Haq was answering whether energy affordability is a political trap or an opportunity for the new Congress, having just said data centers fared worse than expected in the elections. She argues affordability can't be separated from how voters feel about AI and data centers.
…that that's a place. I mean, you know, the current administration's been very excited about advanced conductoring technologies and things of that nature as a potential near-term solution. I think those might be places where Congress and the administration could see eye to eye and move quickly.
…just had a conversation on the energy exchange with Katie Dykes, a longtime energy policymaker and regulator in Connecticut, who reminded us that many of the decisions on the cost and availability of energy are made at the state and local level, not the federal level. And there's no silver bullet.
…questions and the AI questions, because so much of the load growth that we're seeing, so much of the needs for changes on a system are coming from that new technology that's coming on board. It's not all of it. There's much more. There's also advanced manufacturing. There's also electric vehicles. There's also, there's many other reasons that we need to invest in the electric grid. That said, it is now completely intertwined in people's minds that more electricity might be helping AI. And we really need to figure out this entire morass, AI safety. What does it mean for these job transitions to be happening quickly? What does it mean to have these like loud, noisy, ugly boxes in your neighborhood? Are those benefiting the community or not? Like there's all these larger questions when we talk about energy affordability, it's very reductive to just think that it's about people's…
I'll just add on the data center front, I think if you look at the, for example, all of the referenda that were up across the country, either specifically on local moratoria or local restrictions or recalls of policymakers who'd supported data centers, they did do worse than Republicans overall…
I mean, just given the preponderance of concern among voters in this election, across the country, there were votes against data centers. I think the only vote in favor of them was in North Dakota. You know, Aliyah, will the next Congress seek to impose greater federal oversight on data center…
Yeah, well, I think it will be a failure of the next Congress to not address AI safety, AI, a new social contract for what AI means more broadly. And then also as part of that, what does it mean to have a secure and safe electricity grid to enable AI growth that doesn't put on the backs of…