Speaking to Punchbowl News on its “Fly Out Day” show, Trump framed AI as a prize the US cannot afford to lose. “Whoever wins AI just wins. It’s that big,” he said. “It’s bigger than the internet by many times.” The line that drew attention was blunter still: “Data centres could be bigger than oil.”
The comparison was pointed. Trump said Texas, the heart of the US oil industry, was making a “mistake” in resisting data centres, and that other communities would welcome the money instead. He waved away complaints that the buildings are unsightly, calling some “the most incredible buildings I’ve ever seen”.
The energy doctrine
Behind the boosterism sits a policy. Trump’s answer to the strain data centres put on the grid is to let them build their own power. Under his plan, operators can add generation with fast-track approvals, feed spare electricity back to the grid, and behave like small utilities. Without it, he said, “we wouldn’t have one building being built”.
Some of his claims stretch the facts. Trump said a data centre can need “more electricity than the entire nation uses”, sometimes twice as much. No single site comes close. Data centres are a fast-growing but still minority slice of US power demand. The strain on the grid is real, yet not on the scale he described.
