Are there ample guardrails for builders of American data centers?

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We're going to bring in American Edge Project CEO Doug
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Kelly on a topic that we hear about every day.
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People are up and down on, oh, my God, you're
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not putting a data center anywhere within 100 miles of
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my house. We hear that plenty. A lot of people
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tell us why we shouldn't have data centers. I think
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Doug Kelly may have a different view of this.
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Doug, welcome. Hey, thanks for having me.
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Let's talk about this. China, of course, would like to
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control all of the digital information in the universe. And
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we're not going to let that happen, last I heard.
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Am I right?
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No, not a bit.
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What's happening in terms of all of the pushback from
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communities around America about data centers? They think that it's
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going to be the end of the earth if we
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put up a data center anywhere like in the Commonwealth
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of Kentucky. But there's a need, right?
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Of course, there's a need, right?
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So if you think back in our history, right, we
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built the railroads, we built the highways, we built the
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information superhighway and the internet. All of these were generational
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infrastructure projects that had to be built. They came with
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some controversy in the communities, but we resolved those controversies
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and those concerns.
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And because we built those things, because we had this bias.
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To build, our country prospered decade after decade after decade.
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We're at that same point right now with data centers, right?
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Our entire globe runs on a digital infrastructure. And the
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question is, is America going to build that digital infrastructure
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or are we going to let China build that infrastructure
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and set the rules for the world?
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The choice is simple. America must build that infrastructure.
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Yeah, we got to make the right guardrails, though, to
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protect our communities. I hear that, you know, it wipes
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out the electrical system for a local area. The water
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system is zapped up by a data center? How much
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truth is in those claims?
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Well, communities have a right to be concerned about certain
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things like electricity use and water usage, but there's a
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lot of misinformation out there about how much of these
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resources are used. But let me step back in time
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because I think there's a great opportunity here for Kentucky.
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40 years ago, the Georgetown plant opened up in, or
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the Toyota plant opened in Georgetown, Kentucky, right? Right. That
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was a transformational investment that happened 40 years ago. Ultimately, 10,000
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people employed there. It's the largest manufacturing plant in the
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world for Toyota, and it's about $ 11.
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Billion in investment overall.
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Now, thank God the state made that investment happen because
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it's paid dividends.
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Year after year after year. All right, well, fast forward
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to today.
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In Paducah right now at that former uranium enrichment site,
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They're talking about.
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Putting $ 100.
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Billion AI data center and energy campus on that site.
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It's going to create 8,000 construction jobs, 600 permanent jobs.
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And in the same way, Kentucky turned that transformational auto
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investment 40 years ago into an economic anchor. It now
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has the opportunity to do that once again, except this
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time in AI infrastructure. And if Kentucky sees this moment,
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It'll be a big deal to pay dividends decade after decade.
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But if they say, hey, you know what, we don't
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want this here, all right, then that's a different story.
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And it's going to hurt Kentucky when it comes to
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job growth, economic security, and also tax revenue.
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The Georgetown plant, as you noted, the Toyota plant, does
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have 10,000 employees. A lot of people are skeptical about
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the numbers when they say, well, if we build a
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data center, it's going to have so many jobs. It's like, really?
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More than Gomer the Night Watchman? Who else is going
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to be there at a data center?
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First, I'm glad you asked that. These things take like
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five to six years to build. So let's just take
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that one.
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That I mentioned in the Paducah site. That's 8,000 construction.
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Jobs year to year to year.
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To five years.
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It's a five-year plan.
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So you're basically having hundreds of thousands of person hours
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being built in the state of Kentucky. So let's say
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the number of jobs that comes out afterwards is 600
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permanent jobs.
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That's just on the side alone. When these data centers
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are built, four years later, they have to retool a
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bunch of different things.
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They have to rewire a bunch of different things. They
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bring in new chillers to wire them. These create ongoing
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jobs as well. But more importantly, when you take a
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site that was essentially a brownfield site that nobody can
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do anything with right now and local economic officials are
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trying to bring as much business in as possible.
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If an entity comes by and says.
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Look, we want to make a multi-billion dollar investment in
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this site that currently has no economic value.
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Local officials have.
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To be able to seize that in a way that
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protects the local community as well. So I think with
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a lot of these different protests coming around different sites around.
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The country, it gives.
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Local officials, some pretty strong leverage to say, hey, you know,
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we're interested in partnering with you on this, but we'd
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like protections for our rate payers. We'd like protections on
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our water. We'd like a certain level of transparency. And
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the data center developers on this are going to listen
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and be like, yes, let's strike a deal because we
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see this as a win-win type of opportunity for the community,
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the state, and the business.
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And, man, we need more of those because we've forgotten
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how to build them.
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I know that there's a ratepayer protection pledge. How do
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we know the limit will be reasonable and won't slip
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away after a year or two?
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Well, look, at the end of the day, we want
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communities to make as good of deals as possible on
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these things. Right.
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And some of the stuff can be written in the law.
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It can be enforceable. But these tech companies are coming
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in to say, look.
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We want to win the AI race, and there's no
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way that we can do this without building a network
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of local data centers that brings jobs to a community,
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tax revenue to a community, and at the same time
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powers America's AI ambitions.
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So this is an opportunity in the same way like
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we had.
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This modern-day moonshot moment back when we beat the Soviets
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in the space. Artificial intelligence is our modern-day moonshot moment
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when it can.
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Create blue-collar jobs, it can create white-collar jobs. And it
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can power all the digital services that we need to
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use each and every.
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Day while making sure our country stays ahead of China
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in developing this transformational technology. At the end of the day,
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if we don't do that, we sacrifice our national security
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and our economic security as well as thousands of local jobs.
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Doug Kelly, appreciate the insights. And we'll talk again down
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the road.
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Thanks for having me.
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There you go. Back in a minute on News Radio
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840 WHAS.