will someone like say Pete Hegseth care if the AI being used to target civilians arrests 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, you know, Imperial 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 brute 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, burst, because no one has ever paid for an AI generated movie yet to watch. Right. Let's say, let's say hypothetically 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, but both domestically and abroad?

[B]

Well, I would argue that, yeah, I mean, I mean when you build the hammer, you're going to be looking for a nail. 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 gotta, you can't justify having that large of a budget. And so you have a lot of contractors that come out and are like, like, all right, well why don't we lobby or not lobby, but support a bunch of really hawkish candidates that hate Iran or for 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. I, I think like you're saying it's like, it's kind of like how the Internet came out when DARPA initially was kind of the, the big wing of the Internet with Berkeley and the University of Utah and stuff like that. Eventually the, there was this explosion into the private sector and everyone thought that the Internet was going to 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 develop, it doesn't showcase a product like the Internet does. It doesn't facilitate transactions. What it does is it, it's, it's an efficiency machine. And when those efficiencies run out or when the people who've lost their jobs to AI and, or, or the argument is is they've their job has been enhanced so much for, by AI that they don't necessarily need three other people to help them. That's when that bubble bursts. And yeah, we're stuck with this bill of massive data centers in those companies. It's, it's just like the Fords and the, the chevys of the 2008 crisis. The too big to fail. When Palantir has a massive contract with the US government, the US Government's not going to let them go under. So you're right. I worry the only, and to answer your question 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 a, 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, I think that's what's going to happen. It's all going to be reactionary. What do you thought? What do you think, Matt?

[C]

I think we need a, something similar to the nuclear proliferations treaty with AI that, that's what I, and, but how do we know everyone's following the rules? Because I'm, I'm concerned about it. I, I wanted to bring up the fact though, because 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 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, 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 your electric bills. 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 is what I'm saying. It's no different.

[A]

We may need them for something, but we, you know, we need missiles. Right. I don't need missiles to be in downtown of every town in America. Right. 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.

[C]

What I'm talking about.

[A]

Yeah, I'm agreeing with you. Like, it's, it's this weird argument where we go, well, we, we have to have this. It's like, yeah, but my neighbor doesn't have to have it. Like, the military has to have it.

[B]

Well, that's, yeah, it's. I, my, 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 is 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 it, put a data center out in the middle of nowhere and unfortunately you folks just got to kind of commute two hours to the 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 and things, where we do have some gateways on it. But understand that China and Russia, they do not. And you brought something up really, really great about the having some sort of non proliferation treaty. 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. Our nuclear non proliferation treaties no longer exist. The one, the last one died last year because Trump and Putin decided they did not want to renew it. So just understand that we may have treaties on paper, we may have agreements, but, but that isn't always rock solid either. Even though it was rock solid for several decades, whether it was salt or start the, whether it was the in the arms trees that all the way dating back, all the way back to Eisenhower, all the way through Joe Biden trying to re up the, the treaties. And they, they don't exist anymore. And so we're now in a dually 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 scariness of AI is China realizes the scariness as well. Because mythos, I don't know if you guys know what that is. It basically discovered a bunch of zero day exploits. It was an anthropic technology as part of their, their opus or whatever their, their AI tech. And they kind of just released it and they found huge amounts of, 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 fix it. That really scared China. They understood that the US could weaponize that. And, and, 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 US China slash Russia slash NATO, Western relations, it's so precarious. It's, it's really scary.

[C]

But the thing about China is the people in China, their electric bills are $30 a month.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

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? You know, if, if society starts rejecting, you know, all of this data center hate is a huge rejection from society. Right. And it's, 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.

[B]

Yeah. And they, it's, 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 is leveraging that and they're, 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 stellar like they're very peer reviewed and just. But basically this, they have a vested interest in ensuring these data centers move forward. And there's talking about how anti, anti data center hate is Chinese propaganda. It's, it's the grassroots aspects of it are not. But understand that China is now subverting that. They're finding ways to get in and Idaho is one of the targets. I, I see these AI generated which is ironic because they're AI generated data center hate. And I'm like you're. And what it is is you're seeing these. They'll even attach to politicians that are like minded like. 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 don't, 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 balance like I said as a commissioner on a planning zoning commission, very concerned about the citizens concerns and the real problems come with data centers. Balancing that as a foreign policy national security expert is really difficult for me because there's a. Yeah, there is validity to both. 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.

[A]

I take slight issue or I'll pick a bone with you here, which is that I don't think our country has much of a reputation as being humanitarian at this point. But, but where 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, not true, like standard in some of these countries.

[C]

We still have elections.

[A]

We do still have elections. Yes. And Americans are big babies. We, 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'll go into massive debt for comfort, comfort. But you're right that our government can't punish us without us complaining to the same way as as many closed societies can. Like we do still, like you said, we still have elections and we still have a populace that, while docile, will complain if you threaten their, their comfort. And you know, 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 will be joining us. They are affordability expert and are 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 I was 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?

[C]

I do.

[A]

Hit me.

[C]

It's a fascinating story. We'll See if Chad's heard of this barnacles. Have you heard about the barnacles?

[B]

He always starts out so good.

[C]

No, listen, the barnacles are like. This is like a metaphor. This is like the locust from the Bible. There's these barnacles, barnacles that are collecting on the ships that are trapped in the Strait of Hormuz 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 going to be inoperable by the time we get the straight of Hormuz open. And they're literally trying to figure out what they're going to 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, 20ft 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

[B]

put out

[C]

on it by this maritime association. I can't remember the name of the group, my apologies. But barnacles are going to be a huge thing when we get the straight of war moves 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 them, founded or whatever, to where basically they're fixed. They get all the barnacles off of them. So the barnacles are like the locust in the Bible and they're in the middle of the Persian Gulf and they're going to wreak HAVOC on the 2000 ships and the 20,000 sailors that are sitting there.

[B]

I feel like there's a great opportunity we missed.

[C]

We totally did have like barnacles.

[A]

God, if only I'd been on the predictive markets three months ago.

[B]

You know, Polymark is going to pick that up. They're going to be like chances for Barnacle removal within 30 days. $7 million in bets.

[A]

Someone, some insider in the military, is getting tipped off and making all that barnacle futures money.

[C]

Just Google barnacles and the story will come up. It's actually a really big story.

[A]

A lot of competitive Barnacle stories in the news.

[C]

No, there's not a ton of 1804. One thing I wanted to add here before too long, I'm not going to give the date, but I'm actually headed to Washington D.C. to sit with the Senate, the Energy and Natural Resource Committee. In the Senate, I've been invited. We're going to host a roundtable where I'm going to 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 because it'd just be fascinating. That's where I'm gonna be.

[A]

And yeah, I know, I hope with zero casualties it's still the case as far as I'm hoping for things to happen in the future. But yeah, unfortunately I think you're. I don't know what day you're going to be there, but you're in the clear. Probably.

[C]

Yeah. Oh yeah, it'll be in June. I'll just leave it at. But yeah. So Mr. Global will be hanging out in the Senate working on policy.

[A]

I really look forward to you getting your message across to them. And I, I'll, I'll give you some barbs, you know, some. If you need some zingers or some, you know, just some jokes to open with. Make sure.

[B]

What's a Pam body book? The burn book?

[A]

Yeah, I'll give you a little burn book. I'll give you a. Just some roast jokes to get started with, you know, whatever.

[C]

One thing, one thing I'm a little concerned about is they want to have a meeting with me about what I'm going to say.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

That's, that's standard.

[A]

Yeah, they do that.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah, they used to do that with the military guys too. Whenever NATO come in, they don't like surprises. But you can still surprise them because screw them. So you just won't get invited back.

[C]

It's about so every pan. I don't know how many panelists are going to be there, but each one of us have to give a three to five minute speech, like a introduction type thing. And they want, want to have a meeting with me about what I'm going to say there. And I was, they sent me that email today and I was like, they must have seen my TikTok channel.

[A]

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 be like do you know how many this thing is this like they, sometimes you're like, these are the things I'm gonna hit you with, I want to talk to you about. So be prepared because then they can't be like look, I don't know, I don't have the statistics in front of me. You know, like you actually can kind of use 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. You really like. Well, I told you I was going to talk about it.

[C]

You know, I'll use AI to look it up.

[A]

Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, thanks. Make sure you, you keep the exact econ, the exact carbon footprint at the bottom of the page. Something just so you know. Here's what I used for this. Chad, do you have a least worst part of your week?

[B]

Yeah. So speaking of, I guess kind of the, 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 the Lancet's publication. You see the World Health Organization is in on it, several peer reviewed journals, Gavi, 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 them. It's a huge amount since, since this program started. They've delivered 39 million doses. This came out of a, 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 vax nonsense with real data that shows hey, these things save people's lives. I mean we, the, 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 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, a great story because we've, we've seen a massive reduction in two decades, especially in children under five. And a lot of this drains the Health care system, it pulls the parents out of the workforce. Course if you have a massive malaria outbreak, it can actually drive a regional economy into the ground. So it becomes this vicious cycle. So, and just from a child's perspective, you don't get malaria. It means you can grow up healthier, you can go to school and enter the economy and help these African nations. So I, I do, I do. Like, I just wanted to highlight that it's a, I think that's a good thing. I never, I don't really get into the healthcare world because of my, my line of work, but whenever I see great health care news, I always enjoy talking about it.

[A]

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, humanity's largest goals of the 20th century. And the fact that we've backslid on, on public health knowledge is, 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, it's data that shows this 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 are. So don't do your own research. You don't. You wouldn't know where to start. Charge.

[C]

What's in your Coke Zero, bro.

[A]

Yeah, what's in your. How's your refrigerator work? Just tell me that. We'll start with that.

[B]

I think one of the worst feeling.

[C]

No, I was just gonna say why do I get the feeling in a few years the United States is going to be the only country that has malaria?

[A]

Yeah, it's trending that way because of

[C]

all the anti vaxxers.

[A]

Oh, because of the high rise of cured diseases. That's probably why if I had to go. But I'm not in your head.

[C]

Sorry about that, Chad.

[B]

No, I just want to say it's one of the banes of my existence is hearing people tell me they did their own research. No, you know what I did? 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 is up.

[A]

Truly, if you are a person who's doing their own research, find me online and share your screen screen. That's all I 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, what peer reviewed journals are you allowed to read?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

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 and it's free. But my.

[B]

We don't either yet.

[A]

No, not the podcast. That's the thing I'm about to promote off of. I don't make any money off of advertisers.

[B]

Please sponsor our podcast.

[A]

No, I'm getting loaded off this podcast. But how do you think I afford 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 at 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 internationally even, 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, 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 again, like I said, it's totally free and I'm not trying to sell tickets to anything right now. And it sells everyone. It fills up every time 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 standup comedy and had biked down from another neighborhood not knowing it was there, and then said, wait, I like this. Now I'm going to look for more of it. And people who met their neighbors, there 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 heralds not only like 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 summer. If you're somewhere else, look at your city's website for local resources. They might not only 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.

[B]

No, that's awesome.

[C]

That's really cool. We. We do, in my community, we have a massive park and the city comes and puts up a huge screen green. And we just have movie nights on the weekends. In the summer we do that too. And like all the, all the kids come and just lay out on the grass and it's almost like a drive in theater. But it's all free. 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, I love that stuff too. It's cool.

[A]

Yeah. You know, you don't have to stress about the cost of it or are you being quiet enough? You know, 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. Series screened Coco by the Pixar movie Coco.

[B]

That's cool.

[A]

And I, I sat and watched it with about a hundred Mexican families and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Everyone was so into it. It was really, really beautiful. But, you know, I never would have had that community moment if I'd gone to the theater to see that. And that was, you know, amazing.

[B]

I love, I love those, the community stuff like the markets getting out shopping local at the markets that always come out in the summer and then in the evenings go do fun stuff in the parks and stuff. Because those, those parks, what they have. Even in like medium sized cities like Boise, there's just such cool things to do.

[A]

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, you know, I'm going to purchase the perfect experience. And, and we are, you know, not to get. No, to get anti corporate and anti capitalist. That I'm not. 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, and then we go, why am I still not happy? And it's like because you. We're evolutionary. We're, we're a social, you know, you got to be around other people. So if you're listening to this my, I'm going to 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, but talk. Go to an event and talk to someone. It's gonna be a lot more rewarding than starting a fight on truth social.

[B]

Yep. Yep.

[A]

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 Chad Scott, I'm Nat Town. This has been American power. Power. And remember, power corrupts, but American power corrupts Americanly.