July 25' Trump Executive Orders Supporting AI Development, Reindustrialize 25', Why American Dominance Depends on Power

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome back to the show . Friends , dave and I are so excited to bring another amazing episode Today . We're going to be talking headlines . It's one of our favorite things to do covering the news , keeping our finger on the pulse of things globally and mostly here in Utah , but every now and then , and more often every week , federally , nationally , right , and so maybe , dave , how are you ? I'm great .

Welcome to The Headlines Show

Speaker 2 0:28

Good to be back , Wayne , and yes , we love talking headlines Coming in hot just feeling my excitement here , Hot off the presses right , as they say , that's right , that's right .

Speaker 1 0:39

So we are coming into the last week of July now and there was an executive order that came out that was pretty darn exciting for all of us , and this executive order was on July 23rd . President Trump signed actually three orders that day , but he released the Winning the AI Race , america's AI Action Plan , and that plan was

Trump's AI Action Plan Revealed

Speaker 1 1:07

to bolster US dominance in AI , and it's quite exciting when you dig in , right , dave it is .

Speaker 2 1:15

It has a lot of implications for what we're doing and for what a lot of groups are trying to do around the US and for what a lot of groups are trying to do around the US . Obviously , you know , the premise of all of this is that there is a quote-unquote arms race in AI .

Speaker 1 1:33

Yep and we covered that , we covered that maybe a few months ago on the China-US energy race . That might have been season one . Actually , I think it was season one yeah .

Speaker 2 1:47

How quickly these things are progressing and that there is a need for us to stay ahead of that . Obviously , there's a lot of debate in that area on both sides , but most I think most people agree that they're you know , we're you know we're in a we're in a race with China , primarily , and and so in order to do this I mean things you and I have now talked about probably since day one

US-China AI Arms Race

Speaker 2 2:15

on this platform was well , in order to solve this , you have to solve power , solve power , you have to . I mean , at the heart of this is is solving power and solving infrastructure , because you can't , you can't build what we're going to need and what we're going to continue to need without doing that . And so you know this order uh , it was intended to be kind of an umbrella of like okay , here's all the things that this industry needs to stay ahead .

Speaker 1 2:45

Yeah , yeah , that's right . And it's interesting because the timing of it was right in the same day or two around when back in Pennsylvania , they were having the reindustrialization summit and that was a very impactful couple days event there . And what I'm seeing in this executive order and I'm kind of comparing all that there's a coordinated effort , obviously , and it's a coordination of the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense , which is necessary . We've talked about the implications of the US-China energy race and how that is a matter of national security , so it makes sense that the DOD would be jumping into this conversation and so both of those , those big agencies , are named in this , this new order .

Speaker 1 3:34

And you can actually go read these executive orders . I don't know if you guys have done this , but you can go to white housegov slash presidential dash actions and you can look this up . And if you and I'm sitting on the white house website and the actual title of this order is accelerating federal permitting of data center infrastructure , okay , so now we're setting the table . This is this is an executive order , not specifically about energy , not specifically about energy , not specifically about defense , but very specifically about the US government supporting data center infrastructure , and it just so happens to involve energy in a big way and happens to involve DOD in a big way , right ? So it's

Data Center Infrastructure Focus

Speaker 1 4:22

really cool to see all of those things kind of intertwining here yeah , one of the first , and so I mean I'll just jump into it .

Speaker 2 4:30

One of the first things , if you , you know , I think it's 22 , 23 pages if I remember correctly , reading it , long all of these orders , so it's it's . It'll be easy to get you know through it if you want to go , just take it all in , but we'll try and do our best to distill it . So the first first thing that one of this is trying to do is streamline permitting for data centers and energy infrastructure . So the plan calls for new NEPA categorical exclusions for data centers and associated generation facilities , plus expanded FAST-41 coverage and a potential nationwide Clean Water Act Section 404 permit tailored to AI scale sites . This , would you know ? What does that mean ? It would mean it would probably shave months or even years off entitlement and permitting timelines . And in this sector , if you heard us talk about any of this , you realize that we're kind of in a race , you know , and it's to get get a power and infrastructure stood up as as quickly as possible and as effectively as possible .

Speaker 2 5:32

And so this is you know , this is that this first part of this has helped .

Streamlining Permitting for AI Growth

Speaker 2 5:36

You know was is intended to help do that .

Speaker 1 5:39

And Dave , you mentioned , uh , one of the one of the components of this is fast 41 . And for the listeners who don't know what FAST-41 is , that is Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act and that goes back to like 2009 . That's not a new thing , but there's new enhancements around transportation and infrastructure that play into this guys . That play into this guys . So we're trying to paint a picture here of this quilt that involves all of these pieces and they all have this symbiosis that support each other , and transportation infrastructure happened to be part of what has to be improved in order that we can effectively advance the AI initiatives .

Speaker 1 6:24

Now , when I'm looking at the actual order here , there's a few key points to drill home . Number one there's a designator called a data center project . That means a facility that requires greater than 100 megawatts of new load dedicated to AI inference , training , simulation and synthetic data generation . Also talks about covered components , and that means materials , products , infrastructure that are required to build the data center projects , such as transmission lines , natural gas pipelines or laterals , substations , switch yards , transformers , switch gear and system protective facilities . No-transcript

Key Components of the Executive Order

Speaker 1 18:11

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Speaker 3 35:17

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