In this episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson discuss reported Chinese bot farm activity targeting the debate over AI data centers, the political and economic implications of America’s AI race with China, and the Trump administration’s newly announced Venezuela oil agreement. They examine potential benefits for energy production and jobs, concerns surrounding government equity ownership in private ventures, and broader questions about national security, economic policy, and technological leadership.
China-linked bot networks are reportedly pushing anti-data center narratives across social media, raising new questions about artificial intelligence, energy infrastructure, and U.S. competitiveness. At the same time, the Trump administration has announced a major oil agreement involving Venezuela and access to an estimated 65 billion barrels of oil, a move that could carry significant economic and geopolitical consequences. Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson examine claims that Chinese influence operations are attempting to shape public opinion against AI data centers by amplifying concerns about electricity use and water consumption. They discuss why AI infrastructure has become a national security issue, how public perceptions have shifted in recent months, and what they see as the stakes in the competition between the United States and China. The episode also explores concerns about power generation, grid capacity, and the role data centers play in supporting AI development across industries ranging from healthcare to manufacturing and technology. Senator Cruz argues that future projects should generate sufficient power to avoid burdening local communities while delivering tangible benefits to residents.
Topics Covered:
- Reported Chinese bot farm activity influencing debate over AI data centers
- AI infrastructure, national security, and competition with China
- Electricity demand, power generation, and data center policy debates
- The role of AI in healthcare, industry, and technological innovation
- Trump administration announcement of a Venezuela oil agreement involving 65 billion barrels of oil
- Concerns about federal government equity stakes in private companies and economic policy implications
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
It is Vertical Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you
as well. And Senator, we've got two big topics to
talk about that include national security issues in a unique way,
dealing with AI, and also a big announcement from the
president with oil in Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, that's right.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
We have a massive Chinese bot farm that has been
discussed deliberately pushing anti-data center propaganda in the United States.
And They are putting real money behind it. They are
trying very much to convince every American, whether conservative or liberal,
you hate data centers. You want them shut down. We're
(00:38):
going to give you all the details in terms of
what China's doing and how they are trying to manipulate you.
We're also going to talk about an astonishing announcement that
came from the Trump administration this week of a massive
oil deal with Venezuela, 65 billion barrels of oil.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
A big deal.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
The details are still not entirely clear, but we're going
to give you what we know. It could have an
enormous impact on jobs, on the economy, on national security,
and ultimately the price of gasoline at the pump.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Yeah, it really is impressive there.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
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Speaker 4 (01:41):
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Speaker 2 (01:42):
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Speaker 4 (02:05):
All right, Senator.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So before we get into politics, you had one heck
of a week. It was it was book debut week
with this incredible book you've written about Clarence Thomas. And
it was a really fun week for you. What were
some of the highlights? Because you got to sit down
with some good friends in the business and promote this book.
And also it is at the top of the list
on Amazon as well.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Well, it was also a big week for Verdict because
last week we had an exclusive interview with Clarence Thomas
on the Verdict podcast, spent about an hour and 20
minutes with him. It's the first and only podcast Justice
Thomas has ever done. We've right now got, we're approaching
a million views on YouTube for the Clarence Thomas interview.
I will say, if you didn't happen to watch the interview,
(02:47):
I'd encourage you to go to YouTube, watch it on YouTube,
subscribe on YouTube. because it really is, it gives you
a window into the great man and into who he is.
And he's very candid with me. He and I go
back 30 years. So we talk about his life story.
We talk about his jurisprudence. We talk about his journey
from angry, radical leftist to one of the most important
(03:07):
conservative thinkers to have ever lived. And also, as you mentioned,
my book, Going Further, The Incomparable Clarence Thomas, it debuted
last week. It immediately shopped to number one in the country,
the number one bestseller on Amazon. So if you haven't
gotten the book yet, I would encourage you to go
buy the book. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble,
(03:29):
wherever you get books. And it also makes a great gift. Look,
I wrote this book because people need role models. People
need to admire heroes. And I think Clarence Thomas is
an American hero. He's a role model for me. He's
someone I admire. It's a big part of why I
wrote the book, because I think his story is so
extraordinary that I wanted people to really understand Clarence Thomas,
(03:52):
the man, Clarence Thomas, the justice. And so the book,
I think, makes a great birthday present, Christmas present, graduation present,
particularly for a young person, if you have kids or grandkids. Or,
you know, if you're a teenager yourself or you're in college,
it's a great gift for your buddies because it's a
(04:13):
fantastic story of someone that I admire and that I
think a lot of other folks should admire too.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, by the way, if you're looking for an awesome
gift for Christmas, just thinking ahead, there are signed copies
actually available online that you can get as well that
you've signed, so you can check for those as well.
It's a really cool gift to give somebody an autographed
copy by the author of a book.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
So look for that one as well.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
All right.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I want to get into center. This is a AI centers.
And I want to kind of step back and explain
this from from from ground zero. There is a war
happening right now with AI data centers, and whoever controls
it is going to control information in a way that
you can't even imagine and influence AI and the way
(04:58):
that it answers questions, whether that is freedom of speech
or if it's pure propaganda.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
China understands this.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
They understood it, I think, even before probably a lot
of people in the U.S.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Did. They are all in to control AI.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And, and America is, is obviously now we're, we're advocating
for it. A lot of people are, but there is
so much anti-AI center propaganda, much in the way that
we've seen a lot of that with nuclear reactors and
nuclear power, for example. They're using the same kind of
thing of fear-mongering against Americans. And they understand that if
they can get Americans to turn against AI centers, they
(05:35):
win this race.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
And it's a national security issue as well.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Well, I want to say verdict listeners, I think, are
exceptionally savvy.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
You are informed consumers of news.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
You're informed in the world of politics because you actually
take the time to learn and understand an issue.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
And I will say it is much harder today.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
To be informed in many ways, because so much of
what we perceive as to be organic, to be genuine discussion,
is fake. And so much of what we get, I
don't know about you, Ben, but so much of what
I get is from Twitter, from X, and you see things,
and you just react, oh, okay, so everyone's talking about this, oh,
so people are worked up about this, oh, this is
(06:15):
what people think. And there is a problem, there's a
broader problem that a great many of the so-called influencers
are being paid. The degree of money that is sloshing
around that people are being paid to say this and
that and whatever and and you think oh this is
so and so and i i trust them so so
(06:35):
so you know that uh i'm going to listen to
what they have to say that makes it very challenging
because all of the payments are are you know under
the carpet they're hidden people don't know it's happening uh but.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
There's by the way it's the shock of what you
just said there so if you understand how big this
has gotten I was shocked how many people that I
considered colleagues slash friends in the conservative movement that started
posting things that were anti-Israel. And I at first could
not believe how bad it was. And then I found
out and saw into this dark world of how many
(07:09):
people are actually paid.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
For those tweets.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And then I figured out, I'm like, okay, so these
people that I know, and I've known for decades, they're
getting massive paychecks, a lot of them, to say things
that are anti-Israel. That was the first time I'd ever
seen just how the tentacles had come out around the
world to buy people's opinions or retweets or tweets. And
some of them I know well, which I think was
even more shocking slash honestly disappointing.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, so there are two things that are referred to.
One are bots and one are sock puppets, and they're
different things. So a bot is a fake account. It's
an account that is automated. It's an account that is
made to look like a human being, and they go
to great efforts to make it look like a real person,
someone that seems like a. You know, ordinary American that
just got a view. That's a bot, and there are
millions of bots online. There are also sock puppets, and
(07:57):
sock puppets.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Are real people.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
They are real human beings. They're people that you know
and I know, but they just happen to be taking
a check from someone to put out particular content, either
misinformation or just propaganda. And so they're a real person,
but they're secretly on the take. Both of those have become,
I think, an epidemic online.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And listen.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
You and I spend a lot of our time engaged
in the political world, engaged in the policy world, and
I will say six months ago, The question of data
centers was not a major political issue. Six months ago,
you didn't hear about data centers much. They were being built,
but it was sort of, you'd have a groundbreaking and
it'd be a press release and reporters would go. You know,
(08:40):
I remember six months ago or so, there was a
big Google data center in West Texas. I went to
the groundbreaking. It was billions of dollars being invested. And 100%
of the reaction at the time was enthusiasm. Usually when
you have billions of dollars being invested, big construction project,
lots of jobs, everyone in the community was excited about it.
I have never seen in my adult life a policy
(09:04):
issue change and a political issue change faster. And in
the last six months, the politics on data centers, let
me be very clear, it's a train wreck right now.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
It is bad.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Democrats have decided they hate data centers, that data centers
are the poster child for evil. So you have Democrats
like Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, banning data
centers in the state of New York. But the thing
to understand is Republicans are not far away and they're
not behaving irrationally. If you poll data centers right now,
(09:36):
they are underwater about 70-30.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It is ugly.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
People hate data centers. They are angry about the data centers.
And that dynamic is very real. The elected officials, look,
most elected officials are cowards. That's just the reality.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
They react.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
They react out of fear. And if they see the mob,
they run the other way from the mob. Wherever the
mob is, they run the other way. That makes them
very easy for our adversaries to manipulate, because all you
do is create the appearance of a mob, and a
lot of politicians, particularly those not blessed with backbone, just
head the opposite direction. Now, There are real and legitimate
(10:18):
concerns about data centers. Let me start by saying that.
The top two concerns that the polling shows are there
are water and power. And water is number one, power
is number two. And let me break both of those
down on substance, and then we're going to talk about
the Chinese bots.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Water.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
That consistently comes as your number one concern. I don't
want a data center taking all my water. That is,
to a very large.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Extent, driven....
Speaker 3 (10:47):
By online misinformation and propaganda.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Why?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Because most new data centers that are going in use
what's called closed-loop cooling, which is basically they take the
same water and they circulated around and around and around,
and so they use actually very little water. A closed loop,
an open loop data center cooling uses more water. That
was the first iteration that was built. That was a
legitimate and fair concern. Virtually all of them have shifted
(11:15):
now to closed loop, so their water consumption is really
quite minimal. A data center consumes a fraction of Of
the water that, say, a farm consumes, an almond orchard consumes,
a golf course consumes. Like a golf course versus a
data center isn't even close. The golf course uses much,
much more water. And should we be.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Careful, careful. People are going to start wanting to ban
golf courses now. Calm down.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Look, don't give the Chinese any ideas. And listen, of course,
we should be... good stewards of our resources. And water
is a relatively scarce resource. It's more scarce in some
parts of the country than in others, but we should
be good stewards.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So the water concern.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Is a reasonable objective, but it is based most often
on mistaken facts because the water consumption is a fraction
of the water consumption of most other commercial entities in
a community. Number two, power. Now, power is consistently in
the polling the second most frequent concern. And this one
(12:21):
is a more legitimate concern. This one is fair. And
I think the voters have a reason to be pissed off. Now, listen,
when a data center comes in, politicians typically tell the consumers, hey,
your electricity bill is not going to go up.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And you know what?
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Most voters don't believe that. And there's a reason for that.
Do you know that since 2021, so that's just five
years ago, the average electricity bill in America has gone
up more than 30 percent?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And by the way, to put this into perspective, we
were looking at some polling data the other day. I
was shocked to know that the majority of middle Americans
actually know their power bill now within $ 20 of what
it was last month because it's gotten to be such
a household issue. of what are we spending, turn the
lights off, check the AC, temperature. This is a very
(13:15):
real concern for Americans. And that's, by the way, a
lot more than I thought it was going to be
of how many Americans know, like almost to the exact dollar,
what their power bill was last month.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
So it is real and affordability. You're hearing about that
a lot. That's a very real issue that the cost
of everything has gone up. The cost of Food, the
cost of gasoline, the cost of insurance, the cost of electricity,
everything's gone up, and people are struggling to make ends meet.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
That is a real and fair concern.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
And, you know, I've spent a lot of time, as
you know, I'm the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee,
which has jurisdiction over... 40% of the U.S. economy, including
all of technology, including all of AI. And so it's
my job responsibility to be examining these issues and focused closely.
And so I meet with lots of business leaders, business
(14:04):
leaders across the board in the energy space, the technology space.
And one thing that I am urging anyone building a
data center, and you're seeing more and more elected officials
say this, if a data center comes in, it needs
to be a net environment negative user of power. In
other words, it needs to produce more electricity through its
(14:27):
own generation than it consumes, so that the effect of
the data center going online should be that people's power
bills go down. You're seeing more and more. Greg Abbott,
the governor of Texas, has just put out a new
order that mandates that, that you have to have minimal
water consumption and that you cannot be burdening the grid,
(14:47):
but instead you have to be producing power rather than
taking power off. I think both of those are common
sense steps. I think those should be mandated. Those should
be required. But let's cover the story about the bots,
and then I want to talk about how we should
address this. So the story broke this week about the bots,
and X put out a statement from their global.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Governance agency.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Here's what X said, quote, the X safety team conducted
an investigation into suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations.
We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts. Within
this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner
(15:35):
that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and
energy policy. These posts contain claims that AI data centers
are driving up household electricity prices and straining the grid.
Others included AI generated cartoons that depicted data center operators
(15:57):
enriching themselves at the public's expense. We remain committed to
an open and authentic platform where people debate topics of
public interest. We take seriously any attempts to undermine the
integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that
violate our authenticity policy. They actually included two examples of
(16:19):
Chinese bots. One was an account named Thomas Jackson. So
it sounds like a very American name, seems perfectly normal. Well,
Thomas Jackson, what is it, 87830. Sent out this cartoon,
data centers get subsidized while we foot the bill. That
(16:40):
was a fake Chinese bot. There's another one, Patricia Robinson. Again,
a very normal sounding name saying the AI industry is booming,
but the costs are borne by ordinary people. This is
outright propaganda and it is happening at a very serious level.
(17:02):
And we need to be aware of it. We need
to be savvy consumers that when you're online, when you're
online in the public debate, you start seeing all this
stuff and think, huh, that's organic. Understand the Chinese communists
are investing millions of dollars. to try to convince you
you hate data centers. And there are a lot of folks,
(17:23):
there are a lot of good conservatives that are now
echoing those statements and they don't realize just how much
propaganda and manipulation they're being subject to.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
And look, there's a lot of people that I know
that assume that these AI data centers, I had this
debate the other day with some friends, and this is
how big of an issue this has become. They're like, dude,
I don't want my power lines humming behind my house
all the time that they put a data center 35
miles down the road. And I'm like, You've seen a
video online early on where that happened. Now they've changed
(17:54):
how they're doing these AI data centers. And they're like, well,
I hear they're running out of water everywhere. I'm like,
most of these, you and I have talked about this center.
They're these closed water systems. So they're not just sucking
water like crazy into these data centers, which is what's
been described with the propaganda that's been put online. And
it goes back to something you said earlier. Americans should
be concerned. We should do this in a responsible way.
(18:16):
You pointed to what Texas just said. If you're going
to build these things, you have to be a net
positive to the grid, not a net negative to the grid.
You can do that. But what the governor in New
York did was exactly what China wanted. And I think
we should do the compare and contrast on that. China
wants these governors to walk out there and go moratorium
because every moment you shut these down from being created
(18:38):
in the U.S., they're building 10X of them in China.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Look, this is very much like, and we saw that
in the last two decades, Middle Eastern countries that would
fund anti-oil and gas and anti-fracking campaigns. And the anti-fracking campaigns,
you remember, what was it, Gasland and Gasland 2, these
propaganda movies about how terrible fracking was. And at the
very back, you see that they're funded by Qatar. They're
(19:03):
funded by like Middle Eastern countries that are producing a
crap ton of oil. And it's really simple. They're saying,
please don't produce your own oil and gas just by ours.
China's doing the same thing. They're saying, look, data centers
are what produces AI. And by the way, AI is coming.
You may be concerned about AI. You may be right
to be concerned about AI. But it ain't stopping.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
It is coming.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
And so China is sitting there saying, if we can
get the United States to handcuff their own efforts to
shut down every data center, then you know what they're
going to do? They're going to have to buy all
their AI from China. That means all the data centers
will be in China. That means China will have control
of all the data. That means China will have espionage
over everything you do on AI. That means China will
(19:47):
use AI to engage in propaganda and push you on
every other issue through AI. It is getting a total
tunnel into your family, into your kids, into your life. Like,
China is engaged in a thousand-year war. And if they
win the war for AI, and if they convince us, okay,
we're going to unilaterally disarm, The consequences are catastrophic. And
(20:10):
I got to tell you, Ben, I think we're at
a moment that could be very much like Three Mile Island.
Three Mile Island, you had a nuclear accident. And that
one nuclear accident, look, it was concerning.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
It was dangerous.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
The result of that one accident, for 30 years, the
United States did not build another nuclear reactor. For 30 years,
we did nothing. It was because of Politicians overreacted to
that one accident.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And you know what happened?
Speaker 3 (20:37):
China built a ton of nuclear reactors and actually China
took over the technology from us. They just leapfrogged ahead
of us. They're like, all right, you idiots don't want
nuclear reactors.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
We'll lead the world in that.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
We're at a dangerous point. I think there is a
real possibility, Ben, in nine months, every single state in
America may ban data centers.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
That's how bad the politics is.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
And I'm talking to a lot of business leaders saying,
you don't understand that this has suddenly turned really dark
and really ugly. And by the way, here's how it
gets worse.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
It's a legitimate campaign issue now.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
It is a question every politician is being asked by
either people in the audience at a town hall, S Forum,
or certainly by the media. Like that's when you know
it has hit nationwide When every politician out there is running,
if you have a good comms team, they're prepping you
for these AI questions.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
It is an issue in every campaign across the country.
And what I'm telling these business leaders is if you
think the politics is bad now, if we get to
election day and the narrative that comes out of election
day is the politicians who supported AI or supported data centers,
they lost. As bad as you think the politics is now,
(21:56):
it will get 10x worse next year. Because, look, politicians
are risk averse. If they think, wait a second, if
I support data centers, I will lose my job. They
will run like scared children the other direction. And so
that herd mentality, it's why I'm not saying it's 100%
(22:18):
this is going to happen. It depends how the election goes.
It depends on where the public debate moves. But I'll
tell you what I'm urging the business leaders to do.
Have you ever studied public choice theory?
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Oh, yes.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
So it's a school of economics.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Public choice theory is a school of economics that examines
how decision-making is made in a democratic society, and it
examines it through an economic lens. And one of the
basic foundational principles of public choice theory is that if
you have really concentrated benefits... with a limited number of
people but significant benefits, and you have on the other
(22:55):
side really diffuse harms across a lot of people, and
the harms might be orders of magnitude greater than the benefits, much,
much worse harms than benefits, but they're diffuse among a
lot of people, public choice theory lays out how in
almost every circumstance the concentrated benefits will defeat the diffuse harms,
even though for society that's a much worse outcome because
(23:16):
you're getting a lot more harm than good. What does
that mean for data centers? What I'm telling any business
leader that's putting in a data center, and by the way,
those business leaders are not just tech companies. They're also
industrial companies, construction companies, energy companies, electricity companies, power companies.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Let me ask you a question because I think part
of the fear-mongering behind this is everybody thinks that these
data centers are being built by these like boogeyman companies
that you've never heard of, that just existed now. Can
we just make people understand something that I think is
really important on these AI centers? These are mainstream American
companies that need AI that are building these AI centers.
(23:56):
Throw some of the names out there just so people
understand how mainstream this is.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Oh, look, the big tech companies are all doing Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon.
They're all doing Microsoft. They're all doing massive investments. But
you've also got every big company. is using and having
contracts for data centers. So, you know, all the airlines,
(24:21):
American Airline, United, Delta, all of them. You've got ExxonMobil.
You've got Chevron. You've got every energy company is doing it.
You've got Caterpillar. You've got every manufacturing company. You look
at AI getting involved in the industrial, you know, GM, Ford, Tesla,
like every car company.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
And the healthcare industry, this is the one that I
think people need to understand the most. I was talking
to a doctor the other day at N.B. Anderson, and
he was saying that he believes that cancer will be
cured through AI because they're able to connect so many
dots around the world with data that's coming in. He
said for the future of incurable diseases, things we haven't
(25:02):
figured out how to fix yet, he said he believes
that AI... at some point will be the equivalent of
50 years of research for one year of AI. Because
when you can connect all the data and put it
all together and have these answers come back quicker and
cross-reference and cross-check studies and these clinical trials and things
like that, he thinks it will add life like we've
(25:24):
never seen before to people, not just in America, but
around the world. That's another example of why AI, in
some capacity in the future, could literally help save your life.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
And there is lots of upside. And I want to
be clear. There are a ton of downsides when it
comes to AI as well. And I'm very, very focused
on the downside. In fact, I'm the only member of
Congress who has authored and passed legislation restricting AI. And
that was in particular the Take It Down Act that
criminalized AI using deep fakes to create intimate images of
(25:55):
real people and made it a crime and forced the
tech companies to take that content down. There are lots
of very real problems that need to be addressed that
I am addressing, particularly protecting kids online.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
That are very serious.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
But the reality is AI is right now, every business,
if you have a job working for any company of
any size, AI is intertwined in your job.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
You talked about healthcare.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
If you go into the hospital and get an MRI
or a CAT scan, AI is analyzing that to discover
if you have an injury, if you have a disease,
all of that, that's where the capital is coming from
to build these data centers. And one thing to understand
is Look, we've had data centers for 20 years.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Nobody knew about them. Nobody cared about them. They were
a warehouse.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Look, you don't build a data center in downtown New
York or downtown Houston because real estate's too expensive for
the same reason.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Yeah, you build where it's the cheapest area you can
buy land.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
You don't build a warehouse in downtown either. You build
it further out in the country in a smaller community,
and the driving factors are the biggest factor is access
to low-cost energy. But also you want real estate. It
needs to be more in the countryside where you can
get a larger space for footprint. But we've had data
centers for decades. Nobody's noticed. Nobody's cared. It hasn't impacted anything. Now,
(27:13):
there's a lot more being built now because AI has
increased the demand.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
But this massive pushback to AI.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
is not spontaneous or organic. And this massive pushback, and
understand the data center pushback is separate and discreet from AI.
Some people think, well, it's just concerns about AI. That's
not what the polling shows. The polling shows that it's
water and power that are one and two. And let
me tell you what I'm telling business leaders, Ben. I'm saying,
(27:45):
given the public choice theory, you need to make the
benefits of a data center absolutely clear and unequivocal and unmistakable.
So do not come into a community, a little town
and say, hey, we're going to put a data center
in and the result will be your electricity bill will
go down two and a half percent. As I said,
(28:09):
nobody believes you. We've seen our power bills go up
and up and up and maybe it's true, maybe it's not,
but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That's the kind of claim.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
And also, you know, you have some folks, we're going
to go in and put in a new scoreboard for
the little league.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
But at the end of the day, that doesn't address
the concern, damn it, I can't afford to pay my
power bill, and I'm having trouble providing for my family
because I can't pay my bills. That anger is real
and needs to be addressed. So here's what I'm telling
business leaders. Number one, make it explicit. Send people money.
Send them checks. Send them $ 100 a month. Send them
(28:44):
$ 500 a month. Send them $ 1, 000 a month. I want
you to imagine you're living in a small town, and
a data center is going to go three miles down
the road And the result of it is you get
$ 1, 000 a month every month going forward. Like, that's real money.
That's mailbox money. And by the way, yes, you know,
the community ought to be able to decide. You don't
want the data center to say no. Okay, you don't
(29:05):
get the $ 1, 000 a month, no data center.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
You know what?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
There's going to be another town where the residents say, gosh,
I could use $ 1, 000 a month. That would change the
politics significantly. There's a second thing I'm suggesting, Ben. I'm
suggesting to these CEOs... Go into a community, build a
data center, and tell the constituents, when the data center
goes online, your electricity will be free for the rest
(29:31):
of your life. Not down 2%, free. You don't pay
a power bill for the rest of your life. Hot
diggity damn. You want to talk about getting people's attention.
If the result is suddenly you say, we're going to
pay your electricity bill forever. You're going to get suddenly
people eager to say, no, no, no. Don't put the
data center in that town. Put it in my town.
(29:53):
I want my.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Electricity bill to go away.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And I got to say the tech world, they're just,
they don't understand the politics very well. And so I'm
trying to tell them, look, if you don't start engaging
and leaning in, you're going to wake up and it's
going to be Three Mile Island. And we're going to
discover suddenly China has convinced America to shut ourselves down.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
90 days ago, by the way, I thought it was
going to be a Republican versus Democrat issue where it
was going to be Republican governors are in favor of this.
Democrats are against Republican states. They were open for business.
Now we're seeing, as you mentioned, that changing where it
could be all against the whole country against And I
hope this show, people will share it. I hope you'll
share it with your friends because I think we debunked
(30:36):
a lot here that's important. And obviously, we're going to
keep watching this issue because it's going to affect all
of our lives moving forward. I want to move, Senator,
to another issue real quick, which has had a lot
of big breaking news over the weekend, and that was
the President of the United States of America announcing a
historic deal with a massive amount of oil on True Social.
The President's saying, we've got this deal now with Venezuela.
(30:58):
It is going to be huge for not just America,
but the world, and the price of gas could go
down significantly for Americans.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Talk about what this is and what it means.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Well, this week, President Trump announced a new deal with Venezuela,
a deal for 65 billion barrels of oil.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
That is a massive amount of oil.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of any country on earth.
And this is a deal that will be funded by
a private company, but with the U.S. government as a
major investor in the company, and under the terms that
was announced, that company will have access... to the oil
at cost, and the U.S. government is taking an equity
(31:38):
position and will get the upsides in terms of the
profits from that oil. I will say, as we're talking
about this right now, the full details of the deal
are still somewhat opaque. It is difficult to know exactly
what's going on. My reactions initially, number one, 65 billion
barrels of oil.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Is a big deal. That is a lot of oil in.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
A massive amount and and the united states getting access
to that that's good for american jobs it's good for
the economy and it's also good in the long term
for gasoline prices although to be fair do not expect
this to have an immediate impact on gasoline prices it
will still take years or even decades to build up
the infrastructure to produce all of that oil so that
(32:22):
will not happen overnight um That being said, there are
also significant concerns being raised.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Number one, this is a.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Deal that was cut with Delcy Rodriguez, who is the
interim president of Venezuela. She was Nicolas Maduro's vice president.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
She is a communist. She is a Marxist.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
She has a long history of being viciously anti-American. Maduro
was illegitimate and Delcy Rodriguez is illegitimate. Neither one of
them were elected by the people. and the Trump administration
has kept Delcy in for a period of time during transition.
What I've been saying consistently is there need to be
free and fair elections. Let the people of Venezuela choose
(33:02):
who their leadership is rather than maintaining someone illegitimate. I
still think that's the right decision. I certainly don't want
this oil deal to somehow... push off the notion that
the people of Venezuela get to elect their own leaders.
I don't think we should be maintaining anti-American communists in
power against the wishes of the people who elected them.
(33:25):
I'll say secondly, we are hearing concerns from some, particularly
in the oil and gas business. So Chevron is anticipating
putting and is contemplating at least putting billions of dollars
of investment into Venezuela. They already have significant investments in Venezuela.
And I got to say, if you're an American company,
the prospect of competing against another company that is business
(33:49):
partners with the federal government, the U.S. government, and that
has a special deal with the Venezuelan government, that's going
to make you as a private company pause and say, wait,
is this a fair playing field?
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Can I compete here?
Speaker 3 (34:03):
And so how that's worked out, it's unclear at this point,
but those are a concern a number in the energy
world are raising, and I think those are reasonable concerns
to ask. There is also the longer-term concern that this
deal is being done through the Office of Strategic Capital
at the Department of War, and it is being done
in exchange for equity ownership in the company. We've talked
(34:28):
before on this podcast how I am very uncomfortable with
this administration's taking equity positions in lots and lots of companies.
I think that is a very bad precedent. I think
it puts us on a slippery slope. They started it
with Intel taking a big equity position in Intel. Look,
if you look at the definition of socialism, socialism is
(34:50):
government ownership of the means of production or distribution in
an economy. If the federal government starts taking a major
equity position and just.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Can you say that again? Because that is the warning.
That is the warning that people need to hear. And
why you're saying when the U.S. government starts getting into
these businesses, these private businesses and ownership positions, at first
it can sound great, but this goes back to... when
we had the big fall in 2008 at Lehman Brothers,
and should America take equity positions in these companies?
Speaker 4 (35:18):
And it was a grand economic debate.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
But say that statement again, because this is what you
mean when you say the slippery slope, that if we
start this, what does it end with? Does it end
with government ownership in the biggest sectors, and then we,
as Americans, are dependent on the government, not the private
sector anymore?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
So the textbook definition of socialism is government ownership or
control of the means of production or distribution.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
In an economy.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
At the end of the day, if we end up
with the federal government having equity shares, ownership stakes in
the biggest companies of America, that is socialism.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
It is the definition of socialism.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
And there's a combination of, number one, you look at
what China does, where the Chinese government and every company
in China has what's called the golden share. And the
golden share gives them the ability to control the companies.
It makes every company an arm of the government.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
That ain't good.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
I don't want every company in America to be an
arm of the federal government. And you may think it's
great when it's Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
But you know what?
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Donald Trump is not going to be the last president.
And it ain't nearly that great if it's President Elizabeth
Warren or President AOC or whatever communist comes next. And
so I think it is a very, very dangerous proposition.
And I'll tell you, President Trump and I have discussed
this multiple times. What I am urging him to do
(36:42):
is to take these equity positions that they have taken
and before he leaves office, put them directly into the
Trump accounts of 70 million kids. Transfer them out of
the federal government. and send them to the children of
America instead, so that that way you have America with
a widespread investment in the companies of America, but you
don't have the government having the ability to control those companies,
(37:06):
having the ability to dictate. And by the way, think
about how a left-wing president would use that equity share.
Think how bad woke was. Now imagine a President Elizabeth
Warren telling every company, we own 10% of your company.
Let me tell you right now, you've got to hire 20%
transgender left-handed witches.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Non-binary, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Like that's giving government power over the private sector is
a really dangerous road to be on.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And so.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I am encouraged that we have a deal to access
a massive amount of oil. That, for energy and jobs,
is good. But there are also some dangerous aspects here
that we need to be cautious about and we need
to think carefully through where this goes going forward.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
We're going to keep doing this show just like this.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Hopefully, you learned from it. Hopefully, you'll share it with
your family and your friends.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Don't forget, our episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so
hit that subscribe or auto-download button wherever you get your podcasts.
You can watch most episodes on YouTube as well. And
don't forget, Senator Cruz's new book on Clarence Thomas is
out right now. You can grab it on Amazon or
wherever you get your books. He's a great president as well.
And the senator and I will see you back here
in a couple of days.
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
It is Vertical Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you
as well. And Senator, we've got two big topics to
talk about that include national security issues in a unique way,
dealing with AI, and also a big announcement from the
president with oil in Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Well, that's right.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
We have a massive Chinese bot farm that has been
discussed deliberately pushing anti-data center propaganda in the United States.
And They are putting real money behind it. They are
trying very much to convince every American, whether conservative or liberal,
you hate data centers. You want them shut down. We're
(00:38):
going to give you all the details in terms of
what China's doing and how they are trying to manipulate you.
We're also going to talk about an astonishing announcement that
came from the Trump administration this week of a massive
oil deal with Venezuela, 65 billion barrels of oil.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
A big deal.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
The details are still not entirely clear, but we're going
to give you what we know. It could have an
enormous impact on jobs, on the economy, on national security,
and ultimately the price of gasoline at the pump.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
Yeah, it really is impressive there.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I want to also take a moment and talk to
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know what actually lasts, and that's one reason Compassion International
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(01:31):
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Speaker 4 (01:41):
To finish college.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
That's because sponsorship isn't just temporary relief. It's long-term investment
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shape a child's future. You can sponsor a child today
at Compassion.com. That is Compassion.com. dot com.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
All right, Senator.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
So before we get into politics, you had one heck
of a week. It was it was book debut week
with this incredible book you've written about Clarence Thomas. And
it was a really fun week for you. What were
some of the highlights? Because you got to sit down
with some good friends in the business and promote this book.
And also it is at the top of the list
on Amazon as well.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Well, it was also a big week for Verdict because
last week we had an exclusive interview with Clarence Thomas
on the Verdict podcast, spent about an hour and 20
minutes with him. It's the first and only podcast Justice
Thomas has ever done. We've right now got, we're approaching
a million views on YouTube for the Clarence Thomas interview.
I will say, if you didn't happen to watch the interview,
(02:47):
I'd encourage you to go to YouTube, watch it on YouTube,
subscribe on YouTube. because it really is, it gives you
a window into the great man and into who he is.
And he's very candid with me. He and I go
back 30 years. So we talk about his life story.
We talk about his jurisprudence. We talk about his journey
from angry, radical leftist to one of the most important
(03:07):
conservative thinkers to have ever lived. And also, as you mentioned,
my book, Going Further, The Incomparable Clarence Thomas, it debuted
last week. It immediately shopped to number one in the country,
the number one bestseller on Amazon. So if you haven't
gotten the book yet, I would encourage you to go
buy the book. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble,
(03:29):
wherever you get books. And it also makes a great gift. Look,
I wrote this book because people need role models. People
need to admire heroes. And I think Clarence Thomas is
an American hero. He's a role model for me. He's
someone I admire. It's a big part of why I
wrote the book, because I think his story is so
extraordinary that I wanted people to really understand Clarence Thomas,
(03:52):
the man, Clarence Thomas, the justice. And so the book,
I think, makes a great birthday present, Christmas present, graduation present,
particularly for a young person, if you have kids or grandkids. Or,
you know, if you're a teenager yourself or you're in college,
it's a great gift for your buddies because it's a
(04:13):
fantastic story of someone that I admire and that I
think a lot of other folks should admire too.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, by the way, if you're looking for an awesome
gift for Christmas, just thinking ahead, there are signed copies
actually available online that you can get as well that
you've signed, so you can check for those as well.
It's a really cool gift to give somebody an autographed
copy by the author of a book.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
So look for that one as well.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
All right.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I want to get into center. This is a AI centers.
And I want to kind of step back and explain
this from from from ground zero. There is a war
happening right now with AI data centers, and whoever controls
it is going to control information in a way that
you can't even imagine and influence AI and the way
(04:58):
that it answers questions, whether that is freedom of speech
or if it's pure propaganda.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
China understands this.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
They understood it, I think, even before probably a lot
of people in the U.S.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Did. They are all in to control AI.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And, and America is, is obviously now we're, we're advocating
for it. A lot of people are, but there is
so much anti-AI center propaganda, much in the way that
we've seen a lot of that with nuclear reactors and
nuclear power, for example. They're using the same kind of
thing of fear-mongering against Americans. And they understand that if
they can get Americans to turn against AI centers, they
(05:35):
win this race.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
And it's a national security issue as well.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Well, I want to say verdict listeners, I think, are
exceptionally savvy.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
You are informed consumers of news.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
You're informed in the world of politics because you actually
take the time to learn and understand an issue.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
And I will say it is much harder today.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
To be informed in many ways, because so much of
what we perceive as to be organic, to be genuine discussion,
is fake. And so much of what we get, I
don't know about you, Ben, but so much of what
I get is from Twitter, from X, and you see things,
and you just react, oh, okay, so everyone's talking about this, oh,
so people are worked up about this, oh, this is
(06:15):
what people think. And there is a problem, there's a
broader problem that a great many of the so-called influencers
are being paid. The degree of money that is sloshing
around that people are being paid to say this and
that and whatever and and you think oh this is
so and so and i i trust them so so
(06:35):
so you know that uh i'm going to listen to
what they have to say that makes it very challenging
because all of the payments are are you know under
the carpet they're hidden people don't know it's happening uh but.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
There's by the way it's the shock of what you
just said there so if you understand how big this
has gotten I was shocked how many people that I
considered colleagues slash friends in the conservative movement that started
posting things that were anti-Israel. And I at first could
not believe how bad it was. And then I found
out and saw into this dark world of how many
(07:09):
people are actually paid.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
For those tweets.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And then I figured out, I'm like, okay, so these
people that I know, and I've known for decades, they're
getting massive paychecks, a lot of them, to say things
that are anti-Israel. That was the first time I'd ever
seen just how the tentacles had come out around the
world to buy people's opinions or retweets or tweets. And
some of them I know well, which I think was
even more shocking slash honestly disappointing.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, so there are two things that are referred to.
One are bots and one are sock puppets, and they're
different things. So a bot is a fake account. It's
an account that is automated. It's an account that is
made to look like a human being, and they go
to great efforts to make it look like a real person,
someone that seems like a. You know, ordinary American that
just got a view. That's a bot, and there are
millions of bots online. There are also sock puppets, and
(07:57):
sock puppets.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Are real people.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
They are real human beings. They're people that you know
and I know, but they just happen to be taking
a check from someone to put out particular content, either
misinformation or just propaganda. And so they're a real person,
but they're secretly on the take. Both of those have become,
I think, an epidemic online.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
And listen.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
You and I spend a lot of our time engaged
in the political world, engaged in the policy world, and
I will say six months ago, The question of data
centers was not a major political issue. Six months ago,
you didn't hear about data centers much. They were being built,
but it was sort of, you'd have a groundbreaking and
it'd be a press release and reporters would go. You know,
(08:40):
I remember six months ago or so, there was a
big Google data center in West Texas. I went to
the groundbreaking. It was billions of dollars being invested. And 100%
of the reaction at the time was enthusiasm. Usually when
you have billions of dollars being invested, big construction project,
lots of jobs, everyone in the community was excited about it.
I have never seen in my adult life a policy
(09:04):
issue change and a political issue change faster. And in
the last six months, the politics on data centers, let
me be very clear, it's a train wreck right now.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
It is bad.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Democrats have decided they hate data centers, that data centers
are the poster child for evil. So you have Democrats
like Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, banning data
centers in the state of New York. But the thing
to understand is Republicans are not far away and they're
not behaving irrationally. If you poll data centers right now,
(09:36):
they are underwater about 70-30.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It is ugly.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
People hate data centers. They are angry about the data centers.
And that dynamic is very real. The elected officials, look,
most elected officials are cowards. That's just the reality.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
They react.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
They react out of fear. And if they see the mob,
they run the other way from the mob. Wherever the
mob is, they run the other way. That makes them
very easy for our adversaries to manipulate, because all you
do is create the appearance of a mob, and a
lot of politicians, particularly those not blessed with backbone, just
head the opposite direction. Now, There are real and legitimate
(10:18):
concerns about data centers. Let me start by saying that.
The top two concerns that the polling shows are there
are water and power. And water is number one, power
is number two. And let me break both of those
down on substance, and then we're going to talk about
the Chinese bots.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Water.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
That consistently comes as your number one concern. I don't
want a data center taking all my water. That is,
to a very large.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Extent, driven....
Speaker 3 (10:47):
By online misinformation and propaganda.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Why?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Because most new data centers that are going in use
what's called closed-loop cooling, which is basically they take the
same water and they circulated around and around and around,
and so they use actually very little water. A closed loop,
an open loop data center cooling uses more water. That
was the first iteration that was built. That was a
legitimate and fair concern. Virtually all of them have shifted
(11:15):
now to closed loop, so their water consumption is really
quite minimal. A data center consumes a fraction of Of
the water that, say, a farm consumes, an almond orchard consumes,
a golf course consumes. Like a golf course versus a
data center isn't even close. The golf course uses much,
much more water. And should we be.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Careful, careful. People are going to start wanting to ban
golf courses now. Calm down.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Look, don't give the Chinese any ideas. And listen, of course,
we should be... good stewards of our resources. And water
is a relatively scarce resource. It's more scarce in some
parts of the country than in others, but we should
be good stewards.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
So the water concern.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Is a reasonable objective, but it is based most often
on mistaken facts because the water consumption is a fraction
of the water consumption of most other commercial entities in
a community. Number two, power. Now, power is consistently in
the polling the second most frequent concern. And this one
(12:21):
is a more legitimate concern. This one is fair. And
I think the voters have a reason to be pissed off. Now, listen,
when a data center comes in, politicians typically tell the consumers, hey,
your electricity bill is not going to go up.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
And you know what?
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Most voters don't believe that. And there's a reason for that.
Do you know that since 2021, so that's just five
years ago, the average electricity bill in America has gone
up more than 30 percent?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And by the way, to put this into perspective, we
were looking at some polling data the other day. I
was shocked to know that the majority of middle Americans
actually know their power bill now within $ 20 of what
it was last month because it's gotten to be such
a household issue. of what are we spending, turn the
lights off, check the AC, temperature. This is a very
(13:15):
real concern for Americans. And that's, by the way, a
lot more than I thought it was going to be
of how many Americans know, like almost to the exact dollar,
what their power bill was last month.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
So it is real and affordability. You're hearing about that
a lot. That's a very real issue that the cost
of everything has gone up. The cost of Food, the
cost of gasoline, the cost of insurance, the cost of electricity,
everything's gone up, and people are struggling to make ends meet.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
That is a real and fair concern.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
And, you know, I've spent a lot of time, as
you know, I'm the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee,
which has jurisdiction over... 40% of the U.S. economy, including
all of technology, including all of AI. And so it's
my job responsibility to be examining these issues and focused closely.
And so I meet with lots of business leaders, business
(14:04):
leaders across the board in the energy space, the technology space.
And one thing that I am urging anyone building a
data center, and you're seeing more and more elected officials
say this, if a data center comes in, it needs
to be a net environment negative user of power. In
other words, it needs to produce more electricity through its
(14:27):
own generation than it consumes, so that the effect of
the data center going online should be that people's power
bills go down. You're seeing more and more. Greg Abbott,
the governor of Texas, has just put out a new
order that mandates that, that you have to have minimal
water consumption and that you cannot be burdening the grid,
(14:47):
but instead you have to be producing power rather than
taking power off. I think both of those are common
sense steps. I think those should be mandated. Those should
be required. But let's cover the story about the bots,
and then I want to talk about how we should
address this. So the story broke this week about the bots,
and X put out a statement from their global.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Governance agency.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Here's what X said, quote, the X safety team conducted
an investigation into suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations.
We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts. Within
this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner
(15:35):
that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and
energy policy. These posts contain claims that AI data centers
are driving up household electricity prices and straining the grid.
Others included AI generated cartoons that depicted data center operators
(15:57):
enriching themselves at the public's expense. We remain committed to
an open and authentic platform where people debate topics of
public interest. We take seriously any attempts to undermine the
integrity of the global town square and suspend accounts that
violate our authenticity policy. They actually included two examples of
(16:19):
Chinese bots. One was an account named Thomas Jackson. So
it sounds like a very American name, seems perfectly normal. Well,
Thomas Jackson, what is it, 87830. Sent out this cartoon,
data centers get subsidized while we foot the bill. That
(16:40):
was a fake Chinese bot. There's another one, Patricia Robinson. Again,
a very normal sounding name saying the AI industry is booming,
but the costs are borne by ordinary people. This is
outright propaganda and it is happening at a very serious level.
(17:02):
And we need to be aware of it. We need
to be savvy consumers that when you're online, when you're
online in the public debate, you start seeing all this
stuff and think, huh, that's organic. Understand the Chinese communists
are investing millions of dollars. to try to convince you
you hate data centers. And there are a lot of folks,
(17:23):
there are a lot of good conservatives that are now
echoing those statements and they don't realize just how much
propaganda and manipulation they're being subject to.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
And look, there's a lot of people that I know
that assume that these AI data centers, I had this
debate the other day with some friends, and this is
how big of an issue this has become. They're like, dude,
I don't want my power lines humming behind my house
all the time that they put a data center 35
miles down the road. And I'm like, You've seen a
video online early on where that happened. Now they've changed
(17:54):
how they're doing these AI data centers. And they're like, well,
I hear they're running out of water everywhere. I'm like,
most of these, you and I have talked about this center.
They're these closed water systems. So they're not just sucking
water like crazy into these data centers, which is what's
been described with the propaganda that's been put online. And
it goes back to something you said earlier. Americans should
be concerned. We should do this in a responsible way.
(18:16):
You pointed to what Texas just said. If you're going
to build these things, you have to be a net
positive to the grid, not a net negative to the grid.
You can do that. But what the governor in New
York did was exactly what China wanted. And I think
we should do the compare and contrast on that. China
wants these governors to walk out there and go moratorium
because every moment you shut these down from being created
(18:38):
in the U.S., they're building 10X of them in China.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Look, this is very much like, and we saw that
in the last two decades, Middle Eastern countries that would
fund anti-oil and gas and anti-fracking campaigns. And the anti-fracking campaigns,
you remember, what was it, Gasland and Gasland 2, these
propaganda movies about how terrible fracking was. And at the
very back, you see that they're funded by Qatar. They're
(19:03):
funded by like Middle Eastern countries that are producing a
crap ton of oil. And it's really simple. They're saying,
please don't produce your own oil and gas just by ours.
China's doing the same thing. They're saying, look, data centers
are what produces AI. And by the way, AI is coming.
You may be concerned about AI. You may be right
to be concerned about AI. But it ain't stopping.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
It is coming.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
And so China is sitting there saying, if we can
get the United States to handcuff their own efforts to
shut down every data center, then you know what they're
going to do? They're going to have to buy all
their AI from China. That means all the data centers
will be in China. That means China will have control
of all the data. That means China will have espionage
over everything you do on AI. That means China will
(19:47):
use AI to engage in propaganda and push you on
every other issue through AI. It is getting a total
tunnel into your family, into your kids, into your life. Like,
China is engaged in a thousand-year war. And if they
win the war for AI, and if they convince us, okay,
we're going to unilaterally disarm, The consequences are catastrophic. And
(20:10):
I got to tell you, Ben, I think we're at
a moment that could be very much like Three Mile Island.
Three Mile Island, you had a nuclear accident. And that
one nuclear accident, look, it was concerning.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
It was dangerous.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
The result of that one accident, for 30 years, the
United States did not build another nuclear reactor. For 30 years,
we did nothing. It was because of Politicians overreacted to
that one accident.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
And you know what happened?
Speaker 3 (20:37):
China built a ton of nuclear reactors and actually China
took over the technology from us. They just leapfrogged ahead
of us. They're like, all right, you idiots don't want
nuclear reactors.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
We'll lead the world in that.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
We're at a dangerous point. I think there is a
real possibility, Ben, in nine months, every single state in
America may ban data centers.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
That's how bad the politics is.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
And I'm talking to a lot of business leaders saying,
you don't understand that this has suddenly turned really dark
and really ugly. And by the way, here's how it
gets worse.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
It's a legitimate campaign issue now.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
It is a question every politician is being asked by
either people in the audience at a town hall, S Forum,
or certainly by the media. Like that's when you know
it has hit nationwide When every politician out there is running,
if you have a good comms team, they're prepping you
for these AI questions.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
It is an issue in every campaign across the country.
And what I'm telling these business leaders is if you
think the politics is bad now, if we get to
election day and the narrative that comes out of election
day is the politicians who supported AI or supported data centers,
they lost. As bad as you think the politics is now,
(21:56):
it will get 10x worse next year. Because, look, politicians
are risk averse. If they think, wait a second, if
I support data centers, I will lose my job. They
will run like scared children the other direction. And so
that herd mentality, it's why I'm not saying it's 100%
(22:18):
this is going to happen. It depends how the election goes.
It depends on where the public debate moves. But I'll
tell you what I'm urging the business leaders to do.
Have you ever studied public choice theory?
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Oh, yes.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
So it's a school of economics.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Public choice theory is a school of economics that examines
how decision-making is made in a democratic society, and it
examines it through an economic lens. And one of the
basic foundational principles of public choice theory is that if
you have really concentrated benefits... with a limited number of
people but significant benefits, and you have on the other
(22:55):
side really diffuse harms across a lot of people, and
the harms might be orders of magnitude greater than the benefits, much,
much worse harms than benefits, but they're diffuse among a
lot of people, public choice theory lays out how in
almost every circumstance the concentrated benefits will defeat the diffuse harms,
even though for society that's a much worse outcome because
(23:16):
you're getting a lot more harm than good. What does
that mean for data centers? What I'm telling any business
leader that's putting in a data center, and by the way,
those business leaders are not just tech companies. They're also
industrial companies, construction companies, energy companies, electricity companies, power companies.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Let me ask you a question because I think part
of the fear-mongering behind this is everybody thinks that these
data centers are being built by these like boogeyman companies
that you've never heard of, that just existed now. Can
we just make people understand something that I think is
really important on these AI centers? These are mainstream American
companies that need AI that are building these AI centers.
(23:56):
Throw some of the names out there just so people
understand how mainstream this is.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Oh, look, the big tech companies are all doing Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon.
They're all doing Microsoft. They're all doing massive investments. But
you've also got every big company. is using and having
contracts for data centers. So, you know, all the airlines,
(24:21):
American Airline, United, Delta, all of them. You've got ExxonMobil.
You've got Chevron. You've got every energy company is doing it.
You've got Caterpillar. You've got every manufacturing company. You look
at AI getting involved in the industrial, you know, GM, Ford, Tesla,
like every car company.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
And the healthcare industry, this is the one that I
think people need to understand the most. I was talking
to a doctor the other day at N.B. Anderson, and
he was saying that he believes that cancer will be
cured through AI because they're able to connect so many
dots around the world with data that's coming in. He
said for the future of incurable diseases, things we haven't
(25:02):
figured out how to fix yet, he said he believes
that AI... at some point will be the equivalent of
50 years of research for one year of AI. Because
when you can connect all the data and put it
all together and have these answers come back quicker and
cross-reference and cross-check studies and these clinical trials and things
like that, he thinks it will add life like we've
(25:24):
never seen before to people, not just in America, but
around the world. That's another example of why AI, in
some capacity in the future, could literally help save your life.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
And there is lots of upside. And I want to
be clear. There are a ton of downsides when it
comes to AI as well. And I'm very, very focused
on the downside. In fact, I'm the only member of
Congress who has authored and passed legislation restricting AI. And
that was in particular the Take It Down Act that
criminalized AI using deep fakes to create intimate images of
(25:55):
real people and made it a crime and forced the
tech companies to take that content down. There are lots
of very real problems that need to be addressed that
I am addressing, particularly protecting kids online.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
That are very serious.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
But the reality is AI is right now, every business,
if you have a job working for any company of
any size, AI is intertwined in your job.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
You talked about healthcare.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
If you go into the hospital and get an MRI
or a CAT scan, AI is analyzing that to discover
if you have an injury, if you have a disease,
all of that, that's where the capital is coming from
to build these data centers. And one thing to understand
is Look, we've had data centers for 20 years.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Nobody knew about them. Nobody cared about them. They were
a warehouse.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Look, you don't build a data center in downtown New
York or downtown Houston because real estate's too expensive for
the same reason.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
Yeah, you build where it's the cheapest area you can
buy land.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
You don't build a warehouse in downtown either. You build
it further out in the country in a smaller community,
and the driving factors are the biggest factor is access
to low-cost energy. But also you want real estate. It
needs to be more in the countryside where you can
get a larger space for footprint. But we've had data
centers for decades. Nobody's noticed. Nobody's cared. It hasn't impacted anything. Now,
(27:13):
there's a lot more being built now because AI has
increased the demand.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
But this massive pushback to AI.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
is not spontaneous or organic. And this massive pushback, and
understand the data center pushback is separate and discreet from AI.
Some people think, well, it's just concerns about AI. That's
not what the polling shows. The polling shows that it's
water and power that are one and two. And let
me tell you what I'm telling business leaders, Ben. I'm saying,
(27:45):
given the public choice theory, you need to make the
benefits of a data center absolutely clear and unequivocal and unmistakable.
So do not come into a community, a little town
and say, hey, we're going to put a data center
in and the result will be your electricity bill will
go down two and a half percent. As I said,
(28:09):
nobody believes you. We've seen our power bills go up
and up and up and maybe it's true, maybe it's not,
but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That's the kind of claim.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
And also, you know, you have some folks, we're going
to go in and put in a new scoreboard for
the little league.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
But at the end of the day, that doesn't address
the concern, damn it, I can't afford to pay my
power bill, and I'm having trouble providing for my family
because I can't pay my bills. That anger is real
and needs to be addressed. So here's what I'm telling
business leaders. Number one, make it explicit. Send people money.
Send them checks. Send them $ 100 a month. Send them
(28:44):
$ 500 a month. Send them $ 1, 000 a month. I want
you to imagine you're living in a small town, and
a data center is going to go three miles down
the road And the result of it is you get
$ 1, 000 a month every month going forward. Like, that's real money.
That's mailbox money. And by the way, yes, you know,
the community ought to be able to decide. You don't
want the data center to say no. Okay, you don't
(29:05):
get the $ 1, 000 a month, no data center.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
You know what?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
There's going to be another town where the residents say, gosh,
I could use $ 1, 000 a month. That would change the
politics significantly. There's a second thing I'm suggesting, Ben. I'm
suggesting to these CEOs... Go into a community, build a
data center, and tell the constituents, when the data center
goes online, your electricity will be free for the rest
(29:31):
of your life. Not down 2%, free. You don't pay
a power bill for the rest of your life. Hot
diggity damn. You want to talk about getting people's attention.
If the result is suddenly you say, we're going to
pay your electricity bill forever. You're going to get suddenly
people eager to say, no, no, no. Don't put the
data center in that town. Put it in my town.
(29:53):
I want my.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Electricity bill to go away.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And I got to say the tech world, they're just,
they don't understand the politics very well. And so I'm
trying to tell them, look, if you don't start engaging
and leaning in, you're going to wake up and it's
going to be Three Mile Island. And we're going to
discover suddenly China has convinced America to shut ourselves down.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
90 days ago, by the way, I thought it was
going to be a Republican versus Democrat issue where it
was going to be Republican governors are in favor of this.
Democrats are against Republican states. They were open for business.
Now we're seeing, as you mentioned, that changing where it
could be all against the whole country against And I
hope this show, people will share it. I hope you'll
share it with your friends because I think we debunked
(30:36):
a lot here that's important. And obviously, we're going to
keep watching this issue because it's going to affect all
of our lives moving forward. I want to move, Senator,
to another issue real quick, which has had a lot
of big breaking news over the weekend, and that was
the President of the United States of America announcing a
historic deal with a massive amount of oil on True Social.
The President's saying, we've got this deal now with Venezuela.
(30:58):
It is going to be huge for not just America,
but the world, and the price of gas could go
down significantly for Americans.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Talk about what this is and what it means.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Well, this week, President Trump announced a new deal with Venezuela,
a deal for 65 billion barrels of oil.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
That is a massive amount of oil.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of any country on earth.
And this is a deal that will be funded by
a private company, but with the U.S. government as a
major investor in the company, and under the terms that
was announced, that company will have access... to the oil
at cost, and the U.S. government is taking an equity
(31:38):
position and will get the upsides in terms of the
profits from that oil. I will say, as we're talking
about this right now, the full details of the deal
are still somewhat opaque. It is difficult to know exactly
what's going on. My reactions initially, number one, 65 billion
barrels of oil.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Is a big deal. That is a lot of oil in.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
A massive amount and and the united states getting access
to that that's good for american jobs it's good for
the economy and it's also good in the long term
for gasoline prices although to be fair do not expect
this to have an immediate impact on gasoline prices it
will still take years or even decades to build up
the infrastructure to produce all of that oil so that
(32:22):
will not happen overnight um That being said, there are
also significant concerns being raised.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Number one, this is a.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Deal that was cut with Delcy Rodriguez, who is the
interim president of Venezuela. She was Nicolas Maduro's vice president.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
She is a communist. She is a Marxist.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
She has a long history of being viciously anti-American. Maduro
was illegitimate and Delcy Rodriguez is illegitimate. Neither one of
them were elected by the people. and the Trump administration
has kept Delcy in for a period of time during transition.
What I've been saying consistently is there need to be
free and fair elections. Let the people of Venezuela choose
(33:02):
who their leadership is rather than maintaining someone illegitimate. I
still think that's the right decision. I certainly don't want
this oil deal to somehow... push off the notion that
the people of Venezuela get to elect their own leaders.
I don't think we should be maintaining anti-American communists in
power against the wishes of the people who elected them.
(33:25):
I'll say secondly, we are hearing concerns from some, particularly
in the oil and gas business. So Chevron is anticipating
putting and is contemplating at least putting billions of dollars
of investment into Venezuela. They already have significant investments in Venezuela.
And I got to say, if you're an American company,
the prospect of competing against another company that is business
(33:49):
partners with the federal government, the U.S. government, and that
has a special deal with the Venezuelan government, that's going
to make you as a private company pause and say, wait,
is this a fair playing field?
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Can I compete here?
Speaker 3 (34:03):
And so how that's worked out, it's unclear at this point,
but those are a concern a number in the energy
world are raising, and I think those are reasonable concerns
to ask. There is also the longer-term concern that this
deal is being done through the Office of Strategic Capital
at the Department of War, and it is being done
in exchange for equity ownership in the company. We've talked
(34:28):
before on this podcast how I am very uncomfortable with
this administration's taking equity positions in lots and lots of companies.
I think that is a very bad precedent. I think
it puts us on a slippery slope. They started it
with Intel taking a big equity position in Intel. Look,
if you look at the definition of socialism, socialism is
(34:50):
government ownership of the means of production or distribution in
an economy. If the federal government starts taking a major
equity position and just.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Can you say that again? Because that is the warning.
That is the warning that people need to hear. And
why you're saying when the U.S. government starts getting into
these businesses, these private businesses and ownership positions, at first
it can sound great, but this goes back to... when
we had the big fall in 2008 at Lehman Brothers,
and should America take equity positions in these companies?
Speaker 4 (35:18):
And it was a grand economic debate.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
But say that statement again, because this is what you
mean when you say the slippery slope, that if we
start this, what does it end with? Does it end
with government ownership in the biggest sectors, and then we,
as Americans, are dependent on the government, not the private
sector anymore?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
So the textbook definition of socialism is government ownership or
control of the means of production or distribution.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
In an economy.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
At the end of the day, if we end up
with the federal government having equity shares, ownership stakes in
the biggest companies of America, that is socialism.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
It is the definition of socialism.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
And there's a combination of, number one, you look at
what China does, where the Chinese government and every company
in China has what's called the golden share. And the
golden share gives them the ability to control the companies.
It makes every company an arm of the government.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
That ain't good.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
I don't want every company in America to be an
arm of the federal government. And you may think it's
great when it's Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
But you know what?
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Donald Trump is not going to be the last president.
And it ain't nearly that great if it's President Elizabeth
Warren or President AOC or whatever communist comes next. And
so I think it is a very, very dangerous proposition.
And I'll tell you, President Trump and I have discussed
this multiple times. What I am urging him to do
(36:42):
is to take these equity positions that they have taken
and before he leaves office, put them directly into the
Trump accounts of 70 million kids. Transfer them out of
the federal government. and send them to the children of
America instead, so that that way you have America with
a widespread investment in the companies of America, but you
don't have the government having the ability to control those companies,
(37:06):
having the ability to dictate. And by the way, think
about how a left-wing president would use that equity share.
Think how bad woke was. Now imagine a President Elizabeth
Warren telling every company, we own 10% of your company.
Let me tell you right now, you've got to hire 20%
transgender left-handed witches.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Non-binary, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
Like that's giving government power over the private sector is
a really dangerous road to be on.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
And so.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
I am encouraged that we have a deal to access
a massive amount of oil. That, for energy and jobs,
is good. But there are also some dangerous aspects here
that we need to be cautious about and we need
to think carefully through where this goes going forward.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
We're going to keep doing this show just like this.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
Hopefully, you learned from it. Hopefully, you'll share it with
your family and your friends.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Don't forget, our episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so
hit that subscribe or auto-download button wherever you get your podcasts.
You can watch most episodes on YouTube as well. And
don't forget, Senator Cruz's new book on Clarence Thomas is
out right now. You can grab it on Amazon or
wherever you get your books. He's a great president as well.
And the senator and I will see you back here
in a couple of days.
Host
Ben Ferguson
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