Should Indiana Want To Be The State Of Data Centers? - Page 3
Should Indiana Want To Be The State Of Data Centers? Interior Secretary Doug Burgum discusses whether certain federal land should be utilized for data centers, so it’s not state conversation, but a federal conversation.
Doug Burgum joins me right now. He is the Secretary of the Interior, the former governor of North Dakota, who has a long history in the world of technology. Sir, I appreciate it taking the time to be with us. I do have questions on the tech side and how Interior plays a part in this. But from your department, people wouldn’t think the Secretary of the Interior dealing with land management across the United States impacted by the shutdown. How did the shutdown affect your world?
Well, Tony, great to be with you, and thanks for drawing light on this. But this hurts every American and across the Interior. It’s an incredible department. We’ve got all the national parks, all the tribal relationships across the country, 454 tribal nations. We deal with over four hundred National Park sites and historic sites, US fish and wildlife, all of these things. When you shut down the National Park system, we fought to keep them open, but when we had them open, there was nobody there in the boot collecting revenue. We were losing revenue every day, and you knew who was really hurting the entrance communities to the national parks, those small businesses, particularly during the you know, like fall leaf season, Great Smoky Mountains some of our most visited I think all of these losing tens of millions of dollars of revenue a day for small businesses for what I mean for what, because you know there was nothing accomplished by the Democrats, only hurting Americans.
Talking to the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, you bring up my state, Indiana, and being somebody who has this long career in tech and tech growth, you also play in the world of energy. In my state, data centers have become a front and center subject.
Do we want to be the state of data centers They take up the land, They’re not attractive, there’s not really a workforce. Is it actually throwing off a tax benefit? And what of the energy usage, the power and the water that’s utilized in your view, as you are dealing with this and seeing this and seeing of course questions about hey, can we use this land? Should states be looking at being data center states or is this a no way proposition?
Well? I think they should absolutely look at it. And every state’s got to make up their own decisions and whether they get benefit or not spends a little bit on their revenue generation. If they you know, are generating revenue through property taxes, these can be a huge lift for some rural areas. But as a country, we’re we’re in the AI arms race with China, and China didn’t take the last 43 days off. You know, they’re charging ahead. They’re adding power at unbelievable levels. I mean, there’s been a saying in every language and every culture for a thousand years that knowledge is power. But now it’s actually flipped. It’s power, is knowledge because for the first time in human history, we can take electricity, a kill a lot of electricity, and we can convert it directly into intelligence. So, Tony, I’ve even quit calling these data centers. If you’re manufacturing intelligence, these are manufacturing plants these data centers.
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