The Daily Signal - High Stakes for High Tech: Virginia’s Data Center Controversy

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Once again, the issue of Data Centers are coming up in Virginia as many the local boards of supervisors are making plans to at least set up “commissions” to study more regulations on this industry. The nay-sayers point to the energy load required by these centers as they pump up to 70% of internet traffic through Virginia. However, as we laid out in our June 10th column, it’s the politicians that put us in this pickle and they are the ones we will need to get us out of it. We sat down with Caleb Taylor, policy director of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, to find out what the solutions should really look like and how long they could take to implement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. I'm your host, Joe Thomas, Virginia correspondent for The Daily Signal. Before we dive into today's interview, I want to thank you for tuning in today. If you're a first-time listener, The Daily Signal brings you fact-based reporting and conservative commentary on politics, policy, and culture. And I hope you join our band of regular listeners to our podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and also take a

moment to rate and review us wherever you get your podcast. You can find additional content at DailySignal.com. Now, let's get started with today's conversation right after this. Joining us now is our policy director at the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. The great and learned and thoughtful and wonderful dancer Caleb Taylor. Your wife asked me to insert the last bit there. I'm not sure. But welcome back to the program. How are you doing, sir? I'm well. Thanks for having me back. At least I didn't say all powerful and knowing Oz. So we reserve that for Steve Hainer. So speaking of Steve, we're going to talk a little bit about energy policy today and artificial intelligence. And it's interesting because I continue to have people email. me, depending on what I've said at one moment, to tell me I'm wrong about the data centers in Virginia and that the data centers are the reason all the other Virginians have to pay higher bills, especially politicians who have large campaign contributions from various electric companies telling me that. But I think yours was one of the great pieces that I read about it really being the sum total of public policy. And while we might not be able to do anything about it,

vilifying Dominion energy and data centers is not nearly as, I mean, it might be good sport, but it's not really as accurate as it could be. I mean, you're right. It's the, there are a energy probably more than anything else that Virginia is dealing with. And Virginia is actually a really important state for this is a lot more complicated than it seems. So I think the important thing to recognize is one, Virginia has 35% of the entire world's data centers. Wow. More data centers than anywhere else.

And I read something that 70% of the internet goes through a Virginia data center at some point. That number seems to pencil out if we have that many data centers. That's absolutely correct. And this is actually going to increase in the United States right now. there are 400 new data centers that are in the process of being built during the planning stages over the next couple of years. And nearly a third of them are in Northern Virginia of the new ones coming in. And now data centers do. They require constant energy.

So they come with a fixed demand. It's not the same thing. It's like a house is going to use more of the energy at certain times of the year, certain times of that day. Data Center has a fixed energy requirement because it could just never go off. You can't just turn Facebook's data off or whatever. Although it would be interesting. I know some people would love to. You go online, you click a link and says, we're sorry, the internet is closed right now.

Please come back during regular business hours. That's right. Or at some time during the day. sometime during the evening, you get those bars we used to get on the TV, right? Yes, yes. Intergests just shuts down. So, yeah, it's, they are big demanders. That's important to understand.

But this isn't, this isn't anything abnormal. It's not like it's, you know, it's the data center's fault where we're having to spend so much. What the reality is is that Virginia is also the largest importer of energy, of any state in the country. This includes California, and it's not, it's not by a little bit. It's by a lot. Holy cow. Yes.

So a major problem and a major reason why we're having to spend so much money, other than the fact that, you know, we're dealing with monopolies, and that's how monopolies work, is we're just not producing enough. And part of the reason for us having not developed the infrastructure and, and, part of the reason for us, and developed the generation that the state of Virginia actually needs is a pretty, is pretty significant restrictions caused by the BCEA. Fortunately, even a number of Democrats in the state legislature have been talking about, we need to revisit this.

Well, that's the Virginia Clean Economy Act of the Governor North America. This is the one that ironically ties us to California's climate regulation. regulations, net zero, and all of those things that have been sort of even in California found to be less than thoroughly faced. And it is interesting to see some folks at least waking up to the reality of this, Caleb. So elaborate when you say even Democrats are interested in revisiting this. Well, there's a, I, I think everyone has the realization that there's not enough power coming into Virginia. And we can't sit here and rely on Tennessee and Kentucky and West Virginia and Pennsylvania and Maryland to just continue to import us.

Because some of these new data centers are going in in those states as well. We also have five coal plants that are scheduled to be shut down, I think, by 2030. It's either 2030 or 2035, which the state can't afford. We actually cannot afford to have those shut down, at least until we have something replacing them. Well, that's the problem, isn't it? They were shutting these down, expecting solar panel arrays and wind turbines to replace them for load. Yeah, and they can't for load. And this is the issue.

Now, it is more complicated than this. I actually had a really fascinating conversation with a gentleman named Phil Harris, who is one of the guys who is responsible for the design of our power grid, specifically where we are. He worked for PJM for many, many years. And PJM, for those who know, PJM is sort of this collaborative of a bunch of states here in the Mid-Atlantic, kind of reaching up through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. that is, quote, our grid, right?

That's right. They're the management company over our grid. And don't get me wrong, they don't do a bad job. They actually do a fairly good job and have traditionally done so. This is the reason why we don't currently have rolling blackouts, although if we don't solve this problem, we will start seeing them. But one of the things that I thought was really interesting was the way that he described the way the grid works. And he said, you need to imagine a lake that is 100 miles wide and 100 miles long.

It has inlets and outlets, and this lake is six inches deep. If that lake becomes five inches deep, obviously the whole thing falls apart. And if it becomes seven inches deep, it all falls apart as well. So the energy coming in, the water coming into this lake and the water leaving the lake has to be equal pretty much at all times in real time. So the energy that's powering my lights right now and the energy that's powering your equipment was generated a few moments ago. It is not stored energy. And storage is something that has been talked about a lot. And that technology is advancing, but it's not nearly enough to actually keep D.C. running or Northern Virginia running or Richmond running.

It's something that you could definitely have connected to your house to help your house. continue running if there's a blackout or something, but it's not something that can run a city. Or these data centers. So we need as as demand increases, especially this fixed demand, we need more generation. And frankly, that means natural gas and that means nuclear. Can it also mean not letting these coal plants close? I mean, that's a requirement. There's no way. And I'm saying this as clear as I can. It would be impossible for Virginia to avoid the rolling blackouts. If these coal plants shut down before we get new clean natural gas plants in place and new nuclear, whatever that looks like, whether that's full plants or there are a number, there are, there, there are, actually a number of licensors that,

licenses that have been given to organizations trying to build small modular nuclear power in the state. If we, if those coal-fired plants shut down before we get these online, we're going to be in a world of hurt.

And it should be, it has to be, and people can blame the data centers, but the future of Virginia's economy is going to be technology. It doesn't matter what anybody, wants it to be. That's what it's going to be. Blacksmiths are not coming back anytime soon.

No, they're not. And we have to also understand that this is a huge thing for specifically blue-collar workers. Right now, there's something like 160, 200,000 person dearth in the number of electricians that we need. The number of electrical engineers that we need. need, the number of plumbers that we need. That is the future of blue-collar work in the new kind of American economy that's growing out because of the development of AI. That's not something that robots can do. They may one day, you know, two generations from now, but to human generations, let me be clear. But as of right now, that's not a possibility. We have to have highly trained electricians, you know, these guys that are certified for high power, high voltage work. And we need them all over the state immediately. So this is the future blue collar work too, especially.

And in order to support all of those new jobs that we absolutely need, we need more power generation to actually go to these data centers. And it's important that even though we can blame the data centers for the issue, the reality is this is where we're at. And it's not going to be the data centers that experience blackouts. No. Well, let me ask you this then, Caleb, because this is, I think, new news to a lot of people that, you know, when we talk about the electric grid as a shared enterprise, because we're all plugged into it. somewhere along the line. The demagoguery will then, if it's not the data centers, it's the electric companies. Somebody is, quote, profiting from it. That's the rhetoric that I always hear from the folks who want to. And I think that there's often a distractive tendency in these people.

So take us into that because there's a news story every couple of months of one of these electric companies asking the State Corporation Commission for a rate increase and in many ways pointing to the need to expand the physical grid to accommodate some of these data centers. So is there some mustachioed villain in a stovepipe hat laughing as he profits wildly from our electric expenditures? I mean, not really. I mean, you know me. I'm not a fan of energy monopolies. The argument has always been, well, you won't be able to do it on the free market. I hesitate to say that. Texas, Texas, aside from that ice storm that messed up in because they were relying a lot on wind turbines, I mean, Texas and Florida both have fairly open marketplaces. I think Florida better managed than Texas where I can call up and say, you know, I don't really like your rates right now. And for a period of time, I can switch who I'm buying my electricity from. And yeah, and the problem in Texas had to do with physical infrastructure. It didn't have to do necessarily with generation or load. It had to do with their physical infrastructure was simply not ready for an ice storm at that magnitude. Obviously, Virginia didn't have that problem in terms of infrastructure. And there have been conversations and moves over the last, I guess, five or six years to try to open the door in the retail.

market to more competition in terms of delivery. And I, you know, I'd love to see more. I'd love to see that more. But it's not like, and I'm no big fan of Dominion, but it's not like Dominion is the only, is a cause behind this. Dominion is in some ways having to deal with the cards that they were dealt related again to the Virginia Clean Economy Act. having to engage in the way that that act says, which those who have read it will know,

which I think is probably just me and C. Painter. But those who have read it will know, it very, very specifically only supports solar and wind. And wind doesn't actually produce all that much, so it's essentially just solar. and we don't have anywhere near the amount of solar that we would need to do it, nor do we have anywhere near even the technology of batters to be able to store, because we need to understand that solar and wind are intermittent. They're direct current. These are things that you're not going to get at all times.

So, I mean, solar's technology has advanced dramatically. That's great. but the sun doesn't shine all day. And so it's just not going to be something that can be that can just support the load. And that's been one of the issues 20 years in the discussion about energy generation is that unlike water, we just can't store it in a reservoir somewhere until we need it. Yeah. That's correct. And again, there are some really exciting technologies out there.

where they're attempting to be able to do that in a much larger scale. And maybe some breakthrough will happen in that. But as we stand right now, we're not in that place. And we can't sit and wait on it either. Virginia in particular cannot wait. And so that's why we actually see Democrats actually coming forward and saying, hey, we really do need to address this. because, you know, what is it the voters are going to be most angry about whoever is in power?

Yeah. It's going to be rolling blackouts. Oh, yeah. If you can't get power to my house, with the understanding that it's like you can be mad about the data centers, but the data centers are a flat line of demand in this space. All the rest of us have the shifting demand. and that's the more difficult thing to gauge. And that's where the blackouts are going to happen. So we need to generate, we need to generate, we need to increase, we need to match that demand.

And we need to have the capacity to like address the need as it increases, which it will. I mean, AI, you know, kind of, you know, touching base on AI, you know, all of these data centers are switching over to AI chips. AI chips take 400% more power. Right. Than your standard data center chip, right? And I was talking to Steve Hainer about this, since, you know, we seem to be fixated on mentioning Steve over and over again in this. His ears are ringing like he has tinnitus. But I did ask him about those, you know, because a couple of coal fire plants in Virginia came offline during the Northam administration, and he seemed to be of the mind that he hadn't looked into it specifically,

but it would be worth a look to see if they could be brought back online as well. You would mention that we absolutely have to make sure that we don't let the ones that are scheduled to go offline do it before we're ready. But maybe we can even try to get some of these more recently closed ones back up and running. I mean, that would be great, but I would be even more excited to see them really. retrofit of natural gas. Oh, sure. In some way, you know, get the turbines going again in some way, shape, or form. Yeah.

Sure. If that's, you know, I'm not an engineer, but if within the realm of, you know, engineering, you know, that's a Chris Allen kind of answer. But the, if that's a possibility, I mean, we need to be doing it. We need to be doing whatever we can to get generated. going in this state. And I know that there's going to be some folks, especially folks who live near West Virginia, that would be like, well, that means we need more coal power plants. Well, coal's been going downhill for a long time.

Coal mining is never going to stop because we actually need coal for steel. But in terms of like energy density, natural gas nuclear way beyond the capacity for coal to generate, electricity and it would be better to move into the future rather than relying on the past. Oh, no, no, and I only mentioned that because the infrastructure was there. It doesn't require even the physical building of a building. What about, and we're talking with Caleb Taylor, our legislative director here at the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, talking about the energy needs in the future coming and the future being like next week, it seems like every time we're turning around. What is the timeline on our modular nuclear reactors? We watched

Three Mile Island, not that one. The other one come back online for Microsoft's Data Center in Pennsylvania. We have two of the oldest and most utilized nuclear plants in the country here in the Commonwealth of Virginia and North Anna and Surrey. So, you know, what is, is there a timeline? Do we know what kind of, you know, are we talking five years, 10 years, 30 years? I mean, at some point, when you say, you know, when I look at some of these numbers, I'm like, all right, so you're just basically saying don't count on this. It's, yeah, I wouldn't count on it immediately, but it needs to get moving. So for a full size, a full size nuclear power plant, it takes about 10 years to build.

And I wanted to make it clear, half of that time, almost half of that time, is spent just doing regulatory paperwork. Funny that. So, yeah, we could get it a lot faster if we wanted to, or if we cared enough. the small the SMR, small modular reactors, obviously they're in terms of building are a lot less of a lift just in terms of like actually building the structures

because they're smaller. And so we would say six or seven years, again, 50% of which are probably more than 50% of which with those would be related to compliance. And this is a major, it should be really understood. And I've been harping on, you know me. I've been harping on regulatory reform for a long time, you know. But it should be really clear to people that the people that are accepting the larger cost of those regulations are not to the builders trying to put the stuff up.

It's us not getting the energy fast enough. Right. Well, it's us not receiving that. And a lot of the rhetoric that I hear about, you know, regulations on nuclear plants revolve around that wonderful, you know, thriving metropolis known as Pripyat. And, of course, if you've never looked at a map of Ukraine, that's the home of that Chernobyl place. And it wasn't for a lack of regulation. Certainly the Soviet Union was not known for its libertarian bent. they had more regulations on nuclear energy and energy in general than the United States ever did,

yet they were the ones who kind of slapped together a concrete hole in the ground and then had to bury it in more concrete when it all went sideways. And beyond that, it went sideways with an electrical issue. It didn't even have an issue with the nuclear plant. It had an issue with its electricity, its own internal electrical systems breaking down. And so more regulation doesn't help you avoid a Chernobyl. No, in no way to does it. In fact, more regulation, I would say, aligns very closely with more corruption. And that was the problem in the USSR.

But I think it's also important to recognize that that was a very, very early generation nuclear power plant. We're at, I think, I think we're somewhere between Gen 4 and Gen 5 power plants right now. And these don't actually have the ability to melt down. Interesting. It's physically impossible for them to do so. So it's not something that's like the old, you know, late 70s China syndrome. Or maybe that was in the 80s, I don't know. That was 70s.

It was three-mile island driven. And I didn't mean to drag us into a rabbit hole on that, pun intended. But I think, you know, when people hear about Governor Yonkin's plans for SMRs, you know, their fear is that their neighbor's going to put a nuke in their backyard and then it's going to, you know, something's going to go sideways on Memorial Day barbecue. That's not really what these are about. No, not at all. And I don't imagine that I don't really understand the worry about it.

Like I suppose, like, you know, somebody might be worried about having a nuclear power or any kind of power plant near them. But there's plenty of space to put these things in. And really, anybody who lives in the tidewater is around these things constantly. Because every time an aircraft carrier or a submarine, American submarine, comes into dock in Norfolk or. or, I'm sorry, Nafic or any of these places, you've got one of the prime examples of an incredibly small, tightly run SMR right to there off the coast. In something that's designed to be shot at, too, by the way.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, I mean, we've been actually building these things for quite some time. and being able to do it, being able to do something similar to actually be able to provide the people of Virginia with the power that they need to do all of the things that they want to do, I think I might go so far as to say that's an even better use of an SMR. I agree wholeheartedly. When Governor Yonkin explained it and some of his nuclear folks explained, basically, we're just taking the technology out of these Navy ships and putting them on the back of a flat. bed. I mean, I'm I'm colloquializing it for mass consumption here. I said, gee, why hadn't we been doing this for 20 years at this point, Caleb? And so the political side of it, the political will.

I know that I haven't seen either gubernatorial candidate talk about this. Certainly, I presume the presumption would be, I think that works as a sentence arc. But, but, but. But the presumption should be that Winsome Sears would continue all of the above energy policies of the Yon administration. Wouldn't that be a fair thing to at least assume until we hear from her specifically on it? Yes. I've had a number of conversations with Winsome over the years about a lot of different issues, including regulatory reform, including energy. And I very much think that she would be on board with, with making sure that Virginia did not have to rely on every other state around it to provide that energy.

And again, energy produced in this state is going to be less expensive than energy produced in every other state around us. If we are having to purchase energy from elsewhere, we are going to be purchasing it at a premium. and that cost is going to come down to every single one of us trying to power our homes. But if we're producing it here, it's much easier to handle. If we don't have to rely on PJM to send us power, it's going to be much easier to handle on our wallets. That's a great point. Plus, like you said earlier, we're not, you know, if somebody wants to build a data center in Virginia, We don't have to worry about them going to New Jersey and all of a sudden tapping into the load we were going to count on otherwise.

You know, there needs to be a self-reliance in this. There does need to be a self-reliance. And there is, I mean, there is for the data centers. The data centers are incentivized to create their own what's called behind the meter microgrid. And many of them, especially the new ones that are being built, are in the process of developing something along those lines. But again, it's a power plant, even though it's a power plant specifically designed to, for the data center itself or several data centers, it is still a power plant, which means it has to go through the same insane regulatory compliance that one for mass use would have to go through. And so we're sitting here waiting for papers to be filled out. and for some regulator somewhere to realize the paper's been turned down and to stamp it and all of this insanity.

When, you know, these things could be very, very easily streamlined. You know, we could very, very easily handle any kind of problem without having to do all of this tons of pre-paperwork. nobody who's building a energy plant wants their plant to shut down or explode. Everybody wants to produce energy because that's how they make the money. You make the money back for building it by actually producing energy. So nobody is going to be building an energy plant. It doesn't make sense to build an energy plant that you can't recoup the cost of building it. No, I understand.

And this becomes even more important as AI continues. needs to develop, and it's developing very, very quickly, as you mentioned, especially now with this the AI moratorium, just passing through the part, that's a part of reconciliation budget bill that has, as of, I think, yesterday or today, was passed through by the parliamentarian and is now a part of the bill. There's no longer any worry that it's going to be removed. Yeah, there were a couple of things the parliamentarian took out of the Senate. plan, but not that. I want to pivot and talk about AI in this abstract, though, because I'm wondering where we're

headed with this. Now we have, you know, basically the two big players are chat GPT and GROC, but there are so many other places. You and I are very much libertarian, but I believe in things like. like watermarking. A photographer should be able to watermark a photograph they've taken so that it can't just be shared and all of a sudden it's not your work anymore because it's out there. I don't have a problem with being able to protect your intellectual property. Has it gone so fast in AI that we haven't been able to get our legal heads out of our

political arses to, you know, come up with, you know, common sense, even just extrapolate the copyright protections that exist currently on things that might be co-opted by AI? And I mean, I think this is a big reason why they're planning on doing this moratorium. If you remember the big fight over privacy that we had, it's created this absolutely insane patchwork of privacy laws all across the state that most tech CEOs say something along the lines of, we're covered legally, but we're probably never going to be in compliance. And that's the simple truth. It's just simply not possible.

And with stuff like this, specifically in the tech space, specifically in AI, you know, this was the actual real reason that we have the Commerce Clause, in the Constitution. You know, it's the first time that the federal government could actually use it for what it was meant to be used. And that's the whole purpose of the moratorium is to stop. So this last year, or so really it's so far this year, 2025, there's been a thousand attempts at AI regulations across the United States. Thousand. Several.

A thousand. In 50 states, a thousand. Okay, a thousand pieces of legislation, all aimed at creating this kind of regulatory space, all of which at the same time, not all of which, but the vast majority of which are dealing with issues that are already handled in the code, as you mentioned. So discrimination, it's already illegal to discriminate. It's already illegal to take somebody's intellectual property and use it for yourself without accreditation. royalty,

etc. All of these things are already illegal. The advent of a new technology does not change the fact that they're illegal. A drive-by shooting was just as illegal

from a horse as it is from a car. There is no need. I guess one would be called a ride-by shooting. I don't know. But it doesn't stop being illegal just because a new technology

he's been invented. It's still covered. We already have all of these things on the books. But here's the thing that they're wanting to do. And I've read a lot, a huge number of these thousand bills. And a huge percentage of them are based on the EU's. I mean, when I say based on, I mean almost word for word. Oh, gosh.

Based on the European Union's AI legislation, which, even the EU is now like trying to reformulate, right? Of course. That seems to be their thing in the EU. We're going to do something. And then when everyone is mad at us, we'll undo it and say, sorry. It's like a Monty Python skit writ large. It really is.

And so what we have is all of these pieces of legislation. And what they want you to do, if you have an AI company, is they want you to constantly be reporting why it's not discriminatory or something along those lines. Wow. Rather than if it's discriminatory, you get sued, which is the way we should handle this.

They're wanting developers and deployers to be constantly doing this paperwork every three months, every six months, every 12 months, to prove that they're

acting in good faith. That's not how this works. That's that's insane. Can you imagine owning any other business and having to do that? And frankly, a lot of other businesses do have to do that. So the business owners out there that are listening, they already know what this looks like. Oh, we have it in broadcasting. I have to file paperwork. I have exactly one employee. And I have to prove that if I hired them, I didn't discriminate in hiring them. Luckily, they're elderly and Italians, so I think I cover a couple of checkmarks there. But I have to file an EOE paperwork proving that in the future, I pinky swear, I guess, not to violate somebody's civil rights. We've gone into an incredibly bad place, mostly by following the EU into these, into these

guilty until proven innocent rules. That's absolutely correct. And that's really what the moratorium is about, is to stop things from happening. And we have to understand that the states that have already kind of regulated themselves out of the AI market, so for instance, like Colorado, right?

Colorado passed a really critical, comprehensive AI regulatory, piece of regulatory legislation. And it was signed by the governor. It was just done, I guess, last year or the year before, it was signed by the current governor. I think it's Governor Polis. And even he came out in support of the moratorium. And he signed that bill.

Right? So it's the ones that were early to the regulatory space, which is it's never, it's always good to be early to the innovation space. never good to be early to the regulatory space. The ones that were early to that regulatory space are now doing everything they can to walk that back because they've realized that they're not being included. They're not being included in the market. And there's significant value in this market. What about? And again, some of my friends tend to look under the rocks first before they look at the color of the rock in the sunlight. And bless them for it. Sometimes they find things like a propensity in a lot of these places to write AI regulation that regulates the public sector

version of the AI while leaving the government sector of AI sort of wide open to the use of the government under the premise. Well, it's such a great tool for us to shorten the time it takes to investigate. And the chilling feeling from these folks is they don't want us to have AI, but they want them to be able to use it to scour through anything from traffic camera data on up. You're absolutely right. And there have been a number of moves at the state level to do exactly that. to restrict development outside of what they refer to as public-private partnerships.

If you're doing it for the government, oh, you're free and clear. But if you're doing it, if you're doing it for your own, you know, even folks that are setting up very specific AIs that they're releasing into open source, like through GitHub or something, they're putting regulatory restrictions on the people who are not pulling. planning on selling anything. They're just creating models for people to use and test out. And we've never seen anything, a development like this in American history, you know, or really any history. We've never seen, like, it used to be before ChatGPT launched several years ago, right? The timeline for new development was like 12 or 18 months. And then overnight, yeah, the development of the technology. And overnight, that reduced to something like, I think initially it was like 48 hours and now it's something at like six weeks or something like that.

Wow. And so, you know, we've been able to develop. And really truly, this stands to be the next industrial revolution, American industrial revolution. Like I said, you know, the entry-level job. jobs for high, high test electricians. Oh, sure. You know, again, straight up, you don't have to go to college to become an electrician. You don't have to go to college to become, you know, certified for the high voltage stuff, right?

It's like it's entry levels in the six figures. They need them so bad. But also, you know, and people talk about technology and advances and exploration and things. like that. I was talking to an aerospace engineer. He said, you don't understand. This was one of the things that we didn't know, we didn't know, that the computations and the calculations and the ability to collect and analyze data at this kind of speed was what was keeping us from going anywhere. So even if you're that sci-fi, you know, Arthur C. Clark type, you know, you need part of the the pun, how to sort through all the information if you're out there exploring. Imagine, you know, if Christopher Columbus didn't have somebody good with a telescope and a notepad keeping some track of where they were. I mean, you're absolutely right.

This is the nature of innovation. It's why we have the car. I mean, it's why we have charcoal for our grills. for goodness sakes. I mean, it's, it's, or coal for our power plants. Yes. It's why we have a air conditioning,

you know, especially as hot as it's been, right? Yeah. And, you know, you get these folks, some of these folks that are, that come in and they have this conversation about like,

hey, but at some point, we've got to stop it. And I kind of feel like, like Tucker Carlson has kind of been on this bent. At some point, We got to stop it. But you have to understand that again, yeah, there's there, there, in with Tucker, there's,

there's some things I agree with them on, some things I don't, but this is definitely one I don't. The fact of the matter is, is that like, again, if, if we move forward into the future, there are an immense number of blue collar jobs available, an immense number of developer jobs available. There are immense new opportunities for people that want to go out there and have their own business. Yeah. And all of these, all of these are considerably more productive than they would have been.

Right. And I was just going to draw a parallel. If you ever seen the Johnny Depp reboot of Charlie and the Chonklet Factory, you know, Mr. Bucket loses his job. And at the end of the movie has been hired back to. worked the machine that had outsourced them in the first place. And that frequently is what we'd see. We fear the technological change rather than embracing that, okay, well, somebody still has to fix the machine. You're absolutely right. Or code the machine. I have an uncle. I love,

every time I see him, I love asking him, hey, what are you doing now? And he works in manufacturing. He used to work a CNC machine. Now he's coding it. And And he went from coming out of the military and immediately learning a blue-collar job to updating that blue-collar job into something way, way, way more productive. He's doing way more work than he used to do for less actual work and is getting paid way more than he used to. And this is how this works. We progress forward. And this is one of the reasons why, as many people is particularly like Jim Ziers, like to complain about life in America today. It's better than everywhere else on the planet.

And really, to be... We make more money than everyone. Yeah. And even jobs that are considered entry-level jobs get paid more than 99% of the population of the planet. So, you know, at some point, you know, that's the... The problem is that we have politicians that run around pandering to that fear and shoveling coal. Ah, see what I did there? On to that fire for it.

He is our policy director here at the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. They know better than to schedule any other guests on weeks that Caleb and I are going to talk about things. Because I still feel like there's a whole other episode we haven't gone into yet. and short-change the AI discussion a little bit, short-change the energy production. But Caleb, it's always a blessing to hear from you, and thank you for allowing us to do these radio programs for you. Thank you so much.

I really enjoy our time together, Joe. On air and off. There you go. That'll do it for today's show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new episodes from The Daily Signal. Every weekday you can catch top news in 10 to keep up with the day's top headlines in just 10 minutes. And every weekday afternoon catch Victor Davis Hansen's thoughtful analysis for the Daily Signal.

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