The Tucker Carlson Show - Clayton Morris: Blackouts & Water Shortages, Tech Overlords Build AI Dystopia & Crush Resistance

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

The DoJ is using your tax dollars to sue any community that resists data centers. Clayton Morris on the AI takeover of America. (00:00) Clayton Morris’ Perspective on AI and Data Centers (08:08) The AI Task Force Designed to Pummel Communities (14:29) How Much Water Does It Take to Cool a Data Center? (29:53) The Powerlessness of Communities Consumed by Data Center (47:34) The Upsides vs. Downsides of AI   Paid partnerships with: Dutch: Use code TUCKER for $50 off your vet care at https://dutch.com/tucker Black Rifle Coffee: Promo code "Tucker" for 30% off at https://www.blackriflecoffee.com Redmond Salt: Use code TUCKER for 15% off your first order at https://redmond.com/tucker Alp Pouch: Shop the new Frontier collection at https://AlpPouch.com/Tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clayton Morris, thank you so much for doing this. A lot of us have been focused on the AI slash data center story from a badly informed tech perspective trying to answer the question, you know, will machines become our masters? Is this the end of the human race? But there's another component to the story which may be bigger and it has to do with the physical world and the demands of AI on that world and the short-term implications for the rest of us because of the construction of these data centers. and you have been on this more than anyone I know.

So can you just frame the way that you're looking at AI and data centers? Why is it important? Well, I think it's so important for these communities. You're seeing if we step back, there's so much math involved in this. And, you know, I always say that every real estate story is all local. So it's different what's happening in New York from what's happening in Texas right now. What's happening in Quincy, Washington, or Homer City, Pennsylvania. like it's all different.

But it's all of the same, you know, it's all of the same animal, so to speak. And so we are, I don't even think we're at the beginning of this because there's so much discussion about AI, just flip on CNBC or Bloomberg or anything. It's AI everywhere. We're going to hit an AI bubble. We haven't even started this buildout for AI data centers

across the United States. And I honestly think we're at the precipice of major transformation for humanity. And we won't know for years, whether it's good or bad. There were studies done on Google the Google effect back in like 2011. You know, our kids like outsourcing their ability to search for things to Google. Like, think about how funny that is now in hindsight all these years later. But we are, I think, at the beginning of this buildout, we haven't even begun to see the thousands of data centers and the way that this is going to change

humanity for good and bad. And I think that anyone who says they know for sure doesn't know. And I think a lot of these companies that are spending $500 billion, we just got word that Nvidia is going to take out credit in order to build out massive amounts of infrastructure. So this is like a new phase of this now, not even their own money. It's going to be a credit story, borrowing money at enormous sums from Wall Street in order to build out this infrastructure. sure. So just at like a micro level, if you just think about communities and what it means to just you and I, it means right now increased prices for kilowatt hours just to run your home. It means increased prices at the grocery store just to get additional groceries because

the cost of everything has gone up. It means water shortages across the United States. We're already seeing it. We're already seeing its effects on ranchers. So it's so big and there's so many pieces of this. You've got the robotics piece of this, which is the human robotics layer. So AI will, of course, be involved in every level of robotics, which is going to be as, if you listen to Elon Musk, and I believe he's a very smart person, he says that his Tesla robotics division is going to be the biggest product in human history, is Optimus robots. So if you take him at his word, or even if half of his word is true, and that's just

one company. The human robotics element of this is going to be absolutely massive. And of course, then the AI, the compute power that will be layered inside of that hardware, the requirements for that are going to be astronomical. And that's just one piece of it. Every company that exists right now, just about every company is incorporating AI. It's like the AI that you don't see that I think is in many ways the most invasive of all of this. So, for instance, Zoom, like you and I are talking right now on Zoom. Well, they've recently sort of shifted

to becoming really an AI productivity company in many ways. That's their focus now. Forget being just like, hey, we're going to have a meeting over Zoom. Now they've added in a take notes feature, which can use AI and basically take notes for you during your meeting. And now their focus is AI. So AI being built into everything you can think of.

May I ask you to pause and ask you a question for a second? So just to take Zoom as an example, so Zoom, again, being this software program that allows people to speak on video conferencing anywhere between each other anywhere in the world, basically what they're saying is we're going to transcribe every conversation, and that's going to be helpful as a productivity device somehow. But what happens to the data? So the substance of your conversation is now on a Zoom server. do you have control over what's done with that data, with your words, with that information? I mean, I think this idea that you have control over any of your data is a joke. You can ask companies to delete your data.

But of course, when the FBI then wants to subpoena that data, suddenly it manages to show back up again. So, wait a minute, I thought, you know, like that you could just like delete that stuff. Or Google tells you that, hey, after 30 days, we delete this stuff. It's all there. It's fractals. It's always going to be there. So Zoom, you know, you're opting into this, the Take Notes feature.

And I don't know the full back end of what Zoom's operation looks like, but most of it is all built on Amazon Web Services. Most of it is built on Amazon's infrastructure from Palantir to flock safety. You know, they'll tell you that they've got their own proprietary layer of what they do with that data, but all of it's built on like Amazon infrastructure and sort of this back end infrastructure. So where is that data going? it's living in these data centers and being built out at a clip that we've never seen before. So right now, there are about 809, give or take, a few data centers being built right now. There's about 4,800 of them that are currently built. There's another, I think, 3,900 that have been projected to be built over the next year,

doubling the amount of data centers in the United States. And they're not getting smaller. They're getting bigger. They're getting more massive. Take, for instance, like the Project Stargate in Texas and Abilene, Texas, massive, massive infrastructure that Trump, of course, was championing. And a lot of this was opened up. We shouldn't forget at the very beginning of the Trump presidency with all these executive orders

so that you could start building a data center without even getting environmental permits. So you could start the construction. So if like the redacted news, you know, the data center wants to get started, I could go out tomorrow, buy some land and I could start this construction, local permits and get started. Forget the EPA requirements, like how much pollutants will be spun off as a result of the diesel generator backups or the water influx or any of the particulate matter that will be spun off as a result of the center, the water usage, all of that. Don't worry about it because now the EPA doesn't care. you can get those, you can already start construction. And then, of course, on top of that, you have Trump's AI litigation team, which is pretty

funny when you look at it. So the Department of Justice has built like an AI litigation team to go out to different states. Like you can see where the priorities are. So if there's a state or a community that says, we don't want data centers in our backyard, or we're putting onerous rules in place and regulations in our backyard because we don't want these things here, well, here comes Trump's Department of Justice and the AI litigation team to town, but not staying at a Best Western when they arrive, and they're going to start to look at your community and sue you for onerous regulations against data centers.

This was part of that executive orders and executive actions at the very beginning of Trump's presidency. So glad we have an AI litigation team in place. Wait, so our Department of Justice, which I thought we owned as citizens, is now working on behalf of private companies, which we do not own, in order to force communities to subsidize those private companies? Yes. So under the Attorney General,

under this AI litigation team, this task force, we'll go out and they'll see, hey, you know, did this community in upstate New York put in place some toxic diesel particulates zoning law that's not going to allow this data center to be built because they'll need backup diesel generators.

And when they kick on every 30, you know, every few days to test the diesel backup and it's going to shoot off these particulates and so forth, we don't want that here. We don't want it polluting our air and our waterways, by the way. So that's what this task force will look at. Or maybe we just don't want it. Maybe we just don't, we think it's ugly or we disagree with the whole project or it doesn't matter what the motive is. It's our community.

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And there's going to be, you know, the loopholes that'll be used here, and we'll see what this data AI litigation task force does. It's like the, you know, the white supremacy task force or the anti-Semitism task force that'll be deployed across the United States. So it'll be interesting to see, like, what loopholes are employed. But good news is like 500 or so different communities have already fought back against this. There was a friend of the show, Derek Brose and Hakeem Anwar put on a day of action on the beginning of August against these data centers. So people around the country to come out and say, we don't want these things in our backyard, at least kind of drawing attention to them.

We don't want the noise. We don't want the pollution. And there's so much just misinformation and there's fear about all. of these data centers right now and there's just a lot of there's just a lot of BS that's kind of floating around about how these things operate. Maybe we could talk about it if you want to kind of dive a little more deeply. Well, I want to dive very deeply into it. I mean, you've already, you know, we're 10 minutes into this. You've already shocked me. So I had no idea that was happening. And, you know, if you were to have dinner with me, I would pretend to be highly informed on everything. But obviously that's not true because I didn't even know this. I didn't know that there was a

Department of Justice AI task force designed to pummel communities into accepting things they don't want, which is to say taking sovereignty from American citizens. So yeah, I do want to go into graded up. So tell me about the misconceptions or, as you said, misinformation. Well, for one thing, there's, if you listen to Wall Street or you listen to the people that the sycophants, you know, like on CNBC or the people that love to have these CEOs on their shows and, you know, access journalists, you know, who love to have these CEOs on their shows and kind of promote AI data center buildouts and all the new technology that they're rolling out. And so some of this technology is good, right?

There is actual good cooling technology that's emerging from companies like VRT, which instead of using water that would cool it with using evaporation technology, which is one of the biggest problems. Forget the electricity piece of this for a second. That's the other big part of the story. By the way, this energy, you know, it's like you can, it's like you can rob Peter to pay Paul. It's like, we're not using water. Oh, yeah, but you're using the energy now, the electricity to use dry cooling to cool.

Okay, so it's just like, it's like the shell game. You say moving things around aboard, you know, so when you see these like CEOs come on CNBC or Bloomberg or whatever and tell you how they've solved the cooling problem because they don't need water. Okay, now what about the massive amounts of electricity that you need now to. to use dry cooling. So it's anyway, it takes resources to make things. That's just the bottom line. It takes resources to make things and the supply of resources is finite. So anyone, it doesn't mean you shouldn't make things. You should. But every act of creation is a tradeoff. So it's not clear why we have to lie about that. Let's just be honest about it. But anyway, so, but to the question of water, can you go into that? How much water exclusive of this new and promising technology you just described?

But in general, how much water does it take to cool a data center? Hundreds of millions of gallons. And most, let's be clear, most of the data centers are using this evaporative cooling system. And I mean, by a huge percentage. So, you know, that's great that we've got some new technology out there that uses cooling plates. And it keeps it in on like a closed loop. So the water is like right up against the computers, the GPUs. And then it kind of flows through and it gets cooled almost like by an air conditioning unit.

and then comes back a little cooler. But still, that excess heat needs to go somewhere, right? So it pushes off somewhere. But the water usage, yes, you're limiting that. But on most of them, overwhelmingly, it's evaporative cooling. And so it's all just being wasted. Hundreds of millions of gallons. If you think about an average American home, about, you know, 200 gallons to, like, run an American home.

300 million gallons or 500 million gallons of water just for these data centers. And we're talking like small data centers. So these communities are already seeing, they're already pressed. And if you go to the desert southwest or you move out towards, you know, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming. A lot of the ranchers in these areas are at their limit with their ability to get water to just feed their heads of cattle. So everything is so dry. I just interviewed a rancher who's dealing with this right now. So in order to get permits to pull, you know, to pull water to feed their heads of cattle,

they have to go to the city, the municipality, they have to get those rights. But most of those permits are already used. Like they're not, there's no like new permits just like sitting there for Bob Rancher to come grab. So they're already tapped, tapping into these aquifers. I mean, requiring them to go down, pull out any kind of water they can from these aquifers, right? So those are already tapped. a lot in the west of the United States. And then on top of that, now you have these data centers that are coming in,

and all these ranchers are asking the question, how are they able to get water? Like, we've applied for permits and we as ranchers are not allowed to get water, but they are? Where are they getting the permit? So they're carving out these special permits for these ranchers, which is, excuse me, for these data centers, which is unbelievable on its surface.

And so these ranchers then are, having to compete for what little water scraps are left to feed their head of cattle, which brings up a larger question about wanting to decimate the beef industry, of course, and you have 68 million heads of cattle. How many of those are being whittled away, whittled away, whittled away? And then you've got wildfires out west on top of that, which is destroying the grazing land, so they don't have enough water for that. But the data centers are fine to get these water rights somehow.

People should ask questions about that. Like, how are they able to get these carve-outs to tap into these oxeners? aquifers in ways that these ranchers are not. It's very interesting. So the misinformation right now is this idea that, well, now we've got this new sort of liquid cooling setup. And so therefore, we're not using as much water. And that is the case in some cases with some of this new technology. But a lot of that is even built out yet. But you're seeing like these companies like like exploding. I think they're even more valuable now, like share price, not more valuable, but like more than Amazon because they're selling these cooling technologies that they can use

in these data centers. So that's just one piece of it. But the majority of these data centers are using an enormous amount of water that we simply don't have. And you're having these communities now fighting over it in order to, you know, homeowners who are having to deal with this now. And And of course, the other big piece of this is the smart meters. So just take, for example, like Aurora, Colorado, not too far from me, where they implemented these smart water meters. So they can monitor at every 15-minute increments, like the amount of water that you're using as a private citizen compared to the water that's being used from these data centers.

I don't know what sort of metering system they have on these data centers, but there's a massive data center called QTS in Aurora, Colorado. Massive, huge. And in that setup, they've got, they're using an enormous amount of water. And the homes around Aurora, Colorado are using now these smart meters to monitor how much irrigation, how much water they're using. And they've sent out thousands of notices to people that live there, that, hey, you've used too much water, you're using too much water. And these smart meters are only going to increase across the United States. There's many communities that are now rolling out these water smart meters in order to make sure that you're not using enough water. But are those same, are those same, you know, municipalities

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I mean, so one of the long-term and distressing trends in the United States is the explosion in population in places that don't have their resource, to sustain that population. So I'm thinking Clark County, Nevada, Maricopa County, Arizona, you know, Phoenix, Vegas, Denver, parts of California, like they don't have the water

for this number of people. So we know this. No one seems to care. This is going to be a huge issue going forward. But there are other parts of the United States, upper Midwest, for example, that have a ton of water and not a lot of people. So why would you ever build a data center in Colorado,

for example, already doesn't have the resources to support the people. Like, who's making these decisions and why? Do you have any idea? Why is every data center not being built on Lake Superior? Well, because the money. So just take, for example, I believe it's probably the money, but a lot of it is these data center buildouts now,

well, a couple pieces. I'll take Quincy Washington. I think it's an interesting sort of anecdote of a story. So the propaganda around Quincy, Washington, is that data centers saved this town. Data centers came in, used the hydroelectric power here, and the influx, the tax basis now, I think it was like three different centers that were built,

three different data centers. The amount of influx of like a 56% increase in taxes flew into like Quincy, Washington. So they built $120 million new school. They built all new sewer infrastructure inside of Quincy, Washington. parks, water slide parks for the kids, crime has dropped, and they point, and they blame it specifically on the data centers. So all of the money that flows into these communities from their taxes is exorbitant. So they don't want to turn away from this additional tax revenue in these communities.

And that to me is it's always the money, right? That's at the heart of it, is clearly the tax revenue that's coming in. The other piece of this is that I think these companies are telling, I say they're telling lies, but they're certainly, they're certainly structuring these deals in a very interesting way, which is we will, we're not going to pull from your resources. So we're not going to tap the electricity in your town. We're not going to tap the excess water. We've figured that out, which is laughable because there's always the spillover effect of these things. It's not self-contained. But a lot of these new data centers being built professed to be self-contained, which is we're going to produce our own power. So you don't have to worry about it.

So we're going to use these SMRs, these small nuclear reactors, these modular nuclear reactors. There's companies like new scale technology, which are, you know, exploding these like. And so Amazon can put a nuclear reactor at one of these data centers, a small nuclear one. We don't need to rely on Three Mile Island, which, by the way, is being revitalized right now in order to power data centers. I know if people recall the fund that happened at Three Mile Island. But so that's being revitalized right now for data centers. So they can build self-contained power, modular nuclear technology. The other story, and I was speaking to a source at Amazon, who it was just crazy to hear

what their buildout looks like right now and said that when they go in, And they're looking at, like, defunct coal plants or other power plants that are nearby these data centers. And if they can't get the power they need from the local community, they just buy up the, like, the coal-powered plant or the, you know, the other, the other power plants that were there. They buy them up. And then they revitalize them, bring in, you know, a couple thousand people, build it out to a new, a new, a new, new energy complex. And then, oh, you think, oh, that's great. So now that coal plant that you're taking over, which is defunct, it closed three years

ago or four years ago or 10 years ago, under regulations and onerous regulations and so forth, you're going to revitalize it and then the community will benefit. No, no, no, no. They're going to get all the power. So they're not giving any of this power back to the community. The coal plants specifically, and the ones that are in Nevada. and Colorado where Amazon is coming in and building these facilities, they're buying them up and revitalizing them,

and they're turning them into natural gas facilities. So that it's far cleaner. They don't have to deal with the coal regulations. And then they will use all of that energy. Oh, okay. So then it won't have an effect on the community then, right? So then energy prices won't have gone up in the community. Oh, no, no, no.

In fact, the sources I've spoken to at Amazon said, absolutely the energy costs will go up in those communities. and they already have. So their self-contained, why am I energy costs going up? It's because the spillover effect of it all and the grid capacity and everything else. So you're already seeing this across the country. People without data centers, even in their backyard yet, are seeing increases to their kilowatt hours, their per kilowatt hours,

upwards of 12, 13, 14%, just in prices. We in Colorado have already seen prices skyrocket, even without the massive data center buildouts because it's future projections. So it's the auction process of electricity. So the future projections on the auction process believe that they will be overcapacity. They believe and local communities are saying expect blackouts.

If I could, I'll give you an example, Homer City, Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania, near where I went to college out there, University of Pittsburgh, and that whole area in Western PA. this is a really interesting anecdote because Homer City, they, you know, their energy prices have already increased, but they're building this, the data centers that have come in there, have revitalized the old coal plants that are there.

And we're shut down in 2023. Now they're building this massive Homer City energy complex on top of it, converting it to natural gas. but the people of Homer City don't get the benefit of it. They don't get any of that. It's going to go to the data center build out. And I think the mayor, the other members of the local city council have already seen those prices go up and have said that we will expect blackouts. This is Pennsylvania.

This is in Texas where you get incredible heat waves. You know, you'll still get heat waves and things, but not like Texas or Arizona. So expect blackouts. Over the next few years, our grid cannot handle this. And so the people of this area that live in the surrounding area can expect to see their homes affected by this and blackouts that will unfold in these neighborhoods. And again, that's Pennsylvania, western Pennsylvania, nowhere near like Abilene, Texas or Arizona. So these things are very real for people. and the costs that will be passed on to the consumers

where energy costs are already skyrocketing is very real. I know the Trump administration says, well, we're putting this cap on as part of this AI build out. We're putting this cap on it so that we're going to make these producers pay that. But there's no evidence that they are. Like, we are already paying more for electricity already. I don't know what it is for you in Maine. Like, if you've seen it there, if you know what data sent it.

Because it seems like I'm looking at the data center map in Maine as like very minimal for buildouts from what I can tell. But so you have the future projections of costs of this energy buildout that are already affecting people. I mean, I guess I'm struck by so many parts of the story, but the one that I'm fixated on maybe most is the total powerlessness of the people who live in this country to have any effect on any of this at all. going back to what you said at the outset of the conversation about the Department of Justice targeting anyone who complains about this or tries to slow it down. Have there been, I don't think most people are for this. I don't think people understand exactly what the purpose of it is. I don't think there's been much of an attempt to convince us that this will improve our lives, which is to say the technology itself, AI, data centers.

How is that good for me? How does it make this a better country for my kids? no one's spending any time trying to convince us that it is. It's all scaring the crap out of people. Maybe for good reason, maybe not. I really don't know what the motive is. You talk to an AI person, someone developing AI, and they spend very little time telling you how this is going to cure cancer and a whole lot of time telling you how it may end humanity. So it's like, I don't really get what's going on here, but I know that people aren't for it. Has anybody had any success in protecting their communities from destruction by this.

Maybe New York State is the only real story right now from a state level where you have the state now banning the buildout of data centers right now. And you have Governor Abbott in Texas who is now putting a one-year moratorium on data center buildouts through an audit process. So you have to prove like your energy efficiency and all of that in order to be built out in Texas. But I also, I love, I love the hypocrisy there. So it's okay that we can have like massive child trafficking operations like happening

right, right in the state of Texas and right under your nose and old Walmart facilities and thousands of children being trafficked. But we're going to, we're going to audit data centers. Abbott has overseen the total destruction of Texas. And that's, I don't. Yeah. I'm not saying he's evil. He's just weak.

But, yeah, it doesn't get the credit he deserves for that. but it'll be obvious in the next 10 years. But New York, I mean, so we'll see. I mean, I don't know. And I don't know what's going to happen in Texas. I mean, you have this Project Stargate project in Abilene, Texas, arguably one of the largest data center buildouts in the world in Project Stargate, one that President Trump has championed.

So I wonder if there's going to be any pushback from the AI task force. You know, if anyone speaks out against that in the state of Texas. But New York, and I. I don't know how much of this is, you know, how much of this will continue and will New York be like the state that says we're done with data centers altogether, sorry, go someplace else. What will that look like? And I don't know. And I don't know if this will be rolled back pending some, hey, we now feel that they're self-sufficient, the power is self-sufficient, that they don't need to rely on us at all for energy, for water.

And they figured out the diesel generation backup so that's not spilling off particulates and all of these other things. And now we can welcome them back to the state. You know, and then you have governments, you have local governments like in the state of Georgia, of course, who are going after using imminent domain to seize land just like you would to build a new highway, seize people's homes in order to build AI data centers, because it's a, as President Trump as part of these executive orders, I mean, he, he was explicit that this is a national security issue for the United States of America. So this is another big piece of this. And I don't think enough people are talking about what the Trump administration just did even

just a few weeks ago with the FCC ruling. I don't know, are you familiar with the FCC ruling? Totally ignorant, as usual. And I'm also confused us why this is a national security issue. I don't even know that means. I mean, China, China, China, China, China, but okay, how is it a national security issue? What are you talking about? Do you have any clue? So, I mean, I guess if you look at, from a military perspective, to make sure that we have the AI infrastructure that can deal with the future of modern warfare, whether it's drone capabilities, robotics on the battlefield, it all comes back to war, of course. So to make sure that Palantir, you know, Palantir using AWS, it's not really public, but they really use a lot of Amazon Web Services as the back end of Palantir with their own

sort of proprietary front end of all of this. Then you're building out all these new government data centers that Amazon is helping build. And what's interesting about these data centers that Amazon is building for the military or for the Pentagon or the CIA is you've got like eight layers of security in these facilities so that even if President Trump wanted to go through them, he has to go through like eight layers of like, you know, bio-scanning and I don't know. It's like the movies where you walk through a corridor and one door opens and scans your eyeballs. Get smart. Yeah. Yeah. So like eight layers

of this stuff in these facilities and Amazon builds this for the CIA and others. And as they get to a certain level of the buildout, they basically hand the keys over to the guys on the inside and they say, we'll take it from here. And so then Amazon's like, okay, we built, you know, now if you call us, if you need us, and that's how this operates. And so they will only come back. I've learned if there's like some sort of massive power outage or something like that, they have to come back in.

But otherwise, it's like the CIA then runs these facilities. And by the way, some of these facilities are being built kind of in plain sight, but inside of other facilities like Veterans Affairs buildings. So you think, oh, that's a Veterans Affairs building. But inside is a hidden operations data center inside of some of these facilities that I've learned as well, which is interesting. So a lot of these government buildings you think on the outside are one thing, an IRS building, but on the inside is a hidden data center for monitoring its citizens. So national security, the idea that we don't want China to have this AI layer for all of the data collection that we're doing in the United States, whether it's flock safety. I know that's the most kind of public facing one right now,

but that data goes somewhere, and it goes through AWS. It goes through Amazon Web Services, the same way that Palantir does and all of it. And it needs to be stored somewhere. So it needs to be stored in these massive facilities, whether it's Nevada and other places, all of this data that's being collected on Americans,

from phone calls to email, everything that they're using to scan and track us at this moment. And so they don't want China involved in this, course, and that's the outwardly facing, you know, enemy. We don't want to use, we don't want any of their models, their AI models. We want to use our own models that are helped inside the United States and funded by the United States government or in part with large grants and so forth. So that's like the national security piece of this.

So about a week ago, there's a story that really didn't get much attention, but it's huge. and it's going to further bring more AI build out an infrastructure into the United States in a huge way. And that is the FCC's ruling on hardware, basically the components for robotics cannot be built outside of the United States. So 65% of the component parts in your humanoid robots or robotics need to be built within the United States now. Well, Elon Musk, I mean, in Tesla and optimists, like, that's a huge, they're going to have to shift dramatically so that now, instead of the most of it being built in China, most of it will need to be built in the United States. The actuators, fingers for robot, all of that stuff needs to now be built in the United States, 65% of it. So that's another big piece of this war right now over AI between China. That's going to increase, though, to over 80% by the year 2030.

So that ruling is like, hey, get your stuff figured out now at 65% because it's going to go up to 80%. So all of this stuff will be built in the United States or at least presumably it'll be built in the United States. And then this AI layer inside the United States is just going to grow. So speaking to sources at Amazon, they're build out. They are sold out. This blew me away. They are sold out for eight. Like, if I wanted to, like, redacted news, my little crappy show, like, if I wanted to build an AI data center and or even just use a part of compute, like with Amazon Web Services for my show or something, or you wanted to do it with the Tucker Carlson network or something.

Amazon is sold out through 2030 for capacity. Like, we want a portion of this data center to be devoted to whatever. sorry, we're sold out through 2030. And we don't have enough capacity now. And we have projected to be building out thousands of additional data centers in the next few years. So when I said at the beginning, we're not even at the beginning of this. And people are already talking about a bubble and this. No.

And there's so many other pieces to this. I'm sorry, I'm just kind of rambling here. But all these ideas kind of fly out of my head about how crazy this is because there's so many pieces of this. You've got the robotics piece of this. you have the information layer, then you have like the factory piece of this, then you have the efficiency piece of this inside of these factories, then you have just the actual infrastructure to build out all of these different data centers,

and then all of the companies surrounding those buildouts, like this blew me away. I don't know if you've heard of United Rentals. Have you heard of this company? No. It's just one example. So when you think about Amazon goes in and builds a new data center, well, or meta or Google or whomever, they hire, they don't like come in there and like change the community and like thousands of people get jobs. Like people come in for like about 18 months at most and they leave.

So it's kind of like the gold rush or like, you know, St. Elmo's in Colorado ghost towns. You know, they come in, they do what they need and then they leave. So they hire these companies to bring in Caterpillar earth digging machines and United Rentals is one of those companies. Right. So, and they've got now sites in 1,000 different locations. So, hey, United Rentals, we're building out a data center in Reno. Do you have a location nearby? You can bring earth diggers, movers, generators, backup generators, all of that. Yep, we got you down. And so then they'll come in and bring all that equipment, build it out, and then it leaves. That's just like one piece of the puzzle. Then you've got like the porta potty's company. Like you've got so many

pieces of this, this buildout that's happening. And so people are like, well, it creates jobs temporarily. And a lot of those people come in for every job. They're not like creating new jobs every time, right? They're just, they just go to a location and they go to the next location. So I'm not creating new jobs. And these data centers really only employ at the most around maybe 50 people, and even that number is dwindling. So, sorry, there's just so many pieces of this that it's, It's like there's just like a lack of information out there about it. And I just find it just so fascinating and frustrating and terrifying all at the same time. And maybe also a little bit silly.

I mean, this is happening so fast. And as you've pointed out, it's so complex. But it's also so expensive that you have to ask like, well, what is this? I mean, it's an effort obviously to snap the control grid into place and, you know, eliminate dissent. Got it. it's an effort to stay on par with China, got it. But it's also an investment opportunity for a lot of people, and it's the last hope of states like California, which have been completely hollowed out. I mean, the tax base in California is like disappearing. And so their hope is that AI is going to

hit, this is all going to be incredibly profitable, and they'll be able to keep their welfare state afloat. Is this a good bet from a business perspective or is it a bubble? And if it's the former, how? How exactly does it make money? I don't understand that part of it. So this is one of the... Yeah, no, this is a great question. And so when people say, we're in an AI bubble, they don't know what they're talking about, I believe.

Right. When Mark Cuban says, you know, we're building out so many of these data centers and we don't need them, and they're going to be turned into pickleball courts, I believe he doesn't know what he's talking about. I don't... From every source I've spoken to,

we're not even at the beginning of this. and the demand for compute is off the charts from different companies. So I don't know what he's talking about. Like these are going to be converted to pickleball courts. I think of anything, my theory, my theory is that these are going to be turned eventually, we don't need them. These are because they're cement and steel. These are going to be turned into for-profit prisons.

That's just my theory. Just throwing it out there. They're out in the middle of nowhere. They'll be converted. And we need them badly. Of course, the Trump administration loves the for-profit prison system. So I just think that that's a perfect transition, not pickleball courts. But anyway, so right now we're at the beginning of this.

And I was going through earnings reports trying to find over the past few weeks. The reason I say we're at the beginning of this, because I have not seen yet from companies on their earnings reports where they have pointed to the AI buildout in their factories equaling a percentage of revenue. to answer your question. There's very few of them right now. But I believe that that wave is coming. So I think, and I'm not being hyperbolic about it, I really believe that the wave is going to, and that will increase the demand a hundred times. There are a few companies that have now said in some earnings and small measure, their AI buildout has increased revenue. So I'll give you an example, there's like an outdoor furniture company, and I was going through their reports,

and they were explaining that with their AI layer that they built in, they were able to sort of, I don't know, bunch furniture together in a certain way that was more aesthetically pleasing at their stores. I don't know, exactly. And they were able to increase revenue. It also increased the proficiency of their sales associates. So it didn't cost jobs. It actually increased their sales associate's proficiency by like 82%.

They claim. leading to about a 15% increase in revenue. Might have the number slightly different, but you get the point, right? Like, they've been doing something the same way for 30 years, and then suddenly they add in this, like, AI efficiency layer, and suddenly they've increased their revenue by 15% without, like, they didn't hire anybody new.

They didn't build new factory or new warehouse. They just, like, bunched furniture together in a certain way that, like, increased something. Another company, I was looking at their earnings, they claimed that with the scrap metal, that they were able to save, like they put in an AI efficiency layer in their metal processing facility, in their factory, and when it would chop off pieces of metal, that would usually lead to about $129 million in wasted scrap. But by putting in this AI efficiency layer, they were able to save almost all of that,

like saving hundreds of millions of dollars in non having like wasted scrap metal. So these are like small little anecdotes from like a few companies that have maybe shown some initiative with AI. And so if if we see huge increases in efficiency and revenue, game over. Like, you know, there's no bubble. You know, like with the dot com bubble, there are people building like fake websites, you know, what they didn't have anything. There was like nothing there.

It was like fake. And there were so many greedy people who were building all these fake websites. I remember it well, like pets.com, you know, all these, whatever. And it was all just fake and it was all greedy people. And so I don't know. I mean, I'm just going to say, I don't know. I don't know if like this is all greed or if these companies who have been doing something a certain way for 50 years in their warehouse, suddenly they add in like this AI

efficiency layer and their revenue increases by 20%. Maybe they don't fire anybody. Maybe they actually hire more people. I don't know exactly. So anyone who says they know is, I just, I don't know. Maybe Elon knows. He seems to know. I just, yeah, I, and I'm the last person who would know. I'm happy to admit that. But whenever I see lemming like behavior, I suspect the cliff is near. you know, whenever, you know, every midwit you run across is saying the same thing about the future. I generally bet that's not what the future is going to look like. But, you know, maybe I'm the midwit. But I have noticed all of a sudden when the guy from Shark Tank is like talking about stuff he doesn't understand, the future is data centers.

I'm like, I think the future is probably not data centers. But, you know, who knows? Maybe I'm just reactionary. No, can I say this? I think the future is human connection. So I think one of the, I'm always a glass-half-full kind of person. I think one of the benefits of this, despite all of its downsides, is the human interaction layer. And you're already seeing it, actually.

Restaurants are reporting that, like, young people are coming in. They're not drinking. Number one, they don't, they don't drink alcohol. And they're coming in, they're bringing like a stack of, like, playing cards. And they're just hanging out all night, like, or a board game. They bring in scrabble. you know, and they're not, and they don't bring their phones at all. And they just come in and are together.

And I think there's going to be an insatiable desire for human interaction with this explosion of AI, call it slop, call it fakery, whatever you want to call it. I think there's going to be a, really an insatiable desire for human connection and human interaction and human content, you know, people to be able to say, I'd rather watch Tucker's show because it's real human beings having a conversation than the fake AI generated garbage that maybe Hollywood is putting out. So, you know, I think that's one maybe benefit.

It's that among young people you're seeing this shift, and I hope that that's the case. I don't know. I'm just more troubled about how this is going to affect young people than anything I see my kids. My son just turned 16 and, you know, and he's going to go into the trades. because so many of these jobs are just being taken by AI,

and they will be. And if you don't think that that's the case, you're fooling yourself. Yes. I know all these Wall Street types, the Shark Tank types are like, it's going to create way more jobs. And we don't know.

Maybe they're right. And maybe there will be so many jobs created to help the AI efficiency layer or help the robots, help the robots and all of this piece of it. I don't know that there's any evidence that that's true. I think most of the job. the jobs that you can name, you can title yourself, I'm an accountant, I'm a pilot, I'm this, I'm that, are going to be replaced by AI. I mean, at what point soon will FedEx

all of their aircraft be run by AI instead of pilots? Or maybe because of a pilot's union, there'll be one pilot on board just to oversee the AI, but certainly won't be two, certainly won't be three. So if you're thinking about becoming a pilot, like when my son was, he's kind of like step back from that because like there's that's going to you're not going to make any money on that and you're not going to be able to those jobs are going to disappear. You're already seeing it in the military. It's already happening. So going into the trades, I'm just concerned with my kids, you know, like so my son going into

electrical engineering and learning how to work with his hands and be able to do something meaningful. You know, I don't know. It's a scary time. I'm just really worried about the cognitive offload too for children. I brought up the, I don't know if you remember that study back in, it's like 2011, that Google, the Google effect study. And, you know, it was the idea how much are we outsourcing search and other things to Google instead of doing it ourselves. And the sort of idea of search offload or cognitive offload. And I'm sure you do it.

I know I do it. it's like, oh, if I know I can just search for it and find it, then I don't need to store it up here. Yes. You know, it's like the Socrates. It's like what? Socrates and Plato's Socrates being worried about, we won't be able to remember things because we're not,

you know, we're going to write everything down, you know. And the only reason we know that is because Plato wrote it down. But anyway, so that was the fear on the Google effect side. Now it's really transitioned to something else entirely with AI. beyond just, oh, I don't need to remember it because I can search for it later, and Google will just, like, surface that one page.

But even with that, you had to go and do the research yourself. You had to click on the link. You had to read the book. You had to synthesize the information. You had to organize your thoughts. You had to reason. You had to write it down. So I can just think about college for myself,

just having to get like five or six books on the topic. I remember writing a whole report on vanilla in Latin America. And I had to go to this special library at the University of Pittsburgh's campus that you had to go under lock and key because these were old rare books from like 150 years ago and had to sit in that library. I couldn't take them out because they were rare. And I had to do all of this research on vanilla and all of this in Latin America. And after reading these like four or five books, I had to synthesize my thoughts.

I had to organize my thoughts. which I'm not very good at. It's something I've struggled with my whole life, but I've gotten better at it because I've been forced to do it, to write essays, to write, to reason, to think, to put all of these things down in an argument or a narrative,

become a better writer just by writing over the years, and then present my paper and then, you know, get a C on the paper. It's pretty normal for me or get a B. But now kids are just outsourcing that fully. It's the cognitive offload. where they're saying, hey, I'm an eighth grade. So write me, write me a paper as if an eighth grader wrote it about the fall of the Roman Empire.

And don't make it sound like AI. So no amount of research. Forget the Google effect. Now it's, you're going to do all the research for me. You're going to synthesize everything. You're going to organize everything. And then you're going to present it and I'm going to turn it in. And so what these studies have found recently is that,

kids are actually doing really well with their projects using AI, and they're turning in great work. But then when they're tested on it, they fail because they have no memory of having done any of the work. They didn't sit in the library and research vanilla all afternoon, drinking big gulps. They just offloaded all of that. And so they're not remembering anything being tested on it. They can't recall anything.

So I'm just, I'm really, really worried about, you know, that part of it. And what's going to happen to my kids, our kids going forward and our ability to have conversations, to reason, to think, to have debates, to present arguments, to support your arguments, organize your thoughts. That's where I'm, that's the real human piece of all of this. Well, that's kind of the question is what's the purpose? I mean, does the machine serve the person or the person serve the machine? I think you could make a strong case.

I think most people would make the case that for all the benefits of the Internet, over the last 30 years, it's been a net loss for humanity. We don't live in a more peaceful world. We don't live in a more stable world. And we don't live in a smarter world, a wiser world. We don't. And probably many reasons for that, but the Internet hasn't achieved its core promises, peace, stability, knowledge, wisdom.

That didn't work. So knowing that, why would you triple down on the effect with AI? And of course, you wouldn't if the goal was to serve people. And you really do detect when you listen to technologists speak that their orientation is totally different. Like it's like somehow we have an obligation to serve technology. No one ever explains why, I guess because it's a god, maybe the only god. And so whether that means higher energy prices or less water or dumber, more suicidal children or whatever the result kind of inevitably will be, that's the price you pay to serve the machine. And it's like, that seems backward to me.

It absolutely does. And I, you know, just sitting here thinking as you're saying that, like have we had a net positive with the internet? And it's hard to, it's hard to argue that we have in any appreciable. way. We're sitting in a third world war right now. Think about how the internet moves markets and creates incredible anxiety. You hear this sort of like palpable feeling of anxiety across the United States. I think largely you could blame that on the internet. When people, you know, jump on X or jump on social media and they're fed these dopamine hits of 15 second videos. And they're just like, why did I do that to myself? You feel sort of trans.

supported. I, you know, just getting sucked into, you know, voyeuristic content with people getting arrested or whatever it is. It just makes you feel awful. And I don't think that there's, you have influencers on escalators like filming themselves and like, what? This is what we want? Like, you know, this is, that's why I'm encouraged that the younger people are saying, I don't want a smartphone anymore. The internet and smartphones. I think you could combine them. and then add in this like AI layer on top of it and you're just constantly online. So I don't know, I think you're going to see, maybe you're going to start to see more Amish communities pop up. You know, you're going to start to see like a pushback sort of internet-free zones.

You know, do not bring your phones in here. I don't know how big those things will be. And I don't know what kind of pushback will have from people who've gone through it. Will we have sort of a moment where we all say enough is enough? we don't want this anymore. There are the arguments, well, maybe we shouldn't be connected in such a way to these AI models that are coming from China, that are coming from the United States, that are coming from OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.

Get open source models that you can then store on your own compute in your own house. That is, so you have like all of the wisdom self-contained. And I know there are like some libertarian friends. friends of mine who believe that that's the way to go is like you have you have all of this compute sort of living i don't want to say like Hillary clinton's style like on your own servers in your house but you're not relying on china you're not relying on the government you're not relying on these companies you're relying on yourself and if you want to do some deep research on a project you have access to it because it lives on your own server in your house disconnected from those people i don't know

i don't have that without getting too far afield however i mean i think one of the biggest things that's happened in technology in recent memory was the hacking of cold wallets and the theft of Bitcoin from cold wallets and the promise of a cold wallet was it was disconnected from the internet. It was wholly yours. No one could put a finger on it other than you. And that was the assurance that your Bitcoin was actually yours. And so to see that get hacked somehow suggests that anything with an electrical impulse is not really under your control. Well, we even saw the story was it three weeks ago about the AI model that was offline, was not even connected to the internet, and manage to somehow connect and get on and hack,

jump online to hack and then jump back offline. Right. And so, and then add in the robotics layer to this on top of it all, right? So the humanoid, the humanoid robot piece of this where, you know, you're going to have this. you're going to have this in warfare. You're going to have humanoid robots. I mean, it's straight. It literally is straight out of Terminator.

Yep. You know, this is what's coming. And who can stop it? Is there going to be some sort of a kill switch and the ability to turn this stuff off? I don't think so. So I don't know. We're going to build compounds with, you know, corrugated, I don't know, steel walls and turrets on our houses now to protect us against the coming AI robot invasion, but we're seeing it on the battlefield already. And we already know that the U.S.

military is years ahead on this planning for where this is going. So, I don't know, to me, this is the greatest, most bizarre and biggest transformation in human history that we're watching right now unfold before us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hate to say it, a lot of flawed people with true ideas. out there but Ted Kaczynski did call this 30 years ago and because he was crazy and violent and killed innocence we ignored it but um we shouldn't have because he was you know he was on to something i would say Clayton Morris thank you for that really informed and kind of amazing rundown of where we're going I'm grateful my pleasure it's scary let's hang out and have a human human conversation

without AI. I can't wait. Great to see you. Thanks. Thanks, man.