National Energy Emergency...to Build AI?

January 24, 2025 – Energy expert Robert Rapier and 13D's Woody Preucil join Financial Sense Newshour to explore the reasons behind Trump’s National Energy Emergency declaration this week and its connection to the race for building the largest and most advanced data centers powering AI development. These compelling interviews feature two leading industry experts discussing this week's flurry in executive orders, particularly those related to energy policy, and the latest trends in the high-tech, energy-intensive world of artificial intelligence—both in the U.S. and globally.

Follow more of Robert Rapier's work at Forbes, Investing Daily, or at Shale Magazine.

Follow Woody Preucil or gain access to 13D's cutting edge research at www.13d.com.

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Transcript

Interview with Robert Rapier

Cris Sheridan:
Well, it's been a big week for the energy sector, of course, President Trump making a number of executive orders, also declaring a national energy emergency. We're going to discuss that and some of the implications for all of you that are energy investors invested in the oil and gas space and looking at some of the big picture trends that we're facing potentially over the next four years. Joining us today to discuss this with us is Robert Rapier. He's a chemical engineer and energy writer at Forbes Investing Daily. He's also the editor-in-chief at Shale Magazine and has over 30 years of experience in the energy sector. Robert, thank you for joining us today.

Robert Rapier:
Thanks for having me on.

Cris Sheridan:
So, Robert, I've got your Forbes piece right in front of me that you just wrote a couple days ago, "President Trump's First Day: Key Energy Executive Orders Issued," and you went through a number of the big items that we've seen so far. From a high-level view, what are some of the key takeaways from what we have seen come through Trump's desk so far?

Robert Rapier:
Yeah, there's a lot that happened. The first thing he did, he declared a national energy emergency. Now you've got to think about what are we trying to do here? What is Trump trying to do? He said we've got to bring energy prices down. And by declaring an emergency, the government can use the Defense Production Act to speed up production, distribution of energy. So, you know, the question is, are we in an energy emergency? Oil production in the US is at an all-time high. Oil prices are pretty moderate. Natural gas production is at an all-time high. Our energy exports are at an all-time high. So to declare an energy emergency says to the energy industry, we've got a problem. I mean, we've got to produce more energy. And the energy sector, the energy companies are sitting there going, okay, we kind of like things where they're at. And don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things they want to have changed, but they like more than anything stability. They, they don't want to drive prices down. And so when President Trump says, you know, this national energy emergency is to, is to rein in high prices, that is contradictory to what the energy sector itself wants. They want, you know, moderate to high prices because that's when they profit a lot. So I've seen comments recently from both ExxonMobil CEO and Chevron CEO and they emphasize, you know, we'd like stability. We don't want heavy-handed approach every four years. You know, we'd like to be able to look and project our economics and, you know, forecast our production based on, based on that, based on where we think energy prices are going to be, not based on, you know, being forced to produce more oil. They don't want to overproduce oil and crash the price. But national energy emergency says we've got to get the price down. So, you know, it's kind of working across purposes there.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah. And if I look at a chart of West Texas Intermediate crude, you know, if you look at January 17th, so this was just last week, we were at almost $80, $79 on West Texas, Brent a little bit higher. And we've now dropped to, on the day that you and I are speaking, it's Thursday the 23rd, we've dropped to a little over $74 in the $74 range. So, you know, we've seen a bit of a pullback, not a massive pullback, but a little bit of a pullback in the oil space again, given likely what Trump is declaring here to increase production and "drill, baby, drill," as he boldly declared during his inauguration speech. But what you're highlighting here is that there's, there's a difference between politics and economics and, of course, that oil companies, they sell, this is their main product. So they're not going to want to see a huge decline in the price of their main product, even though that's what, what Trump wants. One of the questions I want to ask you is when it comes to "drill, baby, drill," you know, some of the things that he's highlighted that he wants to do is open up drilling rights to all of this, various places that were either curtailed under the Biden administration, he wants to open up Alaska. There's a number of different things that could be done and are going to be done. Now, do you see this bringing on a large amount of production? I mean, will this change the, the amount of production that we're already seeing, which the US is producing record amounts of oil right now.

Robert Rapier:
Right. So for sure, it won't change anything in the short term. Now, there are probably, there's probably a lot of undiscovered oil in Alaska, and there are areas in Alaska that we know have oil. And oil companies, I'm sure, would like to get in there and explore and drill. So they're always happy about, you know, having more opportunities to go out there and explore and produce, but that's going to take years. So it may add to our oil production in the long run. And, but, but in the short term, absolutely nothing. I mean, it's going to take a while to get that, you know, up and going. I think Trump's thought here is, you know, he's going to cut all these environmental regulations and oil companies are going to save so much money that they're going to be profitable at sort of a lower price point. And there's probably some truth to that, but I think the sweet spot is still going to be, you know, maybe where we're at right now, up to $80, $70, $80. I think that's where the oil companies are going to want to see oil prices. So, you know, at various times, Trump said, you know, we're going to get gasoline below $2 a gallon. Oil companies won't produce below $2 a gallon. They're not going to go out and invest in, you know, you can cut all the environmental regulations and they're not going to make money if gasoline is below $2 a gallon, because that implies a very low oil price.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so, again, I mean, the US is already the largest producer of oil and gas in the world at this point, largely due to the shale boom. It's questionable how much of an impact we'll see "drill, baby, drill" policies have on the oil price in the short term again, because as you said, it's going to take a while for these things to be implemented. There are a number of things that can be done very quickly on the regulatory side. But what are some of the shorter-term impacts you're thinking we'll see very quickly happen for the energy sector?

Robert Rapier:
Well, probably the most immediate was the lift of the moratorium on new licenses to export liquefied natural gas. That was a move that Biden made that I disagreed with because we're exporting LNG, which is going and displacing coal in places like China. That is a good thing. And, you know, we would like to put, you know, cleaner natural gas in, in areas that use coal. And by, by putting this moratorium in place, you know, the Biden administration said, you know, natural gas is still a fossil fuel and therefore we want to tap the brakes here on this. And I wrote extensively on this and I showed, you know, if we could get China to start shutting down coal plants and using US natural gas to replace that coal, their, their carbon emissions would fall dramatically. So that's a big one there. But the thing is, you know, again, these oil companies and energy companies, they want certainty. And it's just like the Keystone XL pipeline. You know, you had one administration that was favorable and then one unfavorable, then favorable again. And TransCanada, which was the company at the time, finally just threw in the towel and said, okay, there's enough of this. And that's the problem with these swinging back and forth. So now that the moratorium has been lifted, in four years, is somebody going to put a moratorium back on there again? So, you know, energy companies are trying to navigate this and try to figure out, you know, not only do they have to forecast energy prices, they've got to forecast what's likely to happen politically.

Cris Sheridan:
Well, you just hit at something that I think was at the core of what many people see as a major inconsistency in the green energy movement or the so-called green energy transition is where, you know, we're trying to punish in many cases fossil fuel companies here in the US from operating or even move away from cleaner-burning natural gas, where in the rest of the world, and this is something that you've spoken and written about many times, we see coal usage at all-time highs, especially in places like China.

Robert Rapier:
Right. And that, that is, you know, that's what's driving carbon emissions higher is, is coal consumption in developing countries. Asia Pacific's carbon emissions are, are the whole reason global carbon emissions are going up. And that is primarily a function of their very heavy coal consumption. And anything we can do to get that down, that's the low-hanging fruit right there. If you can displace coal consumption in China, India, Indonesia, and countries like that, that would go a long way toward bringing carbon emissions down.

Cris Sheridan:
And of course, one of the first things that we did see is Trump pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Robert Rapier:
Yeah. And in that case, I, I think he's right. And, and people who have looked at this have said, you know, US carbon emissions have been flat for 50 years. They've actually declined since the shale boom happened and we are putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage if, you know, I do think we need to have climate agreements. I, I think we do need to, to try to rein in carbon emissions that are going up. But we don't want to handicap ourselves here when our carbon emissions are actually going down and then let China have free rein because we could, we could punish ourselves all we want and it's not going to impact global carbon emissions unless China and India get reined in. And that, you know, that's not happening to enough of an extent. And so, you know, I agree. I, I understand the sentiment of not wanting to be bound by treaties that punish us economically when other countries are actually driving the problem higher.

Cris Sheridan:
I want to ask you about something that one of our prior guests had brought up, that's Adam Rosenzweig at Gering and Rosenzweig. They believe that 2024 will go down as the year of peak shale productivity. Again, you are the editor-in-chief at Shale Magazine, so I know that you're also closely looking at the data. Speaking with the companies in this area, are you seeing signs of a peak in shale?

Robert Rapier:
Yes, and I'll tell you the last two years. At the beginning of the year, I predicted we will set an oil production record this year. I did it in 2023. I did it in 2024. I'm not going to do that this year. We might squeeze a little bit more out this year, but production has been pretty flat for the last several months now. We have increased a little bit in the last few months. We are up to 13 and a half million barrels a day now. But, you know, the, when, when Trump came into office, we were very much in the midst of the shale boom and oil production increased, I think about 3 million barrels a day in his first three years in office before COVID caused production to plummet. I don't think there's any possibility we'll see anything like that again. You know, it increased dramatically under Obama, and then it increased again under Trump, and it increased more under Biden after COVID kind of settled out. But if you look at the data, it looks like that curve is flattening out. You know, one thing that could change that is very high oil prices. You've got very high oil prices and companies are going to go out and they're going to produce as much as they can. But that is contrary to Trump's national energy emergency. So I could see us, whatever happens, it's not going to be, I don't think, dramatic either way. We might set another small record this year. But it's very, it's a coin flip at this point. I mean, we may come in lower this year than we did last year. And, you know, it can't go on forever. It's gone on for a long time. It can't go on forever. So, you know, these things peak and they decline. And, you know, 2024 could be the peak. We'll have a pretty good idea about mid-year, but, you know, it's, it's too early to say right now, but I'm not confident enough to make a prediction that we'll set an oil production record this year.

Cris Sheridan:
Okay. Yeah. And again, when it comes to the difference between economics and politics, obviously Trump pursuing a very pro-growth, pro-productivity, low energy price policy mix. But economic factors may dictate otherwise. As you're pointing out, we do see some very clear signs of a peak in productivity in the shale patch. That's where most of the growth has come from in terms of our oil and gas production. But we also see, this is an article that just came out, recently posted at Reuters, talking about how we now see the rig count here in the US has fallen to a four-year low. So if the number of rigs is going down and if we're seeing a productivity peak in the shale patch, that would seem to argue for higher oil prices. What are your thoughts?

Robert Rapier:
Right. Well, one thing to say about that is rigs are getting more efficient in producing oil. So you can produce more oil with fewer rigs. But you know, these companies are forecasting prices. I mean, rig count is a function of where they think oil prices are going to be and if they think oil prices are going to be sort of modest. I mean, you know, we saw a huge oil price spike after Russia invaded Ukraine and rig count went up and people wanted, companies want to drill for more oil. And right now, if we're looking out, we see, you know, flat to declining oil prices and energy companies are not so enthusiastic about investing money into more drilling and that eventually will impact production and we will see, you know, a decline unless prices, you know, pop back up.

Cris Sheridan:
Do you have any forecasts in place for the oil price or for the energy sector for 2025?

Robert Rapier:
I, I make energy predictions almost every year and I, I don't know that I'm going to do that this year. I, there's so much uncertainty. A lot of it would be a coin flip and I don't think that's very helpful. If I have a strong feeling like last year I had pretty strong feelings on, you know, yeah, we're going to set a new oil production record this year and we did. I had not as strong a feeling on oil prices, but I got pretty close. You know, I, I think I overestimated prices by just three or four dollars on average. So it was, it was pretty close this year. It's, it's hard to say. There's going to be, you know, a lot of it's going to depend on what legislation happens. So that's another point. You know, Trump made these executive orders, but some of it's going to have to be followed up with legislation before it has any teeth. National energy emergency is just sort of symbolic unless we get some legislation that, you know, actually does something that actually creates incentives for these oil companies to produce.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah, it's a very good point. And that runs right in line with something that we've been saying at the start of this year that, you know, when we analyze the markets and the macro trends, we typically look at it from a three-legged stool involving the fundamentals, the technicals, and the politicals. And as we've been arguing, the politicals, we believe are going to have a much greater influence this year than we've seen in the past. And that includes, of course, you know, fiscal policy, monetary policy, but also regulatory policy of which we're discussing today when it comes to, you know, drilling rights, regulatory policy on the energy sector, and also geopolitics falling into that political bucket as well. So politicals are going to be a major force here. And there's a little bit too much uncertainty, as you see it, to make any bold forecasts on the price of oil.

Robert Rapier:
Yes, my crystal ball is cloudier this year than it has been in a while.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah. Okay. You know, one interesting topic that we've been discussing on our show with a number of experts as well is how we see the energy sector tying into this huge boom. Now that we see with data centers and AI, as you probably know, the AI bull market, if you want to call it that, just seems to continue to power forward. And a lot of that is centered around what we see with data centers. There's about 8,000 to 10,000 data centers globally, about half of them are in the US, and Trump just talked about Project Stargate with a number of big tech investors coming together to invest in more and more data centers. But you know, if you're talking about a data center that's anywhere from tens of thousands to up to a million square feet housing tons and tons of different servers, obviously all these clusters of supercomputers, they require 100 megawatts, 150 megawatts of energy. That's tens of thousands of homes worth of electricity. Any thoughts on how you see those things playing out?

Robert Rapier:
Sure. And I wrote a lot about AI over the past couple of years. I don't know that the average person properly appreciates the sort of groundbreaking thing that AI is and is going to be. You know, there have been, in my lifetime, there have been some really revolutionary things that happened. You know, people say, you know, game changer all the time. You know, the internet was a game changer. Smartphones were a game changer. And AI is going to be a game changer. And it may be a game changer bigger than smartphones, but the flip side of that is incredible energy demand and these data centers popping up. If you look at the earnings calls from utilities last year, every quarter, every one of them are talking about the demand growth from data centers. And so we're seeing the sleepy little utility sector finally start to pick up. And you know, you see companies, especially those that can sell competitive power, and you know, in investing daily in utility forecaster, NRG Energy is one of our holdings, and it was up something like 80% last year. And that was because of AI and data centers. That's because they are exposed to the competitive power market. So that is definitely a place to be investing. That's a place that, you know, utilities are going to have to figure out a way to manage this. And you know, you don't want to punish the average electricity consumer by jacking up prices. And especially regulated utilities can't do this easily. But, you know, they've got to figure out a way to navigate this because AI Genie is not going to go back in the bottle. It's going to get bigger and bigger. It's going to consume more and more power and it is going to be a huge story. And I honestly think it's going to be bigger ultimately than the smartphone. Not as big maybe as the internet, which changed everything in our lives. But AI is going to change just about everything in our lives. My son has already changed his college major because, you know, he's looking out and he's saying, you know, the job that I wanted to do, I think is going to be threatened by AI and so I'm going to do something a little bit different, something that, you know, relies on developments in AI going forward.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah, yeah, I use AI for almost every aspect of what I do here at Financial Sense, but that's increasingly being implemented, like you're saying, into all aspects of business. It is a game changer. It legitimately is a game changer. And we just spoke with Bloomberg's head of technology research, and he seemed to believe that when you look at the data, there's no slowdown in spend from these big tech firms, hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, you name it, towards data centers. And now with this Project Stargate, we'll have to see where that goes. With a $500 billion investment said to be laid out over the years ahead, we'll have to see how much of that money is actually committed. But the idea is to continue building these data centers moving forward. And I want to bring attention to, because I think that this is really symbolic of what we're talking about. Elon Musk building Colossus, now the largest supercomputer in the world with 100,000 GPU cluster, and that was built in Memphis, Tennessee. Record amount of time. Why did he choose Tennessee? Low electricity prices. They have hydropower, they have nuclear, but you know, Texas, other parts of the US also being looked at. So you have AI with data centers and now you have the whole energy infrastructure to come into that with a much more friendly administration. Let's say, who wants to beef up the electrical grid, who wants to provide that limitless amount of energy that AI needs. And a huge part of that again now is a move away from renewables as many of these data centers and big tech firms were initially committing capital to and much more now towards natural gas and nuclear.

Robert Rapier:
Right. And you mentioned, you know, is it a bubble? Yes, it probably is a bubble. But remember, you know, we had a dot-com bubble once too, and it imploded. A lot of those companies lost a lot. But many of those companies didn't go away. I mean, the internet didn't go away, the web didn't go away. That's going to happen here. We're going to see some companies that are overinflated based on hype and promises. But the ones that are really delivering something here will still be standing. So, you know, we may see a bubble pop, and you know, we did with the internet. We saw the dot-com bubble pop, but the internet continued and companies continued to grow. And many of the companies that were there when that bubble popped are still there today.

Cris Sheridan:
Right, right. And there's many aspects of how you can invest in this trend, which is underway and it seems to be still moving full steam ahead. As you look at 2025 and focusing on the energy sector here, what are some of the ways that people can invest around these trends?

Robert Rapier:
So around AI specifically, I mean, as I said, we, we are invested in NRG, but there's also Constellation. There are a few companies that are in that competitive power space, like independent power producers. What, what you want to avoid there is the regulated utilities that, you know, they're going to be a lot more constrained in making high profits. They will benefit, but they're not going to benefit like a company like NRG that can go out there and sell competitive power. You know, you want to look at the pipeline companies. Pipeline companies have done very well since the election. And that was based on the belief that, you know, energy production is going to continue. There's going to be less regulation and getting new pipelines built. The utilities that use this energy, they're going to have to buy that energy from energy companies and they're going to have to transport it by a pipeline into the, into the utility, into the power plant. So, you know, there's companies and infrastructure that, you know, energy infrastructure that should benefit. A lot of the natural gas producers should benefit. I mean, the LNG export ban being lifted, that's bullish for natural gas prices. One of the predictions I do have, and it's, you know, the forward curve says this, so it's not, you know, exactly a revolutionary prediction, natural gas prices should go up this year. We should see, you know, last year was unusually low. We should see more and more LNG exports, and we're going to see more and more demand and production for natural gas. Last year flattened out and it may, we don't have final numbers yet, but we may have dipped last year for the first year in a long time. We were running neck and neck with the year before, but it looked like we might come in a little bit lower than 2023. At the same time, demand is ramping up. So I think natural gas prices, we will see those pick up this year. And the forward curve says, you know, that's likely.

Cris Sheridan:
What are your thoughts on investing in the nuclear uranium space?

Robert Rapier:
So, yeah, and uranium prices just, just hit, I think it was an all-time high. Nuclear is the only way to go, especially if we are serious about low carbon energy. We have got to be building nuclear plants. Their China needs to be building nuclear plants and showing they are. Yeah, they need to be doing it, though, and shutting down their coal plants. China, the issue with China is they're increasing energy in every area. Right. And that's, that's where, you know, we have a problem. But yeah, I think nuclear is about to see a renaissance and I just, I don't see any other way around it. I don't see any way we're going to meet the power demands going forward without more nuclear power. So I do think that nuclear hasn't been a lucrative place to invest in for a long time. But I think that's about to change.

Cris Sheridan:
It appears that we're seeing the beginnings of a nuclear energy renaissance. And one big reason for that, again, is we've recognized, as you've spoken many times on our show, renewable energy is intermittent. It doesn't provide that 24/7, 365 baseload power that we need to have a stable electricity grid and to keep electricity prices low. Nuclear needs to be part of that, but also natural gas, clearly. And Trump is going to do everything that he can to make sure that we have that baseload energy.

Robert Rapier:
Right. And I, again, I can't emphasize that enough. That is one of the most significant things he could do is try to incentivize and make sure that we are investing in nuclear power. And you know, it has to be done safely, but it can be done safely. I mean, people have been burned and you know, they're scarred by images of Chernobyl and Fukushima. You know, we can build fail-safe plants that don't melt down, you know, if something catastrophic happens. And that has to be the design and it has to be communicated to people. Look, you know, this, these are the plants of the future. They're not going to melt down and cause an entire city to have to evacuate. This, this can't happen anymore.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah. And by the way, you know, some of these plants that you mentioned, these were built in the 60s and the 70s. We've seen a huge number of advancements in terms of safeguards, manufacturing processes. There's a lot that I think we can implement in terms of new designs. Of course, there are small modular reactors that are being worked on as well. You know, China, it takes them about, I think it's like three to five years on average at most. Five being probably on the longer side to build a nuclear reactor where here in the US, it's 10 to 15 years. So if we could speed up the regulatory process, which is very, very cumbersome.

Robert Rapier:
And that's one area where the national energy emergency may help to the extent that it can help get projects approved faster. You know, that it may have an impact in that area.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah. And that's, that's one thing that Trump is obviously doing and many in his administration are very pro-nuclear as well. So with Trump also saying that we need to have nuclear as part of our baseload energy source. So maybe we are looking at the beginning signs of a nuclear renaissance here in the US. It certainly seems like a number of countries around the world, aside from perhaps Germany and certain parts of Europe, are moving in that direction.

Robert Rapier:
Yeah, I mean, I think Germany is, I think they were short-sighted in shutting down their nuclear and we saw, you know, coal consumption tick up in Germany as a result of that. So I, I don't think they should have done it. It was fear out of Fukushima. It was, you know, really an appreciation for the fact that if a meltdown happens, you may have to evacuate a city permanently, but you need to go back to the drawing board and say, okay, is that possible with these designs that we have? I always give an example of a fail-safe design is something that shuts down power and shuts down safely if there's an emergency. And the example I always use is an electrical fuse. Electrical fuse gets too hot, it melts, electricity stops, that's it, the end. And that is a fail-safe design because you will never make a fail-proof design. There will always be failure points. You just have to make sure that when they fail, it fails in a safe and shuts down in a safe manner.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah, very good point. And I like, I do like to remind people too as well that we have had both submarines and naval carriers using nuclear power to operate them safely for many, many decades. And those are modular as well. They're moving around all over the place. So it can be done. It can be done. Well, Robert, as we close, would you mind telling our listeners the best way that they can follow your work at Forbes Investing Daily or otherwise?

Robert Rapier:
Yeah, sure. So, you know, in Forbes, I'm writing five articles a month for Forbes, generally just covering the overall energy sector. At Utility Forecaster, I have three investment newsletters there for Utility Forecaster where I'm, I'm discussing specific investments. We've got model portfolios there where we, you know, suggest, you know, this, this could be what investors invest in. And then Shale Magazine, I'm editor-in-chief there. We've got a website and we've got a quarterly issue and then we've got a podcast that goes out every week called the Energy Mix. In fact, as soon as I'm off here, I've got to do an interview for the Energy Mix.

Cris Sheridan:
All right, well, Robert, again, it was a pleasure to speak with you to get an update on your outlook for the energy sector, especially given the flurry of executive orders and the national energy emergency that was declared by Trump. And as you pointed out today, there is a crucial difference between politics and economics. We're going to have to see which one of those wins out for 2025 and the years ahead. But lots of things that are obviously in flux here. So we look forward to speaking with you on our show in another few months.

Robert Rapier:
Yeah, it's going to be a very interesting year.


Interview with Woody Preucil

Cris Sheridan:
Well, today we're going to discuss the global buildout of data centers, the problem of cooling these massive buildings and fortresses. We're also going to talk about artificial general intelligence and where China is taking the lead in a number of critical sectors and industries. Latest data coming out showing that they've even advanced further than what was previously shown. So some very interesting trends that we're going to discuss today. Joining us on the show to speak with us about these topics is Woody Preucil. He's the senior managing director at 13D Research and Strategy. And if you're in the financial business, you've probably heard of their "What I Learned This Week" newsletter. It's widely read, considered must-reading material by many investment legends including Stan Druckenmiller, Howard Marks, the late great Byron Wien, and many others. You can follow more of their work at 13D.com. Woody, thank you for joining us today.

Woody Preucil:
Oh, pleasure to be here, Cris. Thank you very much for having me.

Cris Sheridan:
I always look forward to our conversations because you guys are always on the cutting edge of what's happening. One of the biggest topics is data centers. The US is in the lead with building data centers. Virginia has the largest number out of anywhere in the world. But you wrote in one of your recent reports that we're seeing this buildout really start to explode in other parts of the world as well. Let's dive into that.

Woody Preucil:
Yeah, sure. Well, just to set the foundation, you know, artificial intelligence is really driving a trillion-dollar global upgrade in architecture for data centers to what they call accelerated computing. That's dividing the computer workloads between CPUs and GPUs, which is more energy-efficient and provides greater performance. And that's really being fueled by three factors: the rapid adoption of generative AI, the exponential growth in the size of these models, the parameters, and then also the computing burden that's necessary to design, test, and create these next-gen semiconductors, which is a huge business itself. So yeah, there's growth worldwide. Southeast Asia is emerging as a pivotal hub for data center capacity and expansion. A lot of the big tech companies are expanding there. Lots of growth all over the region—Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, et cetera. Southeast Asia's geopolitical and economic stability is a competitive advantage. It's helping drive the growth in the sector, which is, you know, averaging about 4.8% annually since the beginning of the century. So fast-growing region. And Cushman & Wakefield expects the Southeast Asian data center demand to grow at about 25% annually through 2028 compared to about 14% in the US. So by 2028, Southeast Asia is expected to generate the second-most non-US data center revenue. Singapore is in the lead with roughly 100 data centers there. They represent about 60% of the regional capacity. But other Asian countries are expanding rapidly as well. Malaysia is particularly interesting, actually. There's an area of Malaysia that's just right over the border from Singapore where you'll have, you know, a Chinese data center and a US-based company data center sitting right next to each other. So in many respects, this tech arms race is playing out in Southeast Asia, even on the data center front.

Cris Sheridan:
So when we think about moving forward again, a lot of the data center buildout has already happened in the US. It doesn't mean that there's not room to grow still, but as far as percentage growth, we're probably going to see that really start to pick up in this region of the globe.

Woody Preucil:
Yes, correct. And I was in Singapore earlier this year, and they are stuck into a government official there, and they're expanding their grid, increasing their grid capacity by about a third over the next several years. And you know, this is really to, to accommodate their growing data center business in the region.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah. And as we know, these data centers require a lot of energy, a lot of power. In Virginia, with the number of data centers that they have, it seems like there's a data center on every corner over there. The data centers consume about 25% of the electrical grid power, a little bit less so in many of the other states. But of course, power is becoming an increasing concern, and we see many big tech—almost every big tech company now, whether it's Amazon, Google, Microsoft—all plowing into nuclear power as a way of providing the baseload source of power for these just massive, you know, million-square-foot buildings or even larger in some cases. But you talk about when it comes to the infrastructure and buildout of these data centers, cooling is really, really a pivotal part of all this. Do you mind telling us a little bit about what we're seeing on that side of things?

Woody Preucil:
Yes, just one point on the electricity side. So globally right now, this is a semi analysis firm that predicts that, right, they estimate that right now global data centers globally consume about 1 to 1.5% of total energy generation. But that's going to about 4.5% by 2030. So basically tripling and higher beyond that. So because the energy needs from artificial intelligence are growing so rapidly, but equally big, and it's a little bit less talked about, is the water that's required to cool these data centers. So right now there's about 8,000 data centers globally, and this number is growing exponentially. And cooling is the fastest-growing expenditure for running the physical infrastructure of data centers. So that cost to cool data centers is increasing by about a 16% compound annual rate. And this is being driven by the increasing complexity of the workloads and the total water usage to cool these data centers is estimated to be growing to about 6.6 billion cubic meters annually by 2027. That's, that's a lot, a lot of water. Google and Microsoft saw their total water consumption in data centers increase by 20 and 34% respectively in 2022. And you know, the training of a GPT-3 model in one of the advanced data centers consumes about roughly 700,000 liters of water. So there was a study done that estimated that ChatGPT-3 model uses roughly 500 milliliters of water for every 10 to 50 prompts. It depends on where the location of the data center is. But the US running in the US, it's about 30 inferences concerns uses about 500 milliliters of water. And so the more advanced models like ChatGPT-4 or Claude 3 or Gemini 1.5 Pro, you know, may use even more water. And so there was analysis done that, you know, right now ChatGPT receives about 200 million daily requests. And so that, that implies that over 3 million liters of water is used daily for ChatGPT in terms of cooling.

Cris Sheridan:
Massive amounts of water. And what type of water is this? It's gotta be recycled water.

Woody Preucil:
Yeah, yeah, they can, they can use—some of it's returned to the earth, but some of it evaporates, a lot of it evaporates. And so it, it, you know, returns, it goes back into the, into the, you know, climate cycle when it evaporates. But you know, the stage is set for, for using more water. And there are new technologies emerging like liquid cooling because these, the, the racks in the, in the data centers are getting more dense. So right now, you know, like high-density rack in a data center server rack is, uses about 30 kilowatts. But the latest GPUs use about 160% more energy than the previous model. So that's pushing these data center rack sizes to 40 kW. And generally, it's thought that, that this rack size will scale rapidly to over 70 kilowatts. So it all requires more, you know, more water. And so liquid cooling technology has several advantages. It's more scalable than chilled water systems. And it eliminates the need for sophisticated refrigeration systems while achieving significant energy savings. So studies have shown that the liquid cooling technologies can cut power consumption at a facility by about 20% while increasing energy efficiency by more than 15%. And there's three basic types of liquid cooling technologies. First is the rear door heat exchangers. They provide a hybrid approach that combines traditional air cooling with liquid-filled radiators that attach to the back of server racks. The second type is direct chip cooling that circulates liquid coolant directly over the heat-generating components like GPUs. And then the third is what they call immersion cooling. And that involves submerging the servers and the IT equipment in a dielectric liquid which is non-conductive and eliminates the risks of electrical shocks. So the market forecasts for immersion cooling itself could expand from like say a $250 million market a couple of years ago in 2021 to over $1.6 billion by 2027. So this is a fast-growing, fast-growing area.

Cris Sheridan:
Right. Because as you wrote in your report and as you may have mentioned earlier, cooling accounts for 40% of the power that is used in these data centers. So this is a massive, massive expense just going to making sure that these things aren't overheating because there's a lot of heat being generated by all the computation. Of course.

Woody Preucil:
Right. And there was a report done by RBC Capital Markets a little while ago, earlier this year, and they're estimating like a 30% compound annual growth over the next five years, which would increase the total liquid cooling market to roughly $8 billion by 2027 from about $2.8 billion in 2022. So very rapid growth.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah. So I guess here's the thing from an investment standpoint, you know, if you are investing in companies that either are assisting in the buildout of these data centers or in the servicing of these data centers, you want to be looking at those that have an exposure to the parts of the world where we're seeing the most growth now, like you said, Southeast Asia. And then the second would be especially to be looking at these data center service providers or infrastructure companies that are also using these next-generation cooling to try to lower that expense. So those are two areas is investment angles. So as you mentioned, we're seeing obviously AI is growing by leaps and bounds. And every one of these new AI models that come out, particularly the latest one from OpenAI01, they require more compute and O1 as well. I mean, it takes more time to quote, unquote, think and reason. So it takes more computing time. The data centers, its data centers are the, the key building blocks for these things. I mean, semiconductors, of course, but massive millions of semiconductors all housed within these data centers to power these AI models. The AI models are continuing to require more and more power. So you have a number of issues. You have, of course, you need more data centers, which all of these tech CEOs are saying they need more electricity, which is why they're now investing into nuclear. They're going to need cooling. That's going to be an ongoing problem for many years. But let's talk a little bit about another aspect of this because I think this is a really fun part of the conversation. It may be scary for some people, but that's artificial general intelligence. Previously this was considered something just out in sci-fi territory, but it is now a legitimate thing that these companies are saying is on the horizon, some saying even as close as next year. So would you mind breaking that down for us in terms of what is AGI and how are you thinking about this?

Woody Preucil:
Sure. Artificial general intelligence refers to an AI system that can basically accomplish intellectual tasks that are normally performed by humans. So it would have the ability to do multiple tasks that humans do. So, you know, just think of it simplistically as human-level intelligence. Right now we're in an era of narrow AI where artificial intelligence is designed to do specific tasks. But we're transitioning to a broad AI era where they, you know, with these large language models where they can do more multiple tasks. But the, the holy grail, so to speak, is the artificial general intelligence. And the idea is that once we achieve artificial general intelligence, then the system can learn by itself. And because AI can do so many things faster than humans, it will learn at a fast rate, rapid rate, and then within, you know, a period of time, let's say a few years or maybe less, it's hard to say, you could achieve artificial super intelligence, which would be a machine that has the intelligence equivalent of, you know, a million humans or, or more a billion humans. So, and that's the scary part, you know, that you read about in the general media, but this concept of AGI has been talked about for a long time. Benedict Evans, he's a technology analyst and worked at a VC firm, Andreesen Horowitz, previously. And he's noted recently that, you know, every few decades there's a lot of excitement about AGI. And each prior attempt has led to an AI winter because scientists discover that there, you know, there's some unknown number of breakthroughs to reach the AGI. However, you know, there's, there's evidence that it could be different this time. There's, you know, it's possible that they may be able to achieve this holy grail of machine intelligence. So for instance, last month you mentioned OpenAI's new Zero1 model that scored an IQ of 120 on the Norway Mensa test and that surpassed all the other LLM models.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah, it blew them out of the water.

Woody Preucil:
Yes. And, and in other words, the, the 01 model basically scored one and a third standard deviations above the mean, or that's higher than 95% of all humans. So, but other experts have talked about this as well. Mo Gawdat, he's former chief business officer at Google X, he's also a bestselling author of several books. He noted that the ChatGPT scored an IQ of 155 on specific tasks. So that's very, that's, I mean that's, you know, Elon Musk is around 150, 155 apparently. And Einstein has been estimated to have an IQ of like 160 or something like that. So the smartest people on certain specific tasks. And, and Gawdat, you know, underscored that there was a 10x improvement between ChatGPT 3.5 and the latest version. And so even if there are no additional breakthroughs in AGI or AI, you know, AI will continue to grow exponentially for the next four or five years. But if we see another 10x increase in improvement of the computation, you know, like, so intelligence, that would mean that you could see it'd be equivalent to like an IQ of like 1500 or something. So that would be like, you know, an average human as a two-year-old talking to Einstein, we wouldn't have any idea what these machines are talking about. So there was an analysis done recently by the Special Competitive Studies Project and they outline three basic ways that artificial general intelligence could arrive. One is through these continued improvements in these large language models like GPT. 4 Another way is new approaches and AI tools that improve and converge, leading to AGI or AI will transform the fundamental technologies upon which it depends, like compute, power or data, microelectronics, networks, energy. And then the fourth possibility is that all these converge. They all combine these other three megatrends I just mentioned to create AGI. In a recent interview, Eric Schmidt, he's former CEO of Google and he's also Chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence for the US and he did an interview and he made the case that in the next year or so there's going to be three very important developments in AI occurring. One is very large context windows. So you can put a huge amount of data into this context window and that it's basically essential to short-term memory. And that will fundamentally change how humans interact with machines because it'll enable the AI to handle immense amounts of information and maintain context over longer dialogues. Second key development coming is very powerful AI agents. This will enable these large language models to learn the principles of a new subject such as chemistry, and then they can add it to their understanding. So that will make them even more intelligent. And then the third and perhaps most disruptive is moving to a text-to-action model. So right now we've been basically in an era where it's language to language or text input to text output, but soon it'll be text to action. That's another feature of these AI agents. So you know, in the interview Schmidt gave the example of how, you know, the US government is looking at banning TikTok. And you know, but theoretically with text action and powerful AI, a student could say, use, you know, could instruct an AI to create a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all their music, put in its prep, you know, that person's preferences, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it, and in one hour, if it's not viral, do something different along the same lines. So you know, that is the command boom, boom, boom, boom. Right? You understand how powerful that is. I mean, you know, it's just, it's amazing what these AI agents will be able to do in the very near future. And so even if you don't, I mean this is not artificial general intelligence, this is powerful AI, more powerful AI. But you know, one of the other aspects of the OpenAI 01 model is, is that until now the bulk of the progress in the language, large language models has been language driven. But this new Model 01 is really focused on multi-step reasoning and that's a process that's required for advanced mathematics and software coding and other science engineering based questions. And so the previous large language models have lacked these problem solving skills in drug research and material science, coding and physics. But this new Model 01 is also nicknamed Strawberry. It implements a chain of thought technique that allows it to learn and recognize and fix its errors and break down complex actions into smaller ones. So for instance, the model ranks like in the 89th percentile for competitive software coding questions on code forces. And then it would also rank us alongside the top 500 high school students in the USA Math Olympiad answering questions with about an 83.3% accuracy compared to like say 13.4% for GPT4O. And then the model is also trained to answer PhD level questions and feels like astrophysics and organic chemistry. On that it averaged accuracy about 78% versus like say 69.7% for human specialists. Also very powerful AI moving a step closer. But then there's also another company called SingularityNET, it's founded by Ben Goertzel. He's a very well respected scientist in the artificial general intelligence community. He's also an author of several books. Goertzel's system uses open source code, open ended cognitive architecture, diverse algorithms and he sources the data and manages ethically and his approach is that it decreases the need for data and computational power and energy compared to the standard deep neural networks. Anyway, he thinks that he's on track to have what he calls a baby AGI by early next year. There's a lot of progress being made in the field. I mean it's, we don't know when it's going to happen but it's looking increasingly like, like it be able to happen. And another, another key aspect of the progress in Goetzel system is that they're building their AGI system by taking the LLMs and then combining it with other tools like logical theorem provers that can reason and then evolutionary algorithms that can create and they recently have formed an alliance with a couple other AI initiatives, Ocean Protocol and Fetch AI and then also they are merging with well the Kudos, it's a decentralized cloud network. They're merging with the artificial superintelligence society, ASI. So that's going to give go the computer the compute power to scale up his AGI system next year. So we'll see, we'll see what happens. But it's pretty exciting stuff.

Cris Sheridan:
It certainly is. And we've been speaking with another leading AI researcher on our program for many years. This is Dr. Alan D. Thompson. And his research is, is cited and used in even academic papers co-written with big tech firms and you know, some of the leading institutions that are working in this area. But he tracks and he has an AGI countdown where he tracks every incremental development that we see in the AI space and uses that to say how far are we along in developing AGI? And with the most recent release of as you said last month in September of OpenAI's Zero1 model that has now jumped his, bumped his AGI countdown from in the 70 range up to 81%. That was a big jump just based on O1 because of the fact that he had said, you know, I mean, if you look, it's now blown all of these other large language models out of the water when it comes to IQ tests, but also on a series of different exams of benchmarks that they use for testing these LLMs. But even more importantly now it's reached the upper threshold of questions that we're able to even design to test its intelligence. And I think, you know, like you said, according to Ben Goertzel's work, we could be looking at a very rudimentary form of AGI as early as next year. And you quote Eric Schmidt again, he says AI is going to have an impact on the world at a scale that no one understands yet. So I think that that's a very important quote. And from an investment angle, you have another quote from the CEO at Digital Bridge. This is the company that's helping to really build out the infrastructure, invest in the infrastructure, build out of AI and you know, everything that we need the cloud for these things. And the CEO says in the last decade, I'm paraphrasing in building the public cloud, the cloud infrastructure, you know, is about $5 trillion, but in this decade it's going to be about six to $7 trillion in building out AI. And AI requires three times more. The compute power requires more infrastructure, more facilities than the public cloud did. So that just gives you a sense of what's coming. We're seeing that, right? We're, we're in the midst of that right now. Let's switch over to another really important subject and this was something that you zeroed in on in one of your recent research reports. What I learned this week that I think is, is mind blowing and this is a very important trend. This is something we just touched upon with Louis Gov and another guest as well. And that's just how fast China is taking the lead in a number of critical industries. And it's even jumped further with some of the most recent research out. Can you tell us about that?

Woody Preucil:
Yes, most definitely. One thing I just also wanted to mention about Ben Goertzel's approach is that he's using a blockchain chain based technology and so it's decentralized. And so part of his mission there is to make sure corporations or governments don't get control of AGI and That it, and that it will help humanity rather than harm it. So that, that distributed ledger, blockchain based approach is very important.

Cris Sheridan:
Ah, and that's very different than, that's very different than OpenAI, of course.

Woody Preucil:
Yeah, yes. So, okay, switching to tech arms race. So the, you know, Eric Schmidt has underscored that the ability to innovate faster and better will determine the outcome of the great power competition. Being able to do that could give the leading country the economic and military power to govern international trade or expand its territory or garner an increasing share of the world's wealth. We've highlighted, you know, previously and we've talked about it on your show about how China's been in the lead in scientific research for some of these technologies, but now they're expanding their, their lead even further. The Australian, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute looked at something like 2 million papers, scientific papers, and they looked at the high impact papers. So this is the papers that are most often quoted by other scientists. So the 10% most cited papers. And now China has expanded its lead to 57 in the scientific research. They're in lead in 57 of 64 technologies. So basically over the last two decades you could simplistically look at this and say China and the US have effectively swapped places in scientific research. So back between 2003 and 2007, China led in three of the 64 critical technologies, whereas the US led in 60 of the 64 technologies. So been a dramatic switch there. And China's recent gains have come in areas like quantum sensors, high performance computing, gravitational sensors, space launch, advanced integrated circuit design and semiconductor fabrication. So now the US leads in only seven areas which are quantum computing, vaccines and medical countermeasures. So there you would think like say the COVID vaccines, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy, small satellites, atomic clocks, genetic engineering and natural language processing, which is, you know, like generative AI for instance, what we were just talking about. So China's been investing a huge amount of money. It shows what, you know, the benefits of long term research investment. And this is important because historically there is a high correlation between high impact scientific research and innovation and then commercialization. Right now there was another analysis done by a Tokyo based semiconductor research company. They found that they estimate that China is now only three years behind industry leader TSMC in semiconductor technology. They did this by disassembling devices. They disassemble like over 100 electronic devices every year. And they've concluded that the gap is narrowing. Specifically they found that SMICS, which is China's national champion for semiconductor manufacturing. Their 7 nanometer chip is 118.4 square meters in size versus TSMC's 5 nanometer chip, which is 107.8 square meters in size. And the two chips have similar areas and similar performance levels.

Cris Sheridan:
The restrictions that we've seen on exports to China for advanced semiconductors, it appears that this is not really having much impact, given what you just said. You know, when they're disassembling some of the latest products that are coming out of China, they're continuing to advance their semiconductor designs, their manufacturing processes. And I think going back to the earlier point you said, I mean, given that they're now taking a lead in high impact research papers well above any other country overtaking the US like you said, I mean, that naturally leads to commercialization. So it seems like we're seeing that trickling down into advanced manufacturing and commercialization through the semiconductor supply chain.

Woody Preucil:
Right. The CEO of Advanced Microfabrication Equipment in China, AMEC, he's, he believes that China is on track to achieve basic self-sufficiency in building chip making equipment this year. So historically, China's bought, you know, thousands of tools and machinery from semiconductor equipment producers. And in the Netherlands, in the US and Japan, South Korea, and during the first half of this year, China spent something like $25 billion on chip making equipment, a record. And that's more than South Korea, Taiwan and the US combined.

Cris Sheridan:
Wow.

Woody Preucil:
And by 2027, China's expected to control about 40% of the overall mature node chip production. These are the larger chips. They're not the super advanced chips like 2, 3, 5 nanometers that we read about in the mainstream media. These are the mature node chips that are used in every device, like your smartphone and your computer and, you know, devices, we take it for granted they'll control about 40% of that market. So, you know, there, there's still the bottleneck, Lithography is a bottleneck, and supply chain is not yet state of the art, you know, and the tools can be used to make chips only on basic process technologies. But the progress is coming much sooner than expected.

Cris Sheridan:
And you talk about in a recent research report how China is positioned to gain a potential monopoly in 24 of the 64 critical technologies, and that that is up from 14 last year. So that's a big jump, right?

Woody Preucil:
And many of these technologies are newly classified as high risk, like many with defense applications like radar or advanced aircraft engines, drones, collaborative robots, satellite positioning, navigation, etc. So yeah, they're making huge progress. I mean there's, you know, scientific research does not guarantee commercialization, you know, or the lead, but it's, it's just shows that they are making significant progress and they should be viewed as peer to the US And this is really what's behind all these increasing number of sanctions that you're seeing. You know, that the, you know, first it started with Trump, but now the Biden administration has continued it. They recently implemented sanctions on 42 Chinese companies and 63 Russian companies for allegedly supporting Russia's war in Ukraine. And the sanctions also impacted 18 companies in other countries like the United Arab Emirates and Turkey and Hong Kong and Kazakhstan and a couple other countries. So. And the Biden administration's continued to evaluate additional export restrictions. So tensions are rising. And part of the risk is that, you know, China could increasingly retaliate. They control the supply chains for a lot of the critical minerals that are used in these technologies.

Cris Sheridan:
Absolutely.

Woody Preucil:
Last month or recently in September, they begin, they began restricting exports of a strategic metal called antimony and it's used in semiconductor production, infrared missiles and nuclear weapons and that kind of thing. Night vision goggles, you know, they, they, they control about 30% of the world's total deposits. But they, you know, remember a lot of these because they control the supply chain and do like over 60% for a lot of these other minerals, their costs are much lower. So from an economic competitive standpoint, it'll be difficult for the west to match. But the west is still trying to build out their own critical mineral supply chain and it will be at a higher cost and it will take years to ramp up. So in this interim period, there's the risk that China could retaliate in a big way which would hurt the global technology economy or global economy overall.

Cris Sheridan:
So I mean really, China again just taking the lead. And, and they've done a tremendous job at building out this industrial ecosystem where as you pointed out, I mean, not only are they involved heavily in the mining of a lot of the critical rare earth elements, minerals that go into all of these things of the supply chain, the processing of them, you know, when we talk about building out the energy infrastructure necessary, having the regulations in place to out compete everyone, the number of research papers, and these are high impact research papers, which is an important point because when we brought this up in the past. Some of the pushback that we've gotten from our audience is you have to look at quality over quantity. And yes, China may outpace the US and all other countries in terms of the quantity of research papers. It's the quality that is in question. But I think as you are pointing out here today, I mean these are high impact research papers that are highly cited. So these are qualitatively speaking, they're advanced. You know, so this is not just a matter of, of quantity. This is high quality research as well. And the commercialization when it comes to advanced semiconductors, industrial robotics, as you're saying, you know, quantum sensors and a number of other strategic areas where they've taken a lead and in many cases now have a monopoly in around a third of these critical technologies. So that's, that's very important. And we think about what could take place after the election. Of course, you know, if Trump is elected, he has promised basically across the board sanctions on Chinese products. So some other guests have said that we could be looking at a big uptick in US China trade wars for 2025. But you know, again, the Biden administration has even been more aggressive on export restrictions, particularly on robotics, semiconductors and those areas too. So you know, it might be that it's just inevitable moving in that direction regardless of who's elected. But we do need to keep that in mind that as China has, you know, a monopoly or near monopoly on so many of these different areas, the more we push back with tariffs, with export restrictions, the more they can push back too.

Woody Preucil:
Yes. So, you know, it's, it's something that's important to pay attention to and think about when looking at the technology sector to invest. We've created a number of indexes that track these themes. 13D Automation Index, 13D Defense Index. They'll generally benefit, you know, because I think that what this, as China makes further progress is going to increase pressure on the west to accelerate investment in next generation technologies and to try and keep our lead or maintain, you know, parity with, with China. And you know, looking at the artificial intelligence sector overall, I think one of the best ways to, you know, you mentioned nuclear earlier. Uranium and nuclear is also one of our themes. I think, you know, you, in the last couple weeks you've seen quite a number of announcements by the big tech companies, Google and Amazon and Microsoft about doing deals on, on getting power supply from nuclear generators, nuclear reactors. And we think that's the beginning of a long term trend for investing in AI I think one of the lowest risk ways to invest is the uranium nuclear theme. And then also grid infrastructure upgrades because the electric grid is antiquated in many parts of the world and these two areas have multiple drivers. So for uranium and nuclear, you've got the effort, the efforts by countries around the world to decarbonize their economies to meet climate goals. You have increasing focus on energy security. So you're seeing more countries extend the lives of existing nuclear plants and lay plans to build new nuclear plants. And now you've got AI driving demand for nuclear. So multiple legs supporting that thesis. And then same thing with grid infrastructure. You don't have enough high capacity transmission lines to get the power from the nuclear reactors to the data centers or from the renewable energy projects to the urban centers. So there's got to be massive investment made in grid infrastructure. And this is the case around the world. And these companies are a much lower multiple and cheaper than say the cutting-edge chip companies.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah, yeah, good point. Yeah. And, and that's one area that, that we're particularly excited about is the infrastructure component to this data center buildout to the ongoing, as you said, upgrade of power grids which are aged. 50% of new nuclear reactors under construction right now are in China. So they're doing a massive buildout of nuclear. So is India. I mean this is a global phenomenon. There's been a big U-turn on that area. That is definitely an area that I'm exposed to as well and have been for at least a few years. That's, that's been a very strong growth area, especially with some of the recent announcements, of course, with all the big tech firms now jumping on board in this direction. But again, there's a number of long-term investment themes here that we touched upon today when it comes to the data center buildout where those data centers are now seeing the greatest number of growth. Some of the more advanced liquid cooling technology and the companies that provide that artificial general intelligence and how close we are and what's likely going to propel that moving forward. And also when we think about just how much of a lead China has taken in a number of critical technologies. So there's a number of investment themes. Of course you at 13D and your company are looking at all the different ways to invest around that. We rely on your research extensively for how we construct our portfolios and some of the companies that we're looking at. So with that said, what would be the best way for our listeners to gain access to more of 13D's work?

Woody Preucil:
Going forward, easiest way is to go to our website, 13d.com so 13d as in delta.com and then when you get there, you'll see a button in the top right-hand corner saying join 13D. If you click on that, fill out a form, then an account representative will follow up with you. And we look at a lot of different areas besides technology, geopolitics, energy, macroeconomics, gold, many of these other metals that we touched on. So thank you.

Cris Sheridan:
Yeah. Well, Woody, it's always a pleasure to get your insights. And again, we touched upon a number of what I learned this week pieces and publications at 13d.com and as always, Woody, we look forward to speaking with you in another few months.

Woody Preucil:
All right. Well, thank you very much, Cris. It's a pleasure.

Cris Sheridan:
If you have any questions or feedback on what we discussed today or if you'd like to get in touch with us at Financial Sense Wealth Management, feel free to check out our website, financialsensewealth.com or you can give us a call at 888-486-3939. For FS Insider, I'm Cris Sheridan. Thanks for listening.

For a link to our full podcast archive, see Financial Sense Newshour (All) and don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or YouTube Podcasts!

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Advisory services offered through Financial Sense® Advisors, Inc., a registered investment adviser. Securities offered through Financial Sense® Securities, Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC. DBA Financial Sense® Wealth Management. Content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or other advice.

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