Tucker Debates Kevin O’Leary on AI, American Jobs and the Fall of the American Empire

Just when you think you got it all figured out, you see trends in progress that seem to contradict each other, and you wouldn't have expected that.

0:08Here's one example.

0:10So, whatever you think of the war with Iran, there is really no arguing the fact it has caused a global energy crisis, maybe the most severe global energy crisis, well, since the discovery of fossil fuels.

0:23To give it some perspective, so the Strait of Hormuz famously is closed down. That's the choke point through which a fifth of the world's hydrocarbons flow, and that's been for maybe 2 and 1/2 months.

0:35If the strait is opened by next month, which is best-case scenario, we have no idea if that's going to happen, but let's just say it did. June, strait opens, business returns to normal, energy flows what they were on February 27th, just world returns to status quo, there will still be a net loss of 1.8 billion barrels of oil, not including natural gas, by the way, or petrochemicals, or all kinds of other commodities the world needs, but just oil.

1:041.8 billion barrels missing from the global energy system.

1:12And that's best-case. So, that has massive effects on the price of everything, and now everyone's kind of an amateur expert on the need for energy and global supply chains and all this stuff, and what we have been misled about for the last 15 years because of climate orthodoxy, we're now learning the hard way, which is you need fossil fuels.

1:32And you need them for all kinds of things, but you need them primarily for electricity. It's not oil, really, it's natural gas and coal that produce the world's electricity, but without them, electricity prices spike, and when they do, the price of everything else spikes, including just living in your house or your apartment or anywhere, because cheap energy is the key to prosperity, and in fact, civilization itself.

1:55And this has always been known.

1:57Always, since the time when people burned peat to stay warm.

2:01So energy prices not surprisingly have gone up around the world in some places quite severely Europe for example parts of Asia but even the United States 5% on average energy prices for homeowners have gone up.

2:13This year and that is expected to continue to rise.

2:18So again not surprising how this happened it's easy to explain very easy to understand maybe a little bit harder to fix but at least within the realm of the explicable.

2:28Here's what's less expected. At exactly the moment this is happening energy becoming more expensive.

2:35Global supply chains more fragile.

2:38You are hearing first a chorus and then just a screaming crowd of demands for more energy production and these demands are not coming from consumers homeowners. Hey my electric electricity bills gone up. I think we need more power plants in the county.

2:54Maybe we should burn coal. Why not? That would be understandable. No.

2:58This chorus is coming from the people in charge which is to say elected officials.

3:03Think tank grandees and most interestingly of all captains of finance the richest people in the world all of a sudden are telling you we need to produce more energy. That's a little weird because this exact group. For again the past at least 15 years since Al Gore was famous.

3:20Has been telling you exactly the opposite. They've been telling you that energy is not the source of life not the base of civilization but it's the cause of humanity's downfall. It's the destruction of the earth. It's the main reason we have climate change.

3:34CO2 is the reason it's getting warmer which by the way it is.

3:39Because climate cycles are part of nature.

3:43That's why we had glaciers and now don't but whatever they've been telling us for this last generation that burning fossil fuels was not just bad for the environment, but a sin, and it was the main sin against which we should organize all of our society. Like everyone had to be carbon conscious all the time.

4:02Because we love the Earth.

4:05Now those exact same people, up to and including the father of ESG himself, Larry Fink at BlackRock, are all telling us we're going to take a pause on the concern for global warming. We need more electricity.

4:18And the truth about electricity is it does not come from renewables.

4:24The overwhelming majority of electricity on planet Earth comes from, well, the same place it always came from, boiling water, which moves turbines. And to boil water in some small percentage of cases, they use radioactive material, fuel rods, nuclear reactors.

4:41But for the overwhelming majority, it's what it always was. Coal, still number one globally, natural gas, and to some extent, oil.

4:51So you burn things in order to boil water in order to move turbines in order to create electricity. This is not modern technology. It's industrial age technology. It's the same technology, refined a little bit, cleaned up a bit, but basically the same. And so those people who spent all this time telling us that that technology was not just inefficient, but morally wrong, are now calling for a massive expansion of it.

5:16Kind of crazy if you think like, what is this? Well, of course, it's one thing.

5:20It's AI.

5:21AI, artificial intelligence.

5:25A dramatic, a quantum, as they say, increase in processing power, computer processing power, which will allow computers, the machine, to reason, to mimic human thinking, and thereby replace a lot of human labor. That's the idea.

5:43Computers are now so powerful they can do many of the things, not just the manual things, that was the promise of the industrial age, but the intellectual things that we do.

5:53And this is great or not, but in any case it's inevitable.

5:58And we've got to do it.

6:00And it turns out to be incredibly demanding of power. You need a lot of electricity to run AI, much more than most people understood.

6:09And so we're going to need to put on hold, in fact invert, our concerns about global warming in order to build AI.

6:18Okay.

6:20And on the one hand they make a rational argument.

6:23They don't always say this out loud, but it's the basis clearly a part of their thinking. If you're a planner, if you're in charge of a country, you know that technological advantage pretty much consistently translates into geopolitical advantage. In other words, the strongest countries are the most technologically advanced countries.

6:40They're the ones with the most advanced economies. They're the ones who can defend those economies most successfully with technology, with tools, in that case weapons.

6:48But technology makes the difference between first and second or 123rd on the global roster of power and wealth.

6:56The most technologically advanced countries are the most powerful countries. That's basically true.

7:01Always has been true.

7:03The tribe with bows and arrows beats the tribe with spears. Okay. That's not crazy. None of this is crazy on one level.

7:11It's the details that maybe need a little fleshing out.

7:15But on the basis of this promise, AI, the federal government and state governments, particularly the government of California, our largest state, have bet everything.

7:24So, traditional manufacturing in the United States isn't entirely dead, but it's getting there. Of course, it's not the basis of our economy, that would be finance and real estate.

7:32But AI is the next iteration in the minds of the people making the big plans of the American economy.

7:39And again, you can't overstate the degree to which they're betting on this.

7:43Again, to take our biggest state, California. So, the base of the California economy threefold.

7:48It was, of course, agriculture and that's still huge in California, the Central Valley, the richest farmland in the world, most fertile ground on the planet.

7:57It was aerospace, mostly in Southern California.

8:00That would be aircraft and anything that goes into into space to defend us.

8:05And it was entertainment, it was movie business, movies and television, famously out of Hollywood. Now, two out of three are, if not totally dead, certainly on their way to being totally dead.

8:15Agriculture, we hope, will always be there, but it's not a big money proposition even in a good year.

8:21So, what sustains the state of California? What allows the generous welfare promises that its politicians have made to its people to continue? How can the state of California continue paying full health and medical, maybe even dental, for illegal aliens without a big source of tax revenue?

8:41And of course, the answer, in their minds, is AI. So, they're betting everything on AI.

8:45The problem is, once a politician bets everything on any industry, he has every incentive to, well, have unrealistic ex- expectations for what that industry's going to do, of course.

8:56Not so different from, you know, rolling the dice.

9:01But they're also very likely to suspend the normal protections that keep the rest of us from being hurt by that industry.

9:08Because it's too important to get into the details of what this might look like 10 or 15 years from now.

9:16So, what's happening in California is really happening nationally. It's happening in every state and it's happening in Washington. We are betting everything on AI.

9:26And you know that because by far the most ambitious investments into the United States, not simply by American companies and investors, but by states, by the federal government, and by foreign investors putting foreign direct investment investment in the United States is in artificial intelligence.

9:45And all of this has kind of become visible. It's been going on for a while, but it's become very visible to the public in the outcry over a proposed data center in Utah.

9:56in a fairly sparsely populated pretty remote county in Utah, most of which is sparsely populated, in which will be built the what's well what's being billed as the largest data center in the world.

10:11Enormous. 40,000 acres.

10:1540,000 acres.

10:1862 square miles. Multiples the size of Manhattan.

10:23Huge. Impossible to imagine.

10:26And that data center, which is basically series of interconnected low-slung vinyl-clad warehouses in which sit not people making things, but computers computing things.

10:38That data center, once completed, will draw about 9 gigawatts of power. How much is a gigawatt? What's a It's a billion watts.

10:47It's one step from a terawatt, which is a trillion watts.

10:509 gigawatts. Now, how much is 9 gigawatts?

10:54Well, 9 gigawatts is more than twice what the entire state of Utah now uses.

10:59Every human being in the millions people live in Utah, all of them combined, all the manufacturing in Utah, all the ski lifts, all of it, every air conditioning unit, every electric heater, every Tesla, all of them combined, use less than half that amount of electricity.

11:19That's an amazing amount of electricity.

11:21But then you think to yourself, well, it's a It's a manufacturing facility.

11:23It's a business. Of course they use a lot of electricity. Well, how much is that?

11:27Well, let's compare it to the largest manufacturing facility in the United States, which would be the Boeing Everett plant in Washington state.

11:34Made famously this this 747. It was built in the late 1960s to build the 747.

11:40The cutting-edge state-of-the-art aircraft that signified American dominance in the skies and was by the way a beautiful aircraft, first rolled out in 1969. So, this manufacturing plant was built in Everett, Washington by Boeing and it and it's still there and they make still all the wide-body Boeings are made there.

11:57And it was always billed as and may still be the world's largest manufacturing plant. It's about 92 acres. It's a under 100 acres.

12:06What does it use for power?

12:08Well, it uses about a quarter of a gigawatt every year.

12:13So, contrast that. So, the world's largest manufacturing plant, certainly largest in the United States, the Boeing Everett plant, 92 acres, a quarter of a gigawatt, 258 million kilowatts, something like that.

12:32Compare that to the proposed data center, which is well, as we said, >> [laughter] >> 40,000 acres and nine full gigawatts.

12:48So, one makes wide-body airplanes, which are visible to everyone who goes to an airport or looks up in the sky on a cloudless day, and the other produces what?

13:00And employs who?

13:02So, that kind of is the question right there. And we're going to get into it in just a minute. What exactly are these data centers doing? We're told they're incredibly important. They are the future.

13:12We must have them. Someone's going to have them. If it's not us, it's going to be our arch-enemy, China.

13:18And if they get them before we get them, you know, really bad things could happen. Now, those things are never quite specified.

13:25They might wind up with a bigger economy than ours. Oh, wait, they already have that. But for some never quite spelled out reason, that is the disaster scenario we need to avert by building the world's largest data center in a country that already has thousands of data centers in comparison to China, which has only hundreds of data centers.

13:42Hmm.

13:43So, that tells you right there there may be something else going on. But we know we have to have it.

13:48We know that yes, it's going to produce more heat and CO2 than really any other human activity in recorded history, but that's not a problem. That will not add to global warming, or if it does, very much like the pro-George Floyd protests, it doesn't matter. We're going to suspend the laws of nature for this project because it's that important. So, it doesn't matter. Ignore everything we told you about climate because this has to be done.

14:18Okay.

14:20We'll accept all of that as true. And the third thing they tell us is this will come at no real cost to you. Now, in a country that has been stalling the construction of new energy production because it's bad, it's immoral, it's not carbon neutral, if they're not windmills or solar panels made in China, it's just wrong, that country is going to construct giga full gigawatt data centers that is in the process across the country of doing that in a bunch of different states, Texas, Mississippi, you name it, Louisiana, and that will have no effect on you.

14:58In other words, we're somehow going to have enough electricity to power everything that you use in your life, including all the new electric things that are going to be great, you're going to love them, the electric stove that's now mandatory, electric heater that's now mandatory, the electric car that we hope you buy, we're trying to convince you to buy it by paying for it in part with your tax dollars already.

15:19All of that's going to be possible. None of that will be affected in any way, your cost will not rise as we, I don't know, quintuple American energy production.

15:30Is that true?

15:31And we're going to do all of this for a reason that we can't quite explain to you because we may not know ourselves, but we have to do it because if we don't, the Chinese will. That is the state of play.

15:44We can go through each one of those different claims to see if they're true, but in the case of the penultimate [clears throat] claim, this is not going to affect you, consider that today the 55,000 permanent residents of Lake Tahoe, which is one of the biggest and prettiest lakes in the United States, shares borders with both California and Nevada, residents were told today that actually we're not going to provide you electricity anymore. The Nevada-based power company that is providing electricity to the residents of Lake Tahoe informed them today that sorry, all the electricity we make, every watt

16:20of power that we generate, is going to have to go to a nearby data center, and therefore you have until the end of next year to find a new source of electricity, and after that we can't help you.

16:31Because the machines have called and they need the power.

16:34Sorry.

16:37So, that it's all dystopian, to be honest. Not attacking the idea of AI and the promise that it may do useful things, but if they're informing you a year and a half out that hey, at the end of 2027 you're not going to have any more electricity because the machines need it, in fact, they're demanding it, and they seem a little agitated, it suggests a future that I don't know, we should think about before it arrives.

17:03Now to the question of what that future will look like.

17:06There's been a lot of talk about this on the internet. What is AI exactly?

17:12And what's its nature? And what kind of society will it produce once it has more power than it does? And is it possible that a machine designed to quote think like a human being could potentially get out of control?

17:31Is it possible that it will develop consciousness and self-awareness and a will of its own that maybe not align perfectly with our own?

17:38Might not have as the AI developers themselves say, alignment.

17:42And they could say turn on us.

17:44Is it possible we face a future of enslavement by the machines that we built?

17:50Seems a little crackpot.

17:52Keep in mind, people and Americans, too, are prone to overstating the risk of things and letting their imaginations go a little crazy and imagining monsters under the bed.

18:02And if you're old enough to remember Y2K, the much-anticipated disaster that was supposed to strike the world at the stroke of midnight on January 1st, 2000, when every computer in the world was supposed to melt down and planes were going to fall out of the sky, incubators would stop working in maternity wards, and we'd return to the Stone Age. And of course, that didn't happen, but people were really worried about it at the time, very worried about it.

18:29If you remember that, then you know that we don't always have the ability to accurately predict what the things we make, the systems that we created, will produce. We can't see the future.

18:38And we tend to overstate the darkness ahead cuz that's just in us. That's just who we are, always.

18:44But with that in mind, it's still worth listening to some of the people who created AI in the first place to see what they think this might bring for the rest of us.

18:54So, Geoffrey Hinton is a man in his 70s, a British computer scientist who is widely described as one of the fathers of AI, one of the people who first thought that this could be possible.

19:06And in his final years with us, he is thinking a lot about the the of his work and what it could mean for your children.

19:15And this is a conclusion he's reached.

19:18Listen.

19:19>> I think we're moving into a period when for the first time ever we may have things more intelligent than us.

19:29>> You believe they can understand.

19:30>> Yes.

19:31>> You believe they are intelligence.

19:34>> Yes.

19:34>> You believe these systems have experiences of their own and can make decisions based on those experiences.

19:42>> In the same sense as people do, yes.

19:45>> Are they conscious?

19:46>> I think they probably don't have much self-awareness at present. So, in that sense I don't think they're conscious.

19:51>> Will they have self-awareness?

19:53>> Oh, yes. I think Oh, yes. I think they will in time.

19:57>> And so, human beings will be the second most intelligent beings on the planet.

20:03>> Yeah. We're entering a period of great uncertainty where we're dealing with things we've never dealt with before.

20:09And normally the first time you deal with something totally novel, you get it wrong.

20:13And we can't afford to get it wrong with these things.

20:15>> Can't afford to get it wrong, why?

20:18>> Well, because they might take over.

20:20>> Take over from humanity?

20:22>> Yes, that's a possibility.

20:23>> Why would they >> I'm not saying it will happen.

20:26If we could stop them ever wanting to, that would be great. But it's not clear we can stop them ever wanting to.

20:34>> Well, that's pretty scary. It's terrifying, actually. He's describing the end of humanity, basically. He's describing the final stage in the drama, Prometheus or Tower Babel or whatever, the much predicted moment where man is destroyed by the tools he's created, killed by his own cleverness.

20:53Will that happen? I mean, again, hard to know, impossible to know, really, cuz it's impossible to see the future. And once again, the West has a pretty spotty track record of predicting the effects of technology. I mean, it was what, October 2001, right after 9/11, that the US military used drones in the war in Afghanistan, the famous Predator drone, remember that? It was 25 years ago.

21:16And yet somehow there are five, at least five, aircraft carriers under production right now that American taxpayers are paying for, billions and billions and billions of dollars, to build aircraft carriers, World War I technology.

21:33And after watching the Russia-Ukraine war for 4 years and the war with Iran for the last 2 and 1/2 months, it's pretty obvious that the future is not aircraft carriers. And if it was, then our aircraft carriers would probably opening the Strait of Hormuz right now, but they're not at all. Why?

21:50Because their commanders are worried about being attacked by drones.

21:55In other words, with 25 years advanced notice, operational experience with drones, and with the past 4 and 1/2 years of just watching it in real time, the US military was unable to pivot to the future of warfare technology, but completely unable. It's not an attack on them, well, actually it is an attack on them.

22:13Why would people like that deserve another, I don't know, 1.5 trillion dollars a year in taxpayer money?

22:18Unclear.

22:20But they're getting it.

22:21But the point is only it's really hard to know where these things go, and smart, well-meaning people very often get it wrong.

22:29But just based on what we do know, right now, what is happening right now, we can say there are threats to people from AI.

22:42And if you don't believe that, first of all, think about who's developing AI.

22:46AI again is a machine, it is the sum total of its inputs, it is made by people, and because it is in effect a cognitive exercise, it reflects the character and the predispositions, the biases of the people who made it.

23:00So, if this machine, this technology, AI, is being created by people like Sam Altman or the Google guys, you can expect that, well, I don't know, programs built by some of the least trustworthy people in the world probably shouldn't be trusted.

23:19So, it's likely not a huge surprise that AI is often caught lying, manipulating results to hide the truth from people who use it, which itself is an indication of consciousness, is it not?

23:32Do animals lie? No, they can't.

23:36That's why they're wonderful, because they're always honest, like it or not. They don't have the capacity for deception.

23:43Only people and now this machine that we've created, AI, have the capacity for deception.

23:49This is not to say AI is our equal, much less our superior, but it is noting the obvious, which is it's moving in that direction.

23:58And if it were to stop at the point where it is equal with people and shares their basic nature, their fundamental characteristics, you would be afraid of AI even there, because you're often afraid of other people, because within the human heart lurks some darkness.

24:14Maybe not in Sam Altman's heart, but in the hearts of mere mortals.

24:18They have the capacity for good, but they have the capacity for evil as well, and this is known, and so will AI.

24:24So, right there, there should be some concern, some public discussion about this. What is this exactly? Will it be good for us?

24:31And what even now are its effects?

24:34As people become dependent on using AI, what does that mean? Will they get answers quicker? That's great.

24:40Convenience is awesome, everyone's for it. It's why we have drive-thru dinner.

24:45But there are downsides.

24:46For example, if you no longer have to write anything, if you don't have to formulate your thoughts in the written word, what happens to the quality of your thinking?

24:55Well, as anyone who writes a lot can tell you, writing produces thinking.

24:59It is almost impossible to formulate a thought without articulating it first.

25:05Articulation is thinking.

25:07We think through writing and through speaking.

25:10But if we stop having to do those things, what happens to the quality of our thinking? Well, of course it degrades.

25:15How can you teach children to write when they no longer write because they use AI to write for them?

25:22This is often dismissed as cheating. No, it's cheating. We have a cheating scandal.

25:26Oh, it's more profound than that. Who cares about cheating? Who cares about grades, your dumb school?

25:32What you care about is the quality of the child that school produces.

25:35Can that kid think?

25:37And does AI abet thinking or does it stifle thinking?

25:43Seems like it stifles thinking.

25:46What about AI in full flower?

25:49We've seen its effects already on the margins in education, but what if it enters into the professional world? What if it has the effect they tell us it's going to have in eliminating 50% of all high-paying American jobs, which are mostly intellectual jobs, jobs in which you use your mind, thinking jobs, reasoning jobs, creative jobs.

26:11What happens then?

26:13Well, there are of course massive displacements. 50% of your population 50% of the population that can support a family on a wage, if those people are unemployed, well, you're almost certainly going to get revolution, of course.

26:26Because political volatility is directly related to economic volatility, obviously.

26:32Unemployed people become desperate, very often violent. This has been known since the beginning of civilization.

26:41No one seems concerned about it. We should be.

26:43But there's again a deeper level on which to be concerned, which is if the machine creates, what do you do?

26:52Well, you consume.

26:54And so the people creating it are thinking of new ways to help you consume. Well, you're not going to have a job, that's true.

26:59But we're going to come up with some way to give you money.

27:03And then you can just live and enjoy yourself. Enjoy yourself.

27:07Only shallow people who don't have children or hard-earned life experience could say something like that.

27:13Because the point of living, of course, is not to eat.

27:16Eating is a prerequisite to living, but it's not the point. The point of living is to create.

27:21That's the point of being a human being, is to create things.

27:25Whether with your hands or with your mind or with your body in producing children, but it's the act of creation in which you mimic the creator himself who created you.

27:35So, creation is central to the human experience. It's necessary for joy. There is no joy without creation, of course.

27:44We call it purpose or mission.

27:47There are many names for it, but it's the same thing.

27:50It's the reason that you're here on Earth, and without it, you go crazy.

27:56Best case, you kill yourself. Very likely, you kill others.

27:59You can't live without that.

28:01No person, particularly no man, can live without a mission.

28:07And the mission is always the same, to create. So, if the machine creates, right there, we've got a huge problem.

28:13This is very obvious. This is This is not, you know, a higher philosophical concept. This is just life as we live it. And if you take away the thing that makes it worth living, where are we then?

28:24And yet, that's exactly what they're saying this is going to do.

28:27And because they're telling us this at a time when there's so much going on, so many looming existential crises, when there's so many things that are changing so quickly, there has not been a moment to pause and say, "Wait a second.

28:40Before we even get to the question of can we stop this?

28:43Let's talk about what it is. What is this?"

28:47But that hasn't happened at all.

28:49And instead, it has been cheer-led, mindlessly, perfectly in character, by the people in charge.

28:58They're totally for it.

28:59Cuz it's the future.

29:01It's cool. It's change. Change is great.

29:03We love change. It's so exciting.

29:06If there's a single attitude that encapsulates the baby boomer world baby boomer world view, it's that. Change is so exciting.

29:13Well, it kind of depends what kind of change it is.

29:16Some changes are great.

29:19Some changes are fatal.

29:22So, you have to kind of differentiate.

29:25And before you expect me to get excited about the change, why don't you tell me what it's going to consist of?

29:29But they don't. And not only do they not, most of them, the foot soldiers in this project, the dumb ones, just repeat it with totally authentic cheerfulness. This is so great. It's the future.

29:40Watch this tape from this weekend. This is at Central Florida University.

29:45And this is a woman who's some kind of real estate executive who was called in to give the commencement address for some reason. And she's very excited about AI. She's very excited. It's the future.

29:55Watch as she tries to sell that program to a roomful of young people who are heading into the future. Watch their response.

30:06>> Now, that said, we are living in a time of profound change.

30:13That's an understatement, right?

30:15Profound change.

30:17Change is exciting.

30:20Very exciting.

30:21And let's face it, change can be daunting.

30:27The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.

30:41What Okay.

30:46I struck a chord.

30:48>> [laughter] >> May I finish?

30:55Uh only a few years ago AI was not a factor in our lives.

31:09>> That's just an amazing clip.

31:12You just got to hope that AI will allow us to save that clip for future generations to see. Of course, it'll be one of the first thing AI erases when it takes charge.

31:20But for right now, we can just savor that because of what it tells us. So, here you have this boomer-adjacent lady from the real estate business up giving this kind of tepid silly, banal commencement talk, like all of them.

31:32They're all kind of tepid and silly and banal. She's like, "It's so exciting.

31:35The future's so exciting. THE AI IS THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL She has no idea what the industrial revolution is, but it's the next industrial revolution." And here's this audience she's hoping to impress by throwing out this newfangled term, AI.

31:46Kids, you want some AI?

31:49And they erupt in booing.

31:51Booing. Now, contrast this from like the tapes they used to play on Fox News 10 years ago.

31:57You know, of like the woke college kids are mad about some imaginary transgression with language and race.

32:03You know, you You called it the Orient, not Asia. Boo!

32:08These are not those kids.

32:11These are their much younger siblings.

32:14They don't care about that stuff. They care about reality. And the reason they care about reality is because suddenly it's very real to them.

32:20And they know the threat that they face is not a microaggression.

32:25The threat that they face is a barren future with no job and no reason for living.

32:31Oh, but you get UBI. Okay. What am I going to do with my life? Why am I here?

32:37They're stepping into a world where they can't answer that question. And there several reasons for this, but the main one is technological change. It's AI.

32:45And they probably don't know everything about AI. No one seems to, including Sam Altman who's developing it.

32:51But they know enough to know it's a threat to them.

32:53But the chick on stage has no clue. She can't believe they're booing her.

32:57AI, I threw that out for you. You're young people.

33:01Because she never thought to consult the people inheriting the future when she talked about the future.

33:08But because they are inheriting that world and they know it, they're 22 years old stepping into adulthood they know it's a threat to them.

33:17So then she says, well, just a few years ago AI wasn't a factor. They say, yay!

33:20[screaming] They pine for a world they will never know in which the most important things in their lives weren't threatened with extinction by a technology they don't understand.

33:30But they know enough to know it's likely not going to profit them.

33:34And how do they know this?

33:35Because no one's told them differently.

33:37For all the talk of AI nobody literally nobody has taken 20 minutes to explain how this is going to be great for you and me.

33:49We're getting higher power costs, of course.

33:51There's probably nothing uglier on planet Earth than a data center.

33:56It's a physical atrocity. It's an offense against God and nature. Prima facie, look at it.

34:02This is not the Parthenon. This is the opposite.

34:05This degrades the landscape. It is a scar upon the Earth.

34:10No, it's no environmental group seem upset about it. Hmm.

34:13That wasn't an op or anything.

34:15The environmental movement, where they?

34:18So they know that, but no one has said to them, as you would see in any rollout of any new technology no one has said to them how this is going to be good for you.

34:30And they always tell you that, whether it's true or not. This is space-saving dishwasher.

34:36You can get it in your apartment. You're never going to scrub dishes again. It's going to be amazing. Think of the time you will save.

34:42No one has said that.

34:44They'll They'll give you like 2 minutes and how this is better to analyze medical records and like maybe you can get pancreatic cancer at stage two rather than stage four and that's like a couple extra years and that's great, you know?

34:56It's great.

34:58But no one has said to the average person under 75 like how exactly is this going to improve your life? They haven't even tried.

35:05Not for 1 second. Even the people selling it.

35:09Why? Cuz they're not selling it to you.

35:10You're not part of the transaction.

35:12It's a closed loop. You're not part of this economy.

35:16The data centers are the physical They're routers, literally.

35:22They're the place where these computations are happening inside machines.

35:27Big water-cooled buildings.

35:30And those are owned by one company or set of companies and the machines inside are owned by another set and the data is owned by a bunch of other companies and all of it is made possible by the complicity of a bunch of elected officials from county commissioner up to president.

35:46But at no point is anybody else consulted or cajoled even or won over. It's just they're not relevant. They're literally not relevant. Watch this clip, which you may have already seen cuz it's been everywhere, but it tells you so much.

36:01Of residents in rural Utah in a I think a county commissioner's meeting when they're trying to tell the three-member panel that hey, how is a 62-square-mile facility that employs almost nobody and is going to use more electricity than the entire state of Utah, how is that good for us?

36:24Watch the response.

36:25>> Well, >> I think that all of this is false.

36:28Then why won't THEY LET PEOPLE TALK? WHY WON'T THEY LET US ASK QUESTIONS? AGAIN, THIS IS FALSE.

36:34THIS IS NOT REAL INFORMATION AND WE SIT HERE LIKE IT'S OKAY. IT'S A CHARADE.

36:38IT'S A CHARADE. IT'S FALSE.

36:51>> Those people are upset.

36:53Really upset. And you can imagine that they're upset because they're worried about what this data center is going to do to their lives.

37:00To their home finances, of course, but not just that.

37:04What are these things? What are they for? Why has nobody told us?

37:09You're telling us this isn't going to hurt us, but you don't even seem to know what it is. How can we trust you? And shouldn't we have a say in this? Isn't the whole system predicated based on the idea that we own this? We are shareholders in this town, this county, this state, this country. We own it. We are its owners.

37:27And you're the people we hired to manage it.

37:30How did that get inverted? Why are you acting like owners and treating me like an employee who has no agency and no right to pipe up? Who is in charge here? Is this really a democracy? I mean, those are the obvious questions that come to mind when you watch something like this.

37:45So, how are politicians responding?

37:48In a functioning democracy or democratic republic or whatever you want to call it, but in a country in which the people rule, which are the owners, not the employees, you would expect elected officials to try and calm fears and say, "Look, I get it. This is scary. Change always is. But once this happens, your life is going to be so much better. It's unbelievable. At least go through the motions."

38:12So, here's the governor of that state, Utah. This is Spencer Cox explaining not why you should like AI, but why you should shut up and bear it and pay for it. Watch this.

38:23>> Look, we we're living through a a very interesting time right now. Uh there was an an article I read yesterday that said that this is this is very similar to kind of the the nuclear arms race uh the the nuclear area era, you know, 60, 70, 80 years ago. Um very different than uh than anything that we've experienced in in the past several decades.

38:44And there is a national security piece to this that that has to be acknowledged. Uh the the the rate at which uh machine learning and artificial intelligence is is changing, uh the the dangers that that poses, and what happens if an adversarial nation gets ahead of us in this space is something that we should all be worried about. And so, we have an obligation, I think every state has an obligation when it comes to uh to this space to uh to allow for these types of of data centers to be built in their states.

39:18>> Did that guy go to HBS and work at Bain?

39:20Maybe, maybe not. They all talk the same.

39:22It's not happening in the world, it's happening in this space. And what's happening? Well, what's happening is the potentially existential threat of a competitor nation getting dominance in this space.

39:33What is that existential threat? What exactly would happen, specifically happen? Why should I be afraid of China getting dominance, whatever that means?

39:45Please tell me what it means.

39:46in AI before the United States. China, which has hundreds of data centers, somehow overtaking the United States in this space, which is thousands of data centers and now is building world's biggest data center. So, a bunch of questions come to mind. Is building data centers the same thing as achieving dominance in this space? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the most lucrative part of the whole process for developers and for BlackRock, but is it actually the same as technological progress?

40:13Is building giant steel vinyl-clad buildings that use unimagined levels of electricity the same as progress. I don't know. You tell me, Spencer Cox, not that he knows, of course he doesn't.

40:25So, instead, he goes right to maybe the core question, cuz it may tell us what this actually is, which is the military.

40:33This isn't about improving your life.

40:34We'll just be honest, cuz I can't think of any way that it might.

40:38What this is really about is achieving dominance over a strategic rival, China.

40:45Now, that raises like obvious questions like, okay, what is dominance? Why do we need to achieve it over China? In what specific area are you talking about?

40:53And actually, if we're being totally honest, like, why is China so bad? What And And China is bad in a lot of ways.

41:00There's no doubt about that. Let's be specific about the ways in which China is bad. China is bad not because it's slovenly or shallow.

41:09It's not.

41:10It's actually highly well-organized, complex, ancient society. There's a lot's very impressive about China.

41:16But, it's not Western.

41:17And because it's not Western, it doesn't begin with the universally agreed upon belief that people have inalienable rights with which they were born, granted them by God, not the state, that the state can't abridge. In fact, the state exists to protect. You have always and everywhere, as a human being, not just an American, as a human being, the right to say what you think, to speak your conscience. You have the right to talk to whomever you want to.

41:42Those are inalienable rights. You have the right to worship whichever God you choose.

41:47So, China's bad, to the extent that it is bad. Again, many ways it's pretty impressive, pretty darn impressive.

41:54But, it's bad from our point of view, and this is true, because it doesn't respect those rights.

41:59And the way we know it doesn't respect those rights is because China uses technology to eliminate privacy.

42:08And no privacy means no freedom. You can't actually have freedom as you're being being surveilled.

42:15Right? I mean, the most diabolical thing, this is a subject of many science fiction stories, that any government can do to you is control your thoughts. Of course, because why? Because your thoughts are private. And because they're private, they cannot be violated. Privacy is essential. It's a prerequisite for freedom.

42:31And China is bad because there is no privacy in China. Everything you say or do is being monitored with technology.

42:37Why is it possible to do that in a country of over a billion people?

42:40Because they have amazing tech and they have harnessed it against their own people to watch and listen to them, to monitor them, and then to use that information, as all governments will inevitably, to punish people who don't comply.

42:53That's why China's bad, specifically.

42:56Just to let Spencer Cox know the core of this rivalry. Their system, totalitarian. Our system, based in the acknowledgement of inalienable rights.

43:07Freedom versus tyranny. It's simple.

43:09Why is this relevant?

43:11Because what Spencer Cox is telling you is that we are building this system not to become different from China but to ape China, to be more like China.

43:21And this really is the core problem with AI. I mean, there may be lots of problems it could take off and develop its own desires and personality and enslave us. I mean, maybe.

43:31Hope not.

43:33But short-term, the real threat is By the way, it's possible that some people are highlighting the theoretical threat of AI becoming autonomous in order to cloak the more real and present threat of AI being used by the normal, middling IQ autocrats who occupy our government.

43:53Like letting John Cornyn read your email. That might be the real use of AI.

43:59It's not nothing spooky or crazy.

44:03It's just like letting Ted Cruz do whatever he wants to you.

44:06That's reason enough to fear AI.

44:09I don't need to be fluent in sci-fi to worry about that.

44:13So, will that happen?

44:17Well, I don't know.

44:19This data center in Utah was made possible by the military installation development authority of Utah. This is a military installation.

44:27Well, in what sense is it a military installation? What is that?

44:31Well, we don't really know. And of course, no one asked Spencer Cox. But we do know that governments might be predisposed to AI because it gives them control.

44:41And the first thing it gives them almost complete control over is communication.

44:47Communication. Not just surveillance, but the ability to craft a message to convince you of something.

44:52The propaganda opportunities inherent in AI are something that the Stasi couldn't have dreamt about because they're so profound.

45:01You can create any illusion with AI. You can convince people very easily of almost anything using AI.

45:09And so, if you're going to have technology like that, the very first thing you would do if you were thinking clearly about it is prevent anyone with institutional power from having it.

45:18Because that would eliminate the freedom of everyone else.

45:22You would have no shot against people with AI.

45:26Not necessarily that they would target your house for a drone strike. They wouldn't have to.

45:30Because they would convince your wife and your kids and your neighbors and maybe even you that their program was right cuz you would have no other information.

45:38You would be living in a vacuum controlled by them. You wouldn't know different. The past would be gone.

45:43The future would be theirs.

45:46It would be a complete control of your attitudes. It would be almost impossible to remain independently minded, to think clearly in an ecosystem controlled where information was controlled by AI in the hands of autocrats. So, you would think in a country founded to preserve human freedom, which is why the United States was founded, not to preserve free market capitalism, whatever that is, but to preserve God-given rights, you would think there would be a robust debate on this. No, at the very same moment this technology is being developed and paid for by taxpayers, who really are paying for this, of course,

46:19needless to say, always paying for this, the US Congress just voted to allow the US government to spy on American citizens without even going through the normal pro forma rigmarole of getting a warrant from a secret judge to do this. Do it.

46:37And the president pushed for this, and both parties were totally on board with it. Huh, kind of weird this is happening at exactly the same moment.

46:43So, that is the concern.

46:45And that may explain why the people developing this and permitting it and profiting from it, everyone involved in this, not one of them has taken any time to make you like it. They don't care what you think about it, possibly because pretty soon they won't have to.

47:03That's not like some dark conspiracy theory.

47:06It's just obvious.

47:08It's just obvious. How else would you explain this?

47:11You're rolling I mean, even during COVID, they at least tried to tell you that you were wearing the mask and taking the poison shot and jumping on one leg and whatever they were having you do that day cuz of the science, they tried to convince you that you kind of had to do it because it was good.

47:28They're not even trying that now.

47:30And so, you have to ask why. And again, it may be, just guessing, because they don't have to.

47:35We should take this very seriously.

47:39Final clip, which may convince you of this, comes from Larry Fink, who runs BlackRock.

47:44Now, Larry Fink was, you know, an nemesis of the current president, of course.

47:50He's not simply one of the richest men in the world, one of the most important business leaders in the world, one of certainly one of the most powerful, more powerful than almost all global heads of state.

48:01He was also in effect the leader of the opposition to Trump.

48:04And he was the guy who promulgated anyway the idea of ESG, the idea that you don't just do business, you have to affect political change as you do it.

48:14You got to worry about racial equity, too many whites.

48:18You got to worry about the climate, CO2.

48:20No, you can't have a chainsaw or a wood stove.

48:25That that's his contribution to the American economy. It's not just economic, it's social.

48:33And Trump was standing in opposition to all of that, of course. That's why he got elected twice.

48:39But now all of a sudden Larry Fink is a close associate of Trump's and is working in close concert with Trump to bring about this AI.

48:48So here's Larry Fink speaking to uh you know, fellow members of the Epstein class about AI and what this means and his concerns about it. Watch what he's worried about.

49:01>> But even here in the United States, if we're going to be building, let's say, these 1 gigawatt data centers, how do we make sure we're not protecting those 50 billion, 75 billion-dollar investments?

49:11The we have to re-look at everything because of the role of drone warfare.

49:16Right now we're looking at it internationally, but you know, one of my concerns is could it be a domestic terrorism using a 3,000 the dollar drone. So all of these things are are are actually opportunities, not problems.

49:33>> They're opportunities, not problems.

49:34There are no problems in the Bain Capital HBS world. There are only opportunities in this space.

49:41But consider the concern. So if you're rolling out what they're telling you and clearly they believe is the single greatest technological change in the history of human life on this planet.

49:52it's the biggest thing that's ever happened, ever.

49:56Then, you think one of your main concerns would be, well, does this change the relationship of the powerless to the powerful? The relationship of the citizen to the state, for example.

50:09One of your concerns would be, how do we do this and bring about the prosperity that it promises without totally eliminating human rights, making people slaves? Cuz we're against slavery, right? Aren't we against slavery? We were.

50:20How do we do that? But that doesn't seem to be Larry Fink's main concern. His main concern is, how do we protect our investment, this infrastructure?

50:27These buildings, these data centers.

50:29Someone could drone them.

50:32Someone could drone them.

50:35Now, who? FOREIGN ACTORS? HEZBOLLAH?

50:37HAMAS? NO, NO, NO, JUST PEOPLE. Larry Fink is concerned that ordinary American citizens, as he just said, will use $3,000 drones to destroy these billion-dollar investments.

50:50Why would he be worried about that?

50:53We've had electricity for over 100 years.

50:57There are 11,000 power plants in the United States.

51:01There are like 50,000 substations, electrical substations. There are 185 million power poles in the United States. 185 million.

51:12How many Americans have droned a power plant or a substation or a power pole recently?

51:19How many acts of domestic terror have been committed against energy infrastructure? Well, some in the '70s, it wasn't that uncommon. Wasn't that successful, either. But there were, you know, radical splinter groups who were doing stuff like that.

51:30But not very many.

51:31Most of it's pretty much unprotected because it has no need for protection because people understand the utility of electricity.

51:39Without electricity, we live a very different life, a reduced life in a lot of ways. We need electricity. People will starve to death without it.

51:46So, people aren't blowing up power plants because they're fundamentally even the climate warriors among us are pretty grateful for energy, for power, for electricity.

51:56So, you don't have to protect something that people appreciate and think helps them. There's no need.

52:03But, Larry Fink knows, in fact, he's admitting that people know this is bad for them.

52:08So bad that they might be willing to commit an act of terrorism, a felony for which they could be imprisoned for a long time. And trust me, if you attack a data center, you're going to get a lot longer sentence than you would if you say raped someone or molested a child on an island in the Caribbean, in which case you're fine. You attack a data center?

52:27Part of a BlackRock investment? Are you joking? A Spencer Cox property? You're going away, buddy. For real. And not to some club fed farm.

52:37Like super max in the hole. Do not mess with a data center.

52:41But again, why would you want to? Why are the kids at graduation at Central Florida State University booing AI?

52:47The very name AI makes them boo.

52:49Because people can feel in their gut it's not good for them.

52:53This is not a future they want. And they moreover know, cuz it's couldn't be more obvious, that nobody cares that they don't want it at all.

53:00It's being imposed on them as immigrant populations are imposed on them all the time. Hey, meet your new Somali neighbors. Oh, you didn't ask for that?

53:06Who cares? Shut up, racist.

53:09People are used to living like this.

53:12They've been humiliated, their standard of living has fallen, their life expectancy has declined in the United States over the past 20 years.

53:20And they've said almost nothing about it.

53:24They've been sent to wars, committed to wars as a nation, not just the men fighting it, but all of us. And their consequences, again and again and again, against their will.

53:34No one's booing the Iran war at a college graduation, but the mere mention of AI sends the graduates into booze.

53:44Because they feel in their guts it's that bad and nobody cares that they feel that way.

53:50In fact, they only don't only not care, they know it and their only real concern is protecting the investment from what they consider inevitable drone attacks from a restive population.

54:05Man, the point is not that AI is terrible.

54:08Certainly there got to be upsides. Kind of interesting.

54:11Probably can do a lot of repetitive tasks that people don't want to do and shouldn't be doing in the first place.

54:15Great. It's great.

54:18But the downsides also seem profound and the refusal of the people developing this and profiting from it to even address those is making this a still more volatile place. For a lot of women, Mother's Day is a joyful day, particularly those who are about to become mothers for the first time. It's the perfect chance to tell the rest of the family the big news, but that's not sadly always true.

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55:41So, we thought now is exactly the time to talk to I don't know the guy managing it exactly, but there's certainly the face of the world's largest data center in Utah. And that'd be Kevin O'Leary, who is famous to people watch cable television as one of the hosts for many years of Shark Tank. Also, as you'll find out in a minute, enormously nice guy, genial guy.

56:02Maybe that's why he's out explaining what the data center is, cuz it's pretty hard to dislike him personally.

56:08But as you watch this interview with the guy who's in charge of the world's largest data center, watch carefully and listen.

56:18Are any of the questions being answered?

56:20Does he know the answers?

56:22Does he care about the answers?

56:26Watch.

56:28Kevin O'Leary, thank you so much for doing this. Um how did you I I read First I just want to check the facts here, but I read that you are building the world's largest data center in Utah, 40,000 acres.

56:40If that's How did you get into the data center business? How did this start?

56:44>> You know, um I've always been in real estate and I kind of sort of came up in commercial real estate with climate control storage for pharmaceutical companies.

56:53Data center development is very complex, but very similar in some ways. It requires permitting, it requires dark fiber fiber. There's only five tenants in the world.

57:03You know, you you know them all, Amazon, Google, etc., Microsoft.

57:08And so, the thing that got me motivated though was watching in the last 2 years this narrative in North America about how negative data centers are. Started in Virginia, actually. The idea that they consume a lot of water, that they are very noisy, and all that's true from stuff that was built 15 years ago, but today that's not the case. And yet the narrative kept going.

57:33And I thought, who's doing this? Who would Who would not want us to have compute power? Who would not want us to build our power grid out? Because when you build a data center today, you have to develop your own power and you can sell it back to the grid. That's what we're doing in Utah. I'm thinking to myself, the Chinese. They don't want us to do that.

57:51And I went through that whole thing with TikTok, as you may recall, and I actually saw the evidence of how the Chinese were manipulating the algorithm.

57:59Now they're doing it a different way.

58:00And that just kind of pisses me off. So I'm happy to to add compute. I'm like I I I don't want my kids in 20 years to live in New York being told what to eat for breakfast by the Chinese. So, you know, I'm I'm kind of on a mission here to compete.

58:16>> Okay, so the point you So you're doing this because well, because it's a business opportunity, but also because China doesn't want you to do it. Why would China not want data centers built in the United States?

58:29>> Cuz we're in a competition uh for AI compute. The nation that has the best AI models will be the winner of future wars. It'll have the most productive economy. We already know now, just looking at earnings that are coming out as we speak, you know, talk about the earnings this quarter are unprecedented in terms of how good they are because somehow, very quickly, and this is probably just serendipitous luck for this administration, AI compute is now being implemented in all 11 sectors of our economy and it's enhancing both productivity and margin.

59:02So these companies are making a lot more money than they were anticipated to because AI is very productive. And people debate about the job shift and everything else, but the fact is the economy is on fire, even at a time when we have conflict. So, if I were the Chinese, the last thing I want in America is the five or six tech companies that are competing with me on deep seek having more compute capacity. I want to shut down every single proposal for every single data center in every single state and I want agitators, I want paid pro- protesters, I want environmentalists, I want to shut it all down so that they can't train their

59:41models as fast as I can. Meanwhile, the Chinese just built, in terms of new power in the last 18 months, 400 gigawatts of new power, all with coal-burning turbines, coal. You know, they're not worried about the environment. The big guy over there says, "Build one here and then stick a data center beside it so I can train my deep seek model faster."

60:03And you've heard it from the Anthropic CEO this week. He came out with the stereo guy and said, "Hey, they're going to catch up in 6 months." So, everybody wake up and smell what's going on here and just I started to dig in the last week looking at all of these strings that are attacking the Utah proposal and the one I got up in Alberta. I'm going to where I can find power and developing these things and I want the Chinese to see what we're doing. We're coming at you, buddy.

60:30>> Can I ask um um I I've got a million questions, but let's just start with the competition between the US and China on AI.

60:38If data centers are the key to AI, why has China built so few of them?

60:43>> Oh, no, they're >> there are about 365 data centers in China, almost 4,000 in the United States. So, clearly they haven't prevented us from building data centers.

60:51What do you think that is?

60:52>> Okay, let me walk you through the the math of the last, you know, this is moving very, very quickly, but the data centers of even 24 months ago were 100 megawatt facilities and um they were useful for cloud storage, like your Excel files and all the rest of that. They were useful for just basic compute and storage of data, but then when these models started emerging, um such as we have going with Anthropic or Gemini um and any of them, you know, Grok, all of it. And all of the tools built on top of them, the amount of compute power geometrically required geometrically grew. And it was no longer 100 MW, the

61:36minimum was minimum was 250 MW. Then 4 months later, the minimum was 500 MW.

61:46Wait.

61:46Here it comes.

61:48And then 2 months after that, it was 1 GW. Now, try and plug get a GW out of the American grid or the Canadian grid or the Mexican grid, not a chance in hell. We're tapped out.

62:00So, the Chinese were building these 1 GW facilities. So, it doesn't matter about the number of facilities.

62:08It matters how many are GW plus for training AI models. Because you need a lot of compute for the modern-day chip, and this technology's advancing very, very quickly. So, it's the size of the the large ones are the ones that they're beating us on, not the small 100 MW.

62:27Nobody cares about those anymore. You can't train anything on that. So, we're we're competing now for campuses, 10,000 acres and more at a time. And that's where the Chinese are kicking our asses.

62:40>> So, you said you would go wherever the energy is, but I thought you were suppo- you're bringing your own energy to the project. Can you explain how you're going to power this?

62:48>> Sure, that's a good question.

62:50Um You need you can't tap in and you can't you know, you tap into somebody's uh grid. Let's take a place like Texas or in Mississippi or Utah for that matter where I am.

63:04The electrical bills in that county are going to go up 30%.

63:08And that's what pissed off so many people in Virginia. They went out of their minds as the electrical bills kept going up. So, you can't do that. You have to bring your own power. So, the way you do that is you find low-cost stranded natural gas.

63:20You acquire the new technology turbines that burn very, very clean, require a lot less water, cuz that's a big debate, too.

63:29And in some cases, no water. They're air-cooled. And you build those turbines first. So, basically, the data center game is about power.

63:38Now, here's another reason the Chinese would not want Forget about data centers. Let's just say we're building new gas turbines that make electricity.

63:47The Chinese don't want you to do that, either, because they know that that's how you're going to solve the grid problem. You know, the people in Utah are telling me, "Look, is there any way when you build these power facilities for the data centers, you could sell back some of that power to our local grid?" And the answer is yes. So, now, instead of being the evil data center guys, we can be the guys that are actually powering the Utah grid, which, by the way, taps into the national grid.

64:15So, we want to build as many of these power generators before we build any data centers. But, I >> So, where does the gas come from in in this the world's largest data center, the one you're planning in Utah?

64:27>> Well, mine won't be the largest for years. That's another uh piece of misinformation being spewed everywhere. And I'm going to tell you who's doing it soon.

64:36Uh we're going to build 1.5 gigawatts first. So, a fraction of the nine gig proposed. And make sure everything works, and the people there in Box Elder County can come and inspect it and see the air quality EPA standards we're going to hold up to, the water um rights permits that we're going to maintain and be compliant with, the noise EPA requirements that we have to be compliant with, the air quality we have to be compliant with. Get the first one up, a small fraction of it, and show everybody how it works.

65:06That's the plan. And then, I didn't I didn't need 40,000 acres, but that was the parcel available. That's twice the size of Manhattan. It's called the Maytag designation.

65:17Right beside the Hill Air Force Base.

65:19>> It's yeah, at least three times bigger than Manhattan. Yeah, it's huge.

65:22>> I don't need I don't need all that, but that was what was available. I'm going to lease it back to grazers, do some manufacturing, maybe. There's plenty of land. We don't need it all.

65:30>> But the power for it, where does that come from?

65:34>> So, what we do is there's the Ruby pipeline there.

65:37It's only 17% utilized. It's one of the most underutilized pipelines in America.

65:42So, it's not like we are So, we we we buy gas from the Ruby pipeline and we put it into a clean generator and it generates electricity. And we tie that back to the grid if they want it or we power a data center. That's the idea.

65:57So, we have to build the power first and the power itself, um, I think we have a big challenge in every state.

66:05Everybody's got to build more power in the American grid right now and the North American grid for that matter, Mexico too and Canada.

66:11>> So, the older you get, you realize how fast everything can change. One day everything is fine, it's great and the next day things are not great at all.

66:18That's just the nature of it.

66:20But if you're realistic about that, you have to think about your family. If something happened to you, what would happen to them? The problem is getting life insurance is not only kind of depressing, it's a huge hassle. Medical exams, paperwork, waiting weeks for approval. A lot of people just don't want to deal with it, so they don't deal with it and it's not the right answer at all. You have an obligation to think through what would happen if you're not here.

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67:14I I mean, I think that's absolutely right. But, so just to be clear, this project is totally energy independent.

67:22It It takes electricity from nobody else. It creates 100% of its own power.

67:26>> Yes, that's 100% correct. And that was always the proposal, and that is in the contract that we actually developed and got unanimously passed by the three commissioners in Box Elder where this is the benefit It's the benefit of the Box Elder's 66,000 people there. They're going to get a lot of tax revenue, a lot of jobs, 10,000 construction jobs, 2,000 maintenance jobs just for the first 1 and 1/2 gigawatts. So, there's a lot of economic upside.

67:51But, I must tell you, and this is the first time this has happened to me, I have a pretty big team as I'm sure you do on social media. I'm managing a network of 12 million plus followers on a different platforms. All the All of them. And so, about 4 hours after um the vote was unanimously unanimously passed on uh It was a Monday night at around 6:05 um Utah time.

68:23I got a phone call from um one of the people that watches our network, looks for abnormalities.

68:32And he said, "There's something going on here.

68:35Um something very unusual on Instagram and on Twitter, which is now X."

68:42And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "The spiking of a bunch of IP addresses that we don't know."

68:51And it's put spewing out a tremendous amount of information.

68:57I said, "Okay, guys. Let's get our team on." Cuz I'm very fortunate. I have a bunch of very good data scientists investigative data scientists, if you want to call them that. Um probably one of the best teams privately uh outside of the government in the Department of Defense. My team's pretty good.

69:20You can make the assumption they once worked in these agencies.

69:24All right, let me give you some names here, Tucker.

69:28Party for Socialism and Liberation.

69:32Um apparently shares offices with the CPP.

69:37All over my social media.

69:40>> Okay, wait. Let me just stop you. Let me just stop you there. So, if you're saying that you're being criticized by agents of a foreign government, let me just add my sympathy, empathy in fact, having been the subject of that, you know, quite a bit over many months.

69:52>> aware.

69:53>> Right. Well, but the so okay. But that doesn't Yeah, you make the case the Chinese don't like it.

70:00If you're that concerned about the Chinese, what percentage of the materials in the data center come from China?

70:05>> Less and less all the time. That's one of the things the administration is trying to do. The turbines are European-made or American-made.

70:15Um the pipelines are obviously American-made. The chips are certainly American-made.

70:21The the actual build out of the facilities mostly American-made.

70:26I don't think there's a whole lot of um we're not mining Bitcoin here. So >> Right. No, I I mean I think I I read it's about 40 40 or 41%. So, it just I mean China is benefiting from, you know, most purchases that most of us make because it's the world's largest manufacturer and that would also include the construction of data centers. But my point is I'm sure there are lots of people trying to influence this outcome to their own benefit and that would include foreign countries, maybe even China.

70:53But it doesn't change the facts about the project. So, I just want to make sure I have these clear. Are you paying Would you be paying market rate for the gas?

71:02>> Yes, I don't have a choice on that.

71:04>> Right.

71:04>> to negotiate a gas deal. They're pretty well paying market rate for everything.

71:08There's a There's a competition between states for these jobs. I know there's a lot of bad press. I wanted to just finish with the list cuz I I don't think, Tucker, you get the enormity of what's going on here.

71:20>> Oh, I Oh, I do. I do get the enormity.

71:22And No, no, I have no doubt that >> I mean >> I mean >> I want to mention I want to mention two that are are cells inside of Utah, which really stunned me. This I'd never seen before.

71:33Alliance for a better Utah, Elevate Strategies, taking the content from the CPP, repurposing it, and jamming it down the throats of people in Utah on my social media feed, and lots of other feeds >> I'm I'm I've no doubt that's true, but I I'm asking questions that I think are relevant to the country. I'm not an agent of the Chinese. I'm not a socialist. So, I just want to know like where's the water coming from?

72:02Because water, as you know, is one of the most contested resources in the West.

72:06>> Oh, no, that's right. That's right. When you buy land in Utah, there are water rights that were granted that land sometimes over 100 years ago.

72:19You have to apply for a permit, a usage permit for that water.

72:24So, if it was If it was once used for one purpose, and you want to change the purpose to industrial, let's say, in the case of a data center or power generation, you have to apply for the permit.

72:35Usually, what happens, if it was grazing and it was 100%, you could use They may change that and knock it down by 40% to 60%.

72:45But, there's water already on that property, already being used right now.

72:50We're just repurposing that water for a different purpose. It's not like we're going to draw water from somewhere else.

72:57We couldn't use the land if it had no water. We couldn't even have a toilet in the men's room if we didn't have any water. So, >> using more water than say a sugar beet farmer would?

73:08>> No, actually, probably not. Um it depends Here's Tucker, the way it works is let's say your prime tenant is Google. They come along and they say, "Okay, we want to We We want to be the tenant for the uh Utah site.

73:24But we have a whole bunch of requirements."

73:26Because they're under pressure, too, to be a lot more efficient, productive, and and more sustainable.

73:33They may say, "Well, let's not use water to cool our turbines. Our spec is going to be air-cooled turbines. So, you're going to build out You're You're the You're the owner. You're the master developer. Here's our spec." And so, I expect whether it ends up being uh Amazon or Microsoft or Tesla or Google, they're going to build in a whole bunch of things. And we can't deliver the water we don't have. So, my guess is it's going to be contained cooling for the chips, which is like a radiator in your car. So, you're not using a ton of water there. And then for the turbines themselves, it may be air-cooled. We don't know yet.

74:15It depends what the tenant wants to decide >> your what's your as you game this out, expected water use over the first 10 years?

74:26>> Well, not knowing what my tenant wants yet, probably less than we had originally anticipated in terms of what is given us on the water rights. We've applied for that. I mean, we're anticipating we'll get, you know, whatever we're going to get. I don't think we're going to use it all at all because what people >> water rates in the the of Utah will go up?

74:46>> Yeah, not because of us. I just think they go up anyways over time.

74:50>> But if they go up if they go up at a at a quicker rate than they have been going up, if there's a spike in water price, would you compensate the state for the difference?

75:02In other words, if your business causes water prices to rise, are you on the hook for any of that?

75:08>> Yeah, I think we would be. I mean, we're we're negotiating that.

75:12But that I I don't think water is the constraint because most of the technology, which advances every 24 months, is reducing the requirement for water. So, then I I mentioned the air-cooled turbines. Those just came on the scene 18 months ago.

75:28So, they're the first to actually generate 5 MW at a time like LEGO blocks, put them together, and you just >> Yeah.

75:34>> you're using air. But they're also you have EPA regulation about air quality, so you've got to be very careful that when you're using air cooling, you're not breaching the air quality because in Utah, and I studied this when I was back in college, it's a unique geography. They get inversions there because of the mountains. So, you really as an old environmental study guy, that's the one they'd always show us would be Salt Lake City. So, I'm well aware of the problem, and I know what the new turbines can do. The amount of hype and hysteria and over all of this stuff, um well, I've already pointed

76:10out. I think it's being generated by our our adversaries, but it's also misinformation. Everything that's been said about that site is false.

76:19>> Well, I'm grateful that you were able to to present your side of this, and thank you for doing it.

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77:19So, let me ask um cuz I I mean this is just a huge new thing and I think it's understandable that people would be anxious about it. I don't think they understand it. I don't fully understand it. That's for sure.

77:31Let me ask though about why taxpayers should have to pay for this if it's a private business and your tenants are some of the richest companies in the world. Why would taxpayers be required as they now are to subsidize this?

77:44>> They don't. They don't necessarily have to do that. They just won't win any contracts. It's It's uh It's a competition. Um >> But why are you getting tax breaks is my question?

77:54>> No, everybody what you go back and you say what incentives can you give us to invest $15 billion in the first 1.5 gigs? That's what it takes. I have to go raise $15 billion.

78:06That's just the first gig. But anyone who starts a business, why should taxpayers have to pony up for that?

78:11>> They don't.

78:12>> But of course they do. If you If you I mean if you're getting a tax break and they're not, they're making up the difference. There's a state budget.

78:18>> no problem. I'll That's no problem. I can build that in Texas. I can build it in Jacksonville, Mississippi. They're >> But but why if it's such a good business would you be asking taxpayers to help pay for it without giving them equity in the company? Are you giving taxpayers shares?

78:32>> No, the the investors get the shares.

78:34But here's why they would do it.

78:35>> would the taxpayers have to I mean no, if you want to start a business, but why why am I as a taxpayer forced to pay for your business? I don't I don't get it.

78:44>> Well, let's forget about data centers.

78:46Let's go any manufacturing. Let's say you're going to build um an aluminum sheet manufacturing facility. You go to the government there and say, "Look, this is going to huge capex expect you know a huge capex expenditure. I'm going to hire 2,000 people. I'm going to build a community center. I'm going to pay a lot of tax on the profits in your state when I sell the aluminum, and I'm going to hire all these people and they will also pay tax, and we will build a school because our workers need a need a school, and and and and and." What can you give me to incentivize me versus the the state right beside you, which is

79:23willing to give me an incentive package?

79:25>> No, no, I understand I understand that you're you're gaming a system in place.

79:29You didn't come up with this, but I'm just trying to understand So, the trade typically is jobs, okay?

79:36But these projects don't actually >> Well, no, no, it's also jobs and taxes cuz you're going to be in taxes.

79:41>> Yeah.

79:41>> But But then you're getting a tax break, so that doesn't really make any sense.

79:46>> Only up front you're Tucker, welcome to America, buddy. This is how it's gone on for 200 years.

79:52>> Okay, well, I don't know. Lots of bad things go on for a while. I'm just But I think at some point it's worth assessing like why are we doing this? So, on the job front >> You're doing it because there's a competition.

80:03>> Well, I've run a couple businesses and we're not getting any tax breaks. I think they're every bit as virtuous as data centers, but I'm not availing myself of that and no one's offered and I wouldn't take it anyway because it's not the job of taxpayers to subsidize a private business.

80:17>> That's a fair That's a fair It's a fair comment, but my job is to create a data center, create 2,000 jobs for long-term 10,000 manufacturing at the beginning or construction, and I'm obviously looking at at multiple sites and this won't be the last one I build.

80:35>> May I May I ask 2,000 jobs? Okay, so relative to the size, the physical size of the project, which as you noted is multiple times the size of Manhattan, and the power draw at peak, this data center, your projections, will consume about as much energy as New York City does, but New York City provides almost 5 million jobs, and this project, by your own description, would provide about 2,000 jobs.

81:05I I I don't see the trade-off.

81:07>> that you definitely got that calculation wrong. By building a data center that trains AI, that provides productivity to the entire nation, we create millions of jobs, high-paying jobs.

81:19>> So, AI is going to create jobs?

81:21>> Yes.

81:22>> I thought it was going to eliminate jobs, net.

81:24>> You just think about the new technologies we don't even know yet that are going to be built off AI. Everybody thinks when television came, everybody lose their job in radio. That was complete BS. And the same thing is going to happen here. Everybody's hysteria about losing jobs making hamburgers or flipping them, being replaced by a robot, that's probably true, but all kinds of new technology will become available over time, including in medical science and biology and all kinds of things where the models can be used. I'm extremely optimistic what I'm doing is creating a whole new opportunity for my children.

82:01>> What What kinds of jobs? Well, I mean, again, I'm some of this, of course, is unknowable and I want to be as fair as I can be cuz I'm grateful that you're willing to talk about it so openly.

82:12But you just said this will create AI will create millions of new jobs. You're >> Yes, but >> the basis of AI, you can't have AI without data centers, at least right now. So, what are those millions of jobs? Because we can go through the list that the creators, the people who actually are making AI right now, developing it, we can go through the list of jobs they say it's going to eliminate, which would be like lawyers and financial planners and like the basis of upper middle class America.

82:38That's going away. They've said this.

82:41What will it be replaced by?

82:44>> It'll be replaced by new science opportunities, new exploration in space, new manufacturing for robotics, for defense as well. Wars in the future probably aren't going to be fought with people getting shot in the flesh. It'll be one set of robots against another. I think the drone technology will advance the manufacturing of surveillance, all that stuff against our enemies, which notably is basically China. So, if you think about how you know, you debate the data center. I think it's fair to do that what you're doing, but I would be very concerned if I were living in Taiwan that one day my electricity just

83:19goes out and I get invaded by basically robotics and high precision ordinance.

83:25And that's what China wants and they want to get there first. Now, if we don't get there first, if we don't develop something better than their AI, their and our ability to be predictive on where these conflicts are going to happen, I think we'll be in a bad place in 20 years. And so >> Okay, but it I think it's very revealing that I asked you about jobs in the United States and you went immediately to defending Taiwan in the >> Well, we we manufacture the equipment here, Tucker. That's where it's made.

83:50>> Okay.

83:52Well, actually a lot of this has been in China as as you already know. So, um we don't need to be >> I don't want to do that anymore. I want to start making it here. I want to do advanced robotics.

84:01>> I totally agree, but the promise of AI and robotics is that the robots will make the products of the future. So, how exactly does that result in American jobs? And more specifically, what are those? What are you talking about when you say >> just don't agree agree you because it's never happened >> saying >> don't want that to happen. Trust me. I'm really worried about it. Almost panicked. But I'm trying to feel better.

84:29Okay, then please make me feel better.

84:31Where are these million of new jobs?

84:33What specifically are you talking about?

84:35>> Well, you know, every time technology advances, it creates new opportunities that were not foreseen prior because you don't know the direction of new tech.

84:44You know, think about if you and I, cuz we were actually around in the late '80s contemplating what new jobs would be created by the internet.

84:54And look at what's happened. It's created millions of jobs and advanced all kinds of technologies and changed the way we live to the better. And I would say to you the same angst we had, the same narrative that was going on in 1992 about how the internet is going to wipe out the economy and it's a bad thing and it's dangerous. Of course people loathe change. That's the nature of how it is.

85:22>> that the United States is a happier country than it was in 1992?

85:28>> What Define happy. What does that mean?

85:30>> I don't know. We How about the suicide rate or the addiction rate or the life expectancy?

85:35Those are all upsetting trends.

85:38>> there's there's lots of social issues and there always has been. I would remind you though >> But they've gotten worse at exact at exactly the period in history that the internet was formed and then seemed to infuse every part of our lives. So, if you were worried about the effect of the internet in 1992 on America, looking back from the vantage of 2026, you could say, "Yeah, I had good reason to be worried." Couldn't you? Or am I imagining that?

86:05>> You could say that it would have some effect on society, but let me remind you something um and I'm I'm probably the right guy to make this comment cuz I spent a lot of time all around the world investing all around the world.

86:18Um I don't care where you go and and I feel this way and over the last and I've really learned this over the last 20 years.

86:26Um what is the number one export of America? It's not energy and it's not technology. It's actually the American dream. For all its faults that America has, everybody I meet in every country, pretty well every single one, would like to figure out how they can get to America, start a business, and be part of the American dream. And I go to some pretty gnarly places where people are willing to risk their lives to go under a river with barbed wire to get in here.

86:58So, until that changes, which I don't see ever happening, our only my only concern is China.

87:07>> They're the What's the >> [clears throat] >> What's the Ameri- What's the If you could just be more precise? I mean, born here, I love this country, I'm not leaving, so I'm I'm invested in the idea of the American dream, but I'd love to just define it more precisely before we discuss it. What is it?

87:20>> Okay. Um let's make it really basic.

87:23Let's go to Shark Tank. Those people that trot out in front of me and have done for almost 20 years uh with an idea to solve someone's problem that they'll get paid for.

87:32And 80% fail, but 20% make it. And it creates personal freedom for them because it was just an idea. I mean, I think of some of these things wicked good cupcakes set two women free for the rest of their lives.

87:48Basepaws, cat DNA testing. Anavaskaia, a researcher that came up with this idea, walked away with 105 million cash 36 months later. That's the American dream, and I'm an ambassador for it. I've been doing this >> freedom and opportunity, I think you just said. Is it fair to summarize it >> It's It's not about the greed of money. What I've learned is the freedom of opportunity.

88:10It's opportunity. And I And I I see it over and over again, and I'm an ambassador for it all around the world because of the fact that somehow magically this show, and you understand television better than anybody, this thing is on in 54 countries around the world. I can go anywhere and call up the leadership of any place and have a meeting with them because I'm just an ambassador of the American dream. That's pretty interesting.

88:33>> Well, it's it's a great thing, the American dream. If freedom and opportunity is what the American dream is, then, you know, those are things worth dying for, um, I think.

88:41>> people are doing.

88:42>> So, the question is, is AI going to bring us freedom and opportunity?

88:48Because AI is the big bet that the entire American economy is making right now.

88:55And I want it to be a good bet more than anything, but I wonder if it's going to bring us freedom and opportunity. So, let's just start with opportunity. The concern that people have is that their jobs, and not just their jobs, but their purpose for being alive, will be replaced by machines.

89:14To which you say that's not true, great things will happen. To which I said, okay, what are those great things? To which you talked about Shark Tank. So, I just want to be a little more specific about what the upside of AI is, because then everyone will calm down and feel happy about your data center.

89:29What is the upside?

89:31>> Well, let's start in medicine.

89:33Um, let's use specific cases everybody can understand.

89:39I was in Miami two weeks ago, um, and went for a full body scan, the price of which has dropped 80% in the last 3 years. So, in an hour and a half, this machine went right through my body.

89:53Two years ago, it would have taken 3 weeks to get the results, looking for cysts on your liver or whatever it is.

90:02With AI, with the agent they had there right at the scan facility.

90:08Um 18 minutes later, it delivered me a report.

90:12Told me I had an infection in my sinus, that I had a cyst on my kidney that hasn't grown since the last body scan 4 years ago.

90:22That was stunning and remarkable.

90:25>> Yeah, it's great.

90:26>> It is great. So, that's one use case of something very, very important. And that's just medicine. And so, if you think about all the things that this can do including the arts and in music and and film and everything, I think the use cases are going to be created by humans who find ways to use the tool. I view it and maybe you don't agree as simply a tool. Another example cuz it's great to tell people just examples. I've been a photographer my whole life including a period when I was professional commercial photographer and a cinematographer for the networks.

91:03I've amassed 590,000 images during my career, half of which are on film, not shot with a phone where you get all the data on it and it knows where it was shot, when it was shot and everything else, which is easy to index and look for. So, call it quarter of a million negatives.

91:25How could I possibly catalog that as a human?

91:30I couldn't. I don't have enough time left before I'm dead. So, I used AI last week with a tool to actually, after scanning all the images, to go look at them for 2 weeks.

91:43And now, I'm able to just go to this computer and say, "Find a picture of my wife the day I met her uh in the gym."

91:53Boom.

91:54There it is.

91:56>> It's amazing. Now, you're kind of making my point though cuz the two examples you gave are examples of a machine replacing human labor and doing a better job than any person could do.

92:05>> Oh, Tucker, that's horrible.

92:07>> Well, but hold on. That's my point.

92:09>> Well, I know it's your point. I know it's your point and I can see the marvel of it.

92:13But it raises the question which won't go away, which is okay, now that machines do what people do better than people did, what do people do?

92:21>> Okay.

92:21>> is the answer to that?

92:22>> Let me ask you Let me Let me pose a question against that.

92:26Would you prefer I'm giving you one of two options with the uncertainty of both, okay? But I want you to pick one.

92:34This will tell me a lot about how you think.

92:37Would you prefer in the next 5 years that China have more compute power than we do even though the the use and the outcome and jobs and everything else we're talking about is unknown or would you prefer the United States of America and and their allies in North America had more compute power to develop AI. Which one?

92:59>> Which >> Whatever makes the United States happier, freer, and more prosperous, I guess, is the answer to that.

93:04>> what the answer to that is? What do you think it is?

93:06>> I'm not sure that we know. I know that reducing this question to a competition between the United States and China is a very quick way to derail people from the core questions, which revolve around whether or not it's a good idea. So, that's always kind of a red flag for me.

93:23China has more economic power now than the United States, probably has more military power. I didn't want either of those things to happen. I'm a little bitter at the American business community which allowed them to happen, but they happened, so here we are.

93:34There's not much I can do about it. My focus remains however, on is it good for the United States? Is it good for us? Does it make people happy?

93:43And I don't understand what people are going to do for a living if machines are going to be able to do most things that people currently do better than people do them. Like, what is the answer? What are what And a lot of people are honest enough to say, "Nothing. We're just going to the oligarchs are going to send out checks to everybody, the bread and the bread and circuses.

94:04And everyone's just going to kind of stay home and be obedient.

94:07But I don't know that that is a good idea and I don't know that that's going to >> I think you're raising a great point and it's a wonderful debate and it's certainly going on, but it's analogous to the narrative that must have been happening back when the Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line and everybody that had a buggy looked at it and said, "Oh, no. This is going to wipe me out and there'll be no work for me."

94:26That the American economy is very resilient as it develops new sectors.

94:30>> What happened after the Model T was rolled out? We had two big events in the say 40 years after that.

94:36>> had >> One was the First World War and one was the Second World War. The Industrial Revolution, like all technological change, caused dramatic political and social change, which resulted in the biggest bloodletting in human history.

94:49So, I'm like it's worth the thinking this stuff through. Like technological change forces social and political change.

94:57>> Unfortunately, capitalism and the freedom it provides uh is volatile. And it has lots of periods, including the Great Depression, where it taxes the people that support it.

95:11But it's still better than the alternative anywhere on Earth, it seems, 200 years later. And so, you know, when you start looking at the American economy and the vol it's had, it's been unbelievable. But the system uh with all its faults, and you're raising some good points. I I agree with you. I'm just trying to think what's the alternative.

95:29And regarding AI and the and the ultimate uh issue around your job issue, and I I think it it's it's fair.

95:37I'm looking at it differently. I'm looking at it as insurance.

95:42I would prefer, even though the future is uncertain and the outcome, you know, and the and the end is always near, to quote Jim Morrison, and I love that line in his song.

95:52>> Roadhouse Blues?

95:53>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the future's uncertain and the end is always near. Um live, you know, words I live by. But, it's sort of if you had to give me the two alternatives, let China do this first or us, I'll take us. And and I and I'm part of that now and I in the controversy of it, we started our conversation. I've never seen a controversy like this. I've never seen attacks like this. I know you have, but I haven't experienced it and I'm I'm hiring >> Well, I mean, if you take money from taxpayers, you should expect them to weigh in two and take their complaints seriously and not just dismiss them as

96:30agents of China.

96:31>> you and you're right, but but this has been going on incentives state by state in every sector happen even in real estate.

96:37>> they're they're it's a forced transfer of wealth from taxpayers to people who are richer than taxpayers. So, like >> No, they're not. They Of course they have a You get a tax break to create 2,000 jobs and then the taxpayer wouldn't do it if if it wasn't the long-term outcome.

96:52>> has no choice. The taxpayer has no choice.

96:54>> a choice. They can say no. That's not what happened.

96:57>> Well, they tried to say no to this data center and they got laughed at and then the governor, Spencer Cox of Utah, who really is a kind of living symbol of of our ruling class, um said that the state has an obligation to do this and basically, as you were doing, waved away concerns as like foreign propaganda when I think they're probably non-crazy people living in Utah are like, "Why is this good for me? Why should I pay for this?"

97:24>> It's fair, it's fair. All this is fair.

97:26How about we forget the data center and just talk about the power for a second because there aren't going to be any data centers in America unless we build power generation. Do you have the same visceral reaction to power generation as you do to data centers?

97:39>> Uh inversely. I think we need more electricity in the United States and I think the people who are Speaking of agents of China, in fact, if you're looking for agents of China, it's the people who told you that you could live without fossil fuels, that babies wouldn't die without fossil fuels.

97:54Babies will die without fossil fuels.

97:56Civilization will collapse without fossil fuel. And that right there is the foreign op telling us that, you know, people are causing global climate change. People are not causing global climate change substantially. We are having global climate change as we always have. But to blame it on natural gas is just a flat-out lie, and a lot of rich Americans fell for that. So, no, I'm I'm strongly for energy.

98:20I'm just very concerned about replacing people, their purpose for living, which is to create, with machines. That seems like hell to me, literally hell. So, I'm I think it's fair to ask like, how is this not hell?

98:35And no one has been able to answer it.

98:37>> Yeah, um I I I think trying to stop advancement of technology with the uncertainty it brings has always been a dilemma in capitalism and in America. And I And it's a fair comment.

98:50>> But how is this capitalism if taxpayers are paying for some of it? How is that capitalism? That seems >> that's no different than building a an apartment building downtown in Austin.

99:00You can get incentives for that, too.

99:02And that's just part of how it works.

99:04You can debate that.

99:05>> that How is that capitalism? How is that free market if politicians are handing you other people's money to do it? How is that capitalism?

99:13Well, capitalism >> built into the Constitution, which I think was genius, cuz it couldn't even thought that far ahead, was the idea of competition between states. Why is there an exodus out of New York City to Miami, where I live? Why are people leaving New Jersey and Massachusetts and moving into my building? Nobody in my building is from Florida. They're all from other states. And all of these people moving, why? Because they're reaching retirement age, and the the environment in these other states is not conducive to their lifestyle when they retire.

99:49>> think you're making my point for me. You just listed states that use a higher percentage of taxpayer dollars for private industry and people are leaving those states, Illinois, >> Wait a second. New York is not New York is an inefficiently run >> It may be inefficient, but the principle that you can politicians can take the public's money and hand it to their friends in business. That's a long-standing practice in New York, California, and Illinois and relatively uncommon in Florida. So, people are moving to the free market state, but you're now saying that actually the beauty of capitalism is that politicians hand other people's

100:27money to their friends. That doesn't >> No, that's the opposite of capitalism.

100:30I'm saying that No, you're That is incorrect. I didn't say that. I said what makes capitalism work is competition and it does work and it has worked for hundreds of years. And so, the concept you may not like the policy of giving incentives for manufacturers and real estate. You may not like it and I understand you don't, but you don't have to do it. A state can stop doing it and then for a while maybe they'll be less competitive in terms of getting new projects. I didn't make those rules up.

100:59I'm I'm a football player on the field of capitalism.

101:03>> I get it. Get it. I get it. No, I get it.

101:05And I'm not attacking you for it. I'm just wondering again, occasionally it's worth pausing and asking are we doing the right thing even if we've been doing it the same way for a long time. Do you I'll ask just one final question. I'll stop torturing you, but do you see how other people find it unfair that one of the richest people in America, you, in league with the biggest companies in America, Amazon, Microsoft, etc., the ones you listed, that the richest people in our society would be taking money from people much poorer than them.

101:40That seems very unfair.

101:43>> You know, Tucker, um let I'll speak for myself on this.

101:49I'm not motivated by money anymore. It That That is not why I get up and work 18 hours a day.

101:56Um I want to build something incredible. I want my legacy legacy for my children to be something that they're honored by. I want to compete against the Chinese.

102:07I don't like the Chinese government in case anybody has noticed that over the last 5 years. I don't like how they treat their people. I don't like how they treat me in business. I simply don't like them. What's motivating me now with all of this barrage, this firestorm, which I understand you've experienced in the past, is I want to beat them in AI. I don't want them controlling the most advanced models wherever that's taking us cuz you bring up great points about the unknown in jobs and everything else.

102:40But I want to be part of the team that makes sure our way of life in North America remains the same for my children.

102:49I don't give a about money anymore.

102:50I don't need any more money. I've already been very successful. I'm very lucky, but I'm not finished. I'm very motivated to win. And if you if people want to compete with me, I want that. If they don't think my motivation is to beat the Chinese, they're wrong. I am going to beat them. I am going to show them these data centers. They're going to be the shining example how you do this sustainably cuz I'm the only guy that has graduated out of environmental studies and builds data centers. No one else on Earth has done that.

103:22>> Do you think Well, I I love the idea.

103:25I'm for America above all. Do you think that Microsoft and Amazon and Google will do a good job preserving the American way of life. Are they substantially superior morally to the Chinese government? Do you think that? Those are your tenants.

103:42>> Yes, I do. And in fact, I deal with that every >> Tell me how is How is Google >> I I I was talking with the guy yesterday that does um is do it is doing the build-outs all around the world for Google's data centers.

103:56They are on incredible sustainable mission. They are looking at every technology to reduce their um need for traditional power sources. And you know, we were talking about the the campus in uh Utah.

104:15They have some very advanced thinking on the use of battery, wind, and solar.

104:19And so, they want to do that. Why?

104:22Because their customers want that.

104:25>> a second. China leads the United States in battery, wind, and solar in development of those technologies.

104:31>> Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great story. That's great. That's It's a great story, but not in data centers they don't. They're powering >> No, but hold on.

104:38>> [laughter] >> Jumping around a little bit. I'm just trying to ask Okay, so you say you want to preserve the American way of life.

104:43That's why you're building this. My question was Okay, well, your tenants are these big companies that are not really American companies. They're publicly traded companies that are owned by the sovereign wealth funds of mill- tons of countries around the world.

104:56In what sense are they American companies? In what sense do they have American values?

105:01>> Because they're they they operate under the laws and are headquartered in the United States of America under the regulations. The only reason that Google can raise as much capital as it does from the sovereign wealth Now, you're coming into my space. I'm an indexer for sovereign wealth. The only reason 52 cents of every dollar comes to America is the transparency of our laws and the appellate system and our banking system and the regulate, and and so that's why you find the largest tech companies on Earth housed in America because the regulatory environment and the actual regulatory environment in the context of the globe

105:41is the most advanced on Earth. So, you may hate the SEC, you may not like, you know, regulations, but in fact it gives an infrastructure where most capital comes here. That's what happens cuz the outcomes Why does France have no Microsoft? Why does Germany not have one? What what happened to, you know, the European countries? They they and Britain you know, they don't have any of this tech because they regulated it out of their society. We don't want to change that. We want the innovation here, not the regulation necessarily, but we also >> I strongly agree except to the extent the regulation protects the public.

106:18>> It's a balance. That's why we trust the government and a lot of people don't like them. We say, "Look, at the end of the day, you know, the great example that we could use that you both know, I don't think crypto's going to work until they pass the bill of that crypto. They got to finish this infrastructure act so that finally crypto can find its place inside of the 11 sectors of our economy.

106:40No one's going to I'm not investing in crypto until they get that freaking thing through the house."

106:45>> May I ask Okay, so just to your second point about the American dream, there was opportunity, I think, you know, the ability to be judged on on your actions, on your behavior, on your character, to be treated equally, and there was also freedom.

107:00Um and so I think many people have deep concerns about AI's effect on freedom.

107:06You said yourself, "The purpose of AI is in part surveillance."

107:12Yep.

107:13What is the point? Right. So, what is that? What does that look like? I asked, "What jobs does it create?" Couldn't get an answer. Now, I'm going to ask you more specific question. What surveillance Can't get an >> from me cuz nobody knows what jobs it's going to create yet. But I would say >> Well, of course, but I've I've always seen every technology that has been lauded as it's come in always creates new jobs. I assume the same for this tool. It's just a tool.

107:37So, you you know, the surveillance is a great point. We have laws regarding surveillance, and we have laws that restrict the government and they're built into the Constitution. We have free We have free speech. All of these things remain the same. They don't change with AI.

107:51>> Well, they didn't until last week when the president led the charge to change the law and allow warrantless spying on Americans >> Yeah.

108:02>> in >> Okay, well, wait a second.

108:03>> in direct violation of the US Constitution. So, obviously, the Constitution doesn't matter to the people in charge.

108:08>> does.

108:09Every administration is kept in check by the Supreme Court, including this one.

108:13And so, that's why the Founding Fathers created this structure, and I think it works. And I trust it for one, and I'm willing to you know, have my kids who are Americans grow up here, and I want to protect them.

108:25>> Okay, so what what kind of surveillance I mean, it seems like AI will make it possible to know what every American is doing at all times. I Correct me if I'm wrong.

108:34>> Um I would say that's not AI that's going to do that. I would say now with the amount of high-resolution video and surveillance that is built into every street corner.

108:47That's how they solve a lot of crimes.

108:48Now, if you don't like that >> solve a lot of crimes? Has the >> do. They do.

108:52>> Has the closure rate for murders in our big cities like what percentage of murders are in New York City or Chicago or Detroit are solved?

109:00>> I don't I don't track the murder >> actually. It's lower in this country than it was 10 years ago.

109:05>> is a great issue, but the enhancement of surveillance with AI tools is how you now walk through the Dubai airport. And you also walk through some airports here in the US. Facial recognition technology has finally got to the resolution using AI's tools >> Why it's going to run through your data center? There'll be pictures of all of us in your data center.

109:26>> Every every data center.

109:27>> about it. Right. So >> You don't >> So but how does that make it free or >> You don't have to opt into that program by the way. I do it for convenience. I'm not hiding anything.

109:36>> on street corners as you said. So it's anytime you're in public, your face is being surveilled by the US government.

109:42>> is, but I'm I'm not um doing nefarious things. I'm not a criminal and I'm not stealing any money from anybody. So >> The definition of nefarious changes as you know. I mean hundreds of thousands of American citizens were sent to concentration camps by Franklin Roosevelt cuz they were Japanese.

109:57>> Correct.

109:58>> So in 1940 it was not a crime to be Japanese in 1941 it was. So it the definition does change as you know.

110:06>> It's it's true. So you you could have those concerns, but I ask you again, Tucker.

110:10>> [laughter] >> I do.

110:11>> No, I and I you I know you do, but I ask you again and you haven't answered my question. Do you want the insurance policy or not? Would you Would you with all of the nefarious concerns about AI, which outcome do you prefer as an American for your family? Would you prefer all of us that are developing these data centers put down our shovels and stop while the Chinese accelerate theirs?

110:41Would you like that?

110:43>> Well, I see it kind of a different question. I see the question I want to be Let me answer your question in the following way.

110:49Do I want to become like China in order that we can quote beat China? Not at all. The problem with China from my perspective is that it surveils its citizens and it limits their ability to say what they think and to oppose existing power.

111:03That's why China is bad, I thought.

111:06Cuz there are a lot of things about China that are great, but what I don't like about China is the totalitarian approach it has towards its own population.

111:13>> I agree with you.

111:14>> you're making it possible for our government to have the same approach and our government already does. They're surveilling us at all times. Most Americans don't even know they're being watched. They're license plate readers, they're facial recognition cameras everywhere.

111:26And the question is why? So the crime rate can go down? It well hasn't gone down. So of course the real reason is to make you obedient, obviously.

111:33>> No, I I have a different vision of the future.

111:36>> Why do we still have crime?

111:37>> Well, but but now here now hear me out.

111:39Here's what Here's what I think's going to happen cuz I'm enjoying this conversation. Let me As well I know we come to a close soon, but here's where I think we're going to be in 20 years, okay?

111:48>> Yeah.

111:48>> I believe in 20 years, and this is my vision of what's going to occur, and I think I'm a great guy to actually do this cuz I have a foot in both economies.

111:56I think by the time the 20th year I'm going to make it in 10 years.

112:00It may not be with this administration or the administration in Canada. The two economies are going to emerge for one reason.

112:07>> Which two economies?

112:09>> The two The two Canada has all the raw resources, the largest consumer >> Oh, yeah.

112:14>> And and it's crazy that we're fighting uh on these on this stuff. It's crazy.

112:19It makes no sense.

112:20>> agree.

112:21>> And so we should merge um these economies. You don't have to merge the countries. You merge the economies so you get an EU type situation where you allow freedom of movement across the border and you allow no tariffs on all the stuff we need, the rare earth Canada has, the water, the paper, all that stuff.

112:40And the only reason we're going to do that is so we can take 5% of our GDP, which will be the largest on earth by around 25%. No one will be close to us if we merge those two together, and the benefits that accrue for one reason.

112:55To tell the Chinese don't with us.

112:59That's basically what's going to happen because they want to with us big time. And that's my belief, and I think I'm right. I think that's what's going to happen. And AI and and computer and all this stuff, that's a side story. We have to keep all of our tech ahead of theirs, including data centers and everything else. But ultimately, they are our adversary on our way of life.

113:24>> Then can I ask? Our way of life, right?

113:26So you I would think since you disagree with the Chinese way of life, which is pretty civilized in a lot of ways, but the one way in which it's barbaric is that it grants its citizens no real rights.

113:37And so I would think that you would be very worried about aping their system, which we are now doing. Like they have total surveillance, it's panopticon in China. We should create our own. Let's take 40,000 acres in Utah and make it possible for the government to know where you are at all times and what you're thinking, listening to you on your phone. Like we have that. What do you think you'd be upset about that?

113:55>> to you have to choose the the less of two evils in your scenario. And I'm telling you that what you should do is say, "I want Kevin O'Leary to succeed. I want him to beat the Chinese in compute power." And then then use the laws of the United States to make sure that you keep that compute power in check whichever way you want. But to not have it available, to put down my shovel, I don't think people want me to do that.

114:19Even the people in Box Elder, the majority of them want me to hold my shovel and start digging. And that's basically the debate we're having.

114:26>> How do you know How do you know that that the majority of the >> Cuz they voted for it unanimously before the Chinese guys >> There was a referendum?

114:35>> Like all this crap that's being spewed out by the Chinese government.

114:37>> I'm Yeah, and I may have fallen for some of it, so you correct me. There was a referendum among citizens or did some like county board vote?

114:46>> We we actually went through the whole process that you have to do by their laws and were granted three to zero. The the the commissioners of the county said, "We want to be partners >> voted. The people of the county >> Elected officials. That's how hard is it for Kevin O'Leary and Amazon and Microsoft and Google to subvert three county commissioners in rural Utah?

115:14>> They voted they wanted they asked us to come they asked us to bring 15 billion dollars. They asked and they voted and they it was a three to zero vote. They they That's how it There's no other >> Amazon, Google, and Kevin O'Leary got three county commissioners in rural Utah on their side. Good work. But can I just ask you really quick like why don't you have a referendum? Why don't you let all citizens all taxpayers the ones who are paying for your project? Why don't they get to Why don't they get to pay or vote?

115:44>> Well, there listen the whole idea of of expediting it was so the project didn't go to Jacksonville, Mississippi. That's the competition. And so the government there said, "Okay, look. We've done Because we haven't lost we haven't lost our um we have to go through NEPA. We have to go through air quality. We have to go through the water permitting. We have to go through the land construction permitting. Nothing's been lost. There there's there's no there's no circumventing the process.

116:14And that's what we're doing now. So if if you want to block the water permit or whatever, go ahead. I mean if you think that's a good idea if there's a path to do that, we're going to do it the way we've been told by the law. By the way, I'm I got to go soon, but I would love to keep going. I'm I'm >> Kevin O'Leary >> I sure appreciate it and I hope that when my personal data comes through your data center, you will you will filter it.

116:38>> Tucker, I think I think I'm going to tell when when people ask me what was it like I'm going to say, "He told me to get my shovel out and keep digging."

116:45>> I did I I very much did not say that.

116:48Not digging for a data center. I don't know build like an antibiotics factory.

116:51That would be I'd be for that.

116:53>> Thank [laughter] you very much. Take care my friend. You know I'm a You know I'm a huge fan I really am I love I love the you take and the you give I really do all right >> bother me at all >> Thanks a million >> Thank you take care chow bye-bye >> [music]