Wyoming's Data Center Boom: Dawson Kluesner on Economic Opportunity, Public Backlash, and the Infrastructure Behind Al

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AI may live in the cloud, but the infrastructure behind it is very physical: land, power plants, transmission lines, water systems, construction crews—and communities deciding whether they actually want massive data centers in their backyard.

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Dawson Kluesner, Director of External Affairs for the Wyoming Association of Municipalities and Coordinator for the Wyoming Economic Development Association. Dawson sits at a fascinating intersection: he works with the cities and towns evaluating major infrastructure projects while also working alongside the economic-development community trying to attract investment to Wyoming.

Wyoming has emerged as an increasingly attractive destination for hyperscale data centers. It has abundant energy resources, available land, a long history as an energy-producing state, and communities looking for ways to diversify their tax bases. But the boom is also generating many of the same concerns appearing around the country: electricity demand, water consumption, noise, environmental impact, public subsidies, infrastructure costs and whether data centers create enough permanent jobs to justify their enormous footprint.

Dawson argues that the answer isn't simply to say yes or no to data centers. The real question is whether communities can structure projects so residents are genuinely better off after they arrive.

The conversation explores:

• Why Wyoming has become attractive to data center developers—and why energy availability may now be one of the biggest constraints on AI infrastructure.

• How Wyoming is trying to protect residential ratepayers, including Black Hills Energy's large-load tariff requiring major industrial customers to pay for the infrastructure needed to serve them.

• Why water remains one of the biggest concerns Dawson hears at community meetings, and how newer cooling technologies are changing the debate.

• The economics of data centers: massive construction activity, relatively smaller permanent workforces, property and electricity tax revenue, and the opportunity to diversify Wyoming's economy.

• The growing demand for electricians, welders, HVAC technicians, plumbers and other skilled trades—and why data center investment could help build a workforce that benefits Wyoming well beyond AI.

• Nuclear power, natural gas, carbon sequestration, wind and the enormous energy buildout required to support the next generation of computing.

• Community benefit agreements, tax incentives and what developers should owe the communities hosting these projects.

• Why opposition to data centers cuts across political lines—and why early, transparent community engagement may matter as much as the underlying technology.

Ultimately, Dawson offers a straightforward test for whether Wyoming's data center boom succeeds: not how many facilities get built or how many gigawatts come online, but whether the projects leave local communities financially stronger, with better infrastructure and greater economic capacity without creating unsustainable demands on residents or resources.

It's a conversation about AI—but also about energy, economics, infrastructure, public trust and the increasingly difficult question of who should bear the costs of building the physical backbone of the digital economy.

Subscribe to Signal & Noise for more conversations at the intersection of media, data, technology and AI.

#ArtificialIntelligence #AI #DataCenters #Wyoming #Infrastructure #Energy #EconomicDevelopment #NuclearEnergy #Technology #SignalAndNoise

Read the full transcript below.

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Brett (00:01.006)

Hey everybody, welcome back to Signal and Noise. This is Brett House, joined by my co-host Riel Longacre. And today we have Dawson Klesner. I'm gonna make sure I pronounce that right. I didn't ask ahead of Klusner. I knew I was gonna mess that up. They people people people that join our audience knows that I I I kill names. Yes, Dawson Kluzner.

Rio Longacre (00:07.354)

Yeah there.

Dawson Kluesner (00:14.179)

Cluesner. That's all right, it's a tough one.

Rio Longacre (00:21.54)

You should feel honored. Like you're you're joining an elite club of like all of our all of our guests.

Dawson Kluesner (00:23.255)

Yeah.

Brett (00:26.9)

Yeah, exactly. I I something to me with me in names. It's been a lifelong thing. But but Dawson joins us from Wyoming. From Cheyenne, Wyoming. I pronounced that correctly, where he is the director of external affairs of the Wyoming Institute Association, I'm sorry, of municipalities and the coordinator at the Wyoming Economic Development Association. Now that I hope you don't have to say that in cocktail parties because there's You're like a

Dawson Kluesner (00:39.309)

Yes.

Dawson Kluesner (00:51.681)

Yeah, I do all the time and it sucks. Right.

Rio Longacre (00:54.33)

It's a great icebreaker, I bet. Yeah.

Brett (00:55.648)

L let's let's break this down, right? And today we're taking a a a kind of a different course, but related to the larger AI and data and tech topics that we talk a lot about on the show. It's the the Wyoming data center boom and what it means for communities that are being asked to host it. so you know, you sit at the intersection of of kind of two jobs that are effectively the the same s same fight, maybe from opposite sides of the table.

Dawson Kluesner (01:24.365)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (01:24.406)

Right? As the Director of External Affairs for the Wyoming Association for Municipalities, you represent towns and cities deciding whether to say yes to data center projects. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. And then as coordinator for for the Wyoming Economic Development Association, you work alongside people trying to land those same projects. So it seems like you're balancing what can be contentious issues, especially in today's climate. And you've got I saw that you've got a an MBA.

Dawson Kluesner (01:32.981)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, you know it's go ahead.

Brett (01:54.386)

from from from Wyoming. So you went to school there, in economics and policy analysis, and you've looked at things like energy taxation development. And so you're sort of trained for this kind of moment in time, which it so it must be a a a really interesting and yeah, and in sense high and it's a high pressure job d shortly after you've you got your MBA, right?

Dawson Kluesner (01:57.634)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (02:07.362)

Okay.

Rio Longacre (02:09.175)

You must be busy now.

Dawson Kluesner (02:16.628)

Yeah. Yeah, no, you know, it's you know, early on in my career I will I will preface with that, but you know

I I decided to go down the path of, you know, kind of, you know, Wyoming is a legacy energy state, and I'll I'll probably touch on that at some point considering we're talking a lot about Wyoming today. but I I decided to go down that career path just because of how you know prominent the energy industry is in the state. And you know, that's kind of the the the cross section we're looking at in the state right now is you know we got a lot of energy as a state like Wyoming and data centers need a lot of energy. So I'm sure we'll we'll dive into that in depth. But but yeah, that's my background, you know, a lot of economic impact analyses around our energy industry.

a lot of policy work, you know, working with our state legislature. and now working with all of our our municipalities, you know, our local elected officials as well as you know all of our state's economic developers. So it's it's kind of funny, you know, our our municipalities work quite in lockstep with a lot of our economic development organizations. So it's an exciting time to be in this industry and doing

Brett (03:10.593)

Yeah, and totally. Yeah, and there's a lot of money being thrown around. I mean, you guys are weighing bil weighing billions in proposed investment across you know, power, water, and neighborhood costs, looking at all that stuff, right? It's kinda hard to pro to to kind of price the the costs from a a risk assessment perspective and a and a people perspective when you're when you look at that much money being offered by these data center developers.

Rio Longacre (03:33.102)

Well well, Brett, I think that's what's so interesting about it, right? So if you remember, I wouldn't say this is a complete detour either from because we had remembered that discussion with and anyone who hasn't listened to it, we had an episode called The Anti Tech Era, where we interviewed Srinivas, who was goes to Chino Paranandi, who's like professor at C. Boulder, and he's an expert in public policy. And we talked a lot about the anti tech, anti data center movement that's growing, especially in very, very deep blue today, Colorado, which contrasts to the very, very deep red.

Wyoming, which is just just north. I mean if just a couple hours north, right? I'd be at the Wyoming border. I think about a ninety minute drive. So it is it it is it's a really big distinction. So Dawson, we're excited to have you on that. We think this is a super fun discussion. And I mean personally I I think data centers are an incredible I mean, let's let's take aside the whole AI race, AI debate about should we be doing this? Is China gonna beat us? How fast should we go? Should it like

Brett (04:09.933)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (04:11.37)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (04:16.45)

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Rio Longacre (04:29.623)

Let's just put that aside for a second. I see data centers as an incredible economic opportunity opportunity for the local communities, for the states, for all the people who are actually gonna be building them. I I really think it is. But at a local level, this case has been challenged quite quite vociferously by a lot of the constituents, right? There's a big movement against them. Who's debating are these jobs worth it? there's been a lot of misinformation when you look at the pollution, the noise, the heat, the water use.

the infrastructure they need. And, you know, it's it's become a very contentious debate where I think up to forty percent of data centers, and that number is going up, are now being defeated at a local level before they're ever even started. many, many places, including Denver, now have moratoriums on data center development. New York State, the entire state has a moratorium, right? Which is which is kind of crazy. So I mean I guess our thesis for this show is that Wyoming's advantage, which and there seems to be one now, though these other states are holding back, but

Brett (05:10.689)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (05:26.733)

Wyoming seems to be opposite, full throttle ahead, is whether these investments can be turned into a credible community bargain, right? so we wanted to dive into that, talk about that, interrogate a little bit, Brett, to your point, really understand why Wyoming's taking this path, which is very different than Colorado's, and how that's turning out so far and what you see. So I guess first question then, Dawson, from your work with Wyoming communities, what changed over there? Or what forces do you think really made data centers such a major economic development opportunity? And why is the state so gung ho about?

Dawson Kluesner (05:57.505)

Yeah, you know I

I'm gonna be preaching the choir a little bit here, I'm sure, and you've probably heard this time and time again. But you know, the honestly the biggest change was that sheer growth and just the demand for communic compute computing power, excuse me. you know, what be used to be a relatively specialized economic development project really has turned into a major infrastructure development project. you know, and that that's that growth has changed for what companies are actually looking for, right? So data centers need enormous amounts of electricity and making it a lot reliable electricity of that, you know.

Brett (06:16.589)

Yeah.

Brett (06:28.194)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (06:28.396)

developable land, you know, fiber connectivity, the ability to get projects permitted and built. So that limiting factor isn't necessarily demand. You know, it's it's finding locations where infrastructure and power can support that demand, right? So that kind of puts Wyoming in a in a very different position than it was five or 10 years ago. You know, Wyoming has historically, you know, I already touched on this a little bit, but we're an energy producing state, right? And that energy advantage is increasingly relevant to an industry where you know electricity availability can determine where projects locate.

So you know, yeah.

Brett (06:59.071)

It's largely shale shale and fracking, right? Is that where most of the energy or is it also solar, wind, hydro?

Dawson Kluesner (07:05.164)

So yes, we have a we have a lot of, you know, natural gas and oil resources but

We're the biggest exporter of of coal in the United States. We actually do more than the Appalachian country Appalachian states. So we generate a lot of of coal-powered electricity and export a lot of coal coal to other states. I think it's something like forty two percent of the nation's coal comes from so yeah, so it's more of a you know a legacy energy industry rather than you know, the the burgeoning renewable industries. But you know, we we we also have nuclear developments, you know, Terra Power in Kemmer, Wyoming is is producing a 300 megawatt nuclear facility.

Brett (07:12.468)

Okay.

Brett (07:24.13)

wow, I didn't I didn't realize that.

Brett (07:32.652)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (07:39.599)

the first advanced reactor in in this in the country, if not the world, I believe. So that's really exciting. You know, we've always doubled down on our energy industries and you know that's just been a a huge advantage in this conversation. you know and on top of that, you know, we're we're a state with very few people and a lot of land, right?

Brett (07:56.973)

Yeah, yeah, that's for that's for sure. Well in Cheyenne it wasn't really it's not such a black and white issue. I mean Rio mentioned that it was gung ho, but you guys proposed a one year moratorium on data centers. or I I mean I mean no, you I'm sorry you rejected a proposed one year moratorium in Cheyenne specifically. But but at the Wyoming state level, I think it was Park County, supposed proposed zoning restrictions that would prohibit day center data centers in most areas. So those are two completely opposite sides of this of this debate.

Rio Longacre (08:08.972)

That was defeated.

Dawson Kluesner (08:12.951)

Yeah.

Brett (08:26.814)

So so is Wyoming truly gung ho or is it really still 'cause you're s you're starting to see in the in the national sentiment, that that a large percentage of of both you know, I think it's an it's it's a it's a majority at this point of both Republicans and Democrats bipartisan.

Dawson Kluesner (08:42.934)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (08:43.448)

And it's bipartisan, Brett. Even Texas has a Tex Texas has some I mean, I think their governor said they're gonna be looking at data center developments critically and there's there's some restrictions now. So it's not just from like just the far left is against it, it's also on the right too. So it is a in a rare bipartisan issue in this country.

Brett (08:57.13)

Well it's yeah. Yeah. Yeah, seventy five percent of registered voters, right? Sixty one percent strongly opposed and that's and that is bipartisan. So how how are you seeing that kind of play out in Wyoming?

Dawson Kluesner (09:10.706)

You know, I don't know if I would label it as as gung ho per se, just across the board generally speaking. but I I will say that, you know, first of all, a lot of the concerns are are very valid and and should be addressed by by these developers, right? but Wyoming is, I would say

Brett (09:13.683)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (09:26.378)

gung ho in the sense of doing it responsibly, you know, and and if we have developers that are willing to come to the table, talk with us and figure out ways to mitigate these issues. I think that that's where the state is is gung-ho in developing these data centers. We are are kind of a first do no harm kind of state when it comes to economic development. And that's the approach that you know a lot of our municipalities and our economic developers has taken with with citing a lot of these projects. You know, where they want to know exactly what their water constraints are, you know, what kind of you know systems they're

be using for for cooling in these data centers. Making sure that the right regulations are in place so that residential and commercial rate plate payers aren't being affected by these huge growing industrial loads that otherwise wouldn't be there, right? So I I would say that we're gung-ho with the caveat of we want to ensure that it's done responsibly. And we're doing all the things in terms of you know creating the right regulations and policy to ensure that that happens.

Rio Longacre (10:20.387)

Well, but d that's great. But you but you know what's kinda driven me crazy about this whole debate, right? Is that like it's there's been so much complete bullshit, right, in the debate. And I'm not saying people shouldn't be concerned about things, we shouldn't do things responsibly, do them right. A hundred percent agree with that. But you look at just the whole AI debate. First first we were told AI was going to an eliminate every every white collar job by

by twenty it said half of them would be gone by this year. I mean it's not happened clearly, right? It's if anything, it's probably created more jobs, right? I think the economist had an article a couple weeks ago about that. Then we were told it was going to be used by you know to you know for for cheating st for students to cheat at school and by by criminals, right? And then we were told it was going to destroy humanity. And then we like to say again and again we're being told these things, which I mean I get it, it's a new technology. It's a little scary. This is kind of the unknown, but like

Dawson Kluesner (10:48.214)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (11:12.725)

Most of the debate, we're told it like the whole water thing. Apparently there was one study and it was off by a factor of ten thousand, right, about how much water data centers actually use. And the new ones recycled almost all the water. So they actually a golf course uses more water than a data center, but no one's protesting golf courses, right? So I'm not saying there should be no reason for concern. And by the way, the electricity thing is that

Dawson Kluesner (11:27.132)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (11:32.415)

And and that is a that is a common thing in the the that you see in the news, the golf course argument. And it's actually true. I mean currently nationally, yeah, the US golf courses use f I didn't know this ahead of time in terms of the amount, but four hundred and twenty twenty-five to five hundred and thirty billion gallons of water a year, right? Whereas US data centers use roughly seventeen four point four billion gallons directly, which is an EPA backed estimate. So it's an order of magnitude larger.

Dawson Kluesner (11:37.184)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (11:38.253)

It's true, yes.

Brett (12:00.746)

And I think to your point, Rio, people don't realize that data centers are fueling modern digital life, right? Like data centers aren't just powering AI, LLMs, and chatbots and frontier models.

Rio Longacre (12:12.023)

Yeah, you're listening to this podcast probably on your iPhone, right? Which uses data center to actually to to run, so

Brett (12:15.754)

Yeah. Exactly. If you're streaming video, if you're watching C T V, I mean everything that's interconnected on the internet, and in digital ecosystems, you know, across this country and globally is all being powered by data centers. Everything in the cloud that we store, that we back up, right, whether it's Google or Microsoft, it's all in the cloud. What's behind the cloud? Data centers. Yeah.

Rio Longacre (12:36.919)

Yeah, you use iCloud for all your photos. Well guess what? Like that yeah, that's a data center. So

Dawson Kluesner (12:41.89)

You know, and I I would also just wanna add, you know, based on the

I've been a part of a lot of the town halls, a lot of the you know, actual on-the-ground community engagement efforts. And you know, these are all these are concerns that are about the golf course example brought up all the time. and you know, this it it stems from, you know, we're now in 2026, right? the first data center in in Cheyenne was sited here in 2012, or it was built here in 2012 and operational in 2012, and it was using completely different technology than what we have today, right? so I think that a lot of these concerns are are founded in 20 year old data, right?

Brett (13:09.898)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (13:15.336)

Like you're looking at at projects that have been on online for you know 15 to 20 years that were using different technology than we see today, right? and so that's kind of where I was saying, you know, first do no harm. Like we're ensuring that these companies are coming to the table and and utilizing you know closed loop systems. because quite frankly, we're in state that is very water constrained, right? You know, we're you know, for for Denver, you know, we're at the the top of the route, Colorado River Compact, right? so we're always in debates with these with these downstream.

Brett (13:15.733)

Yeah.

Brett (13:37.131)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (13:47.031)

It's been a it's been a drought drought conditions the last year here as well too, just as it's been a Wyoming. Yeah, it's it's it's been

Brett (13:50.881)

Yeah. And I and I read that like forty percent of national data centers are built in water restricted areas. But but I think there's a challenge with national sort of aggregate information and data, that really doesn't tell a specific county anything about the impact, the potential impact, on their on their specific community. So when you take sort of a national story that has a bunch of different separate use cases from different regions, different states,

Dawson Kluesner (13:52.108)

Yeah. So we can

Brett (14:19.562)

you know, different environmental conditions. It doesn't necessarily apply to every county by county by county. Right. It's you know, the each each one is facing sort of different things, right? From an from electricity infrastructure to water availability, all that sort of stuff.

Dawson Kluesner (14:24.908)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (14:35.331)

Brett, I think electricity one is interesting. Dawson love to hear your take on this. So, you know, if you look at Berkeley Lab ran a study, and they I think they showed that data centers currently only use about, like globally, about 1.5% of total energy consumption. US about 4.7%, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that's predicted to go up to about 12% by 2030, which is a lot. And as you know, look at all these additional data centers being built, there's no doubt that's gonna go up. So how is Wyoming handling that? Are you requiring that these data centers go be

Brett (14:50.73)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (15:05.441)

you know, behind the meter, meaning they have their own power s gen source. You mentioned nuclear power. Love you love for you to comment on that.

Dawson Kluesner (15:11.734)

Yeah, so I would say the one thing that, you know, we are definitely I would say the gold standard in this regard, at least in in the Cheyenne, Laramie County area.

Black Hills Energy, they they use what's called a large load tariff, which essentially mandates these these large industrial partners. If they're gonna be, you know, say you need a gigawatt of electricity generation, you're gonna be the one, the actual consumer of the electricity, the data center, is gonna be paying for all the infrastructure involved and not passing any of those costs onto ratepayers, right? so you know, transmission lines, generation capacity, any you know infrastructure that's needed to get this electricity out.

Rio Longacre (15:50.305)

All that's paid for by the power pa the data center developer.

Dawson Kluesner (15:53.931)

Yep, so it's in a it's a joint contract between Black Hills Energy, the power producer, and the actual consumer of the electricity. and right now it's it's pretty specific to data centers, but I think it's a larger, you know, regulation and policy around who has to pay for that. And that's that's a protect the ratepayer, right? like I said, we don't wanna see residential ratepayers subsidizing the electricity generation for these these large customers, even if even if they are utilizing their phones, you know, actually using the data centers. We don't wanna have to, you know, pass that cost on

to the residential ratepayers. And that's one of the hugest concerns that you hear across the country, right? Is that w our rates are going to be affected by these huge loads coming online. So we took a proactive step in our public service commission in lockstep with Black Hills Energy, created this tariff to ensure that that doesn't happen. We're still trying to to find ways to adopt that statewide. But here in Cheyenne specifically, all these projects are governed by that by that policy. So it's been it's been really interesting

Brett (16:42.347)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (16:53.794)

to see. And honestly one of the best tools to combat this this thing and kind of to your point, you know, you have to look at it from a a project-to-project basis, right? Like it's literally not comparable to other states when you look at developments in Cheyenne versus anywhere else in the country just because we have that alone, right? This tariff in place. So it's it's been really interesting to see how that's built out. And it's been largely successful. And quite frankly all these all these data center companies are willing to pay for this pay for the infrastructure because you know otherwise

otherwise you you are gonna meet this community backlash that you're seeing elsewhere in the in the country.

Rio Longacre (17:27.351)

Yeah. If they're not pay if they're not doing that, the rates will go up and people will be completely opposed to it. I wouldn't blame them, right? If the rates are doubling or tripling, and that's a big problem. But if they but if but if i I mean if they're bringing their own if they're paying for the infrastructure, if they're paying for net and new power generation, they're funding that and if anything that might the rates might go down.

Brett (17:27.478)

Yeah, well yeah and p and peop and people

Brett (17:34.944)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (17:39.638)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (17:44.811)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, and I I think that's, you know, largely what, you know, as an economist, that's what I would expect would happen, right? Because the ratepayers are still gonna get the benefit of this build out of transmission, build out of generation capacity, and reliability too, right? the the grid is inherently gonna be more reliable. Yep.

Brett (17:45.771)

Yeah.

Brett (17:59.041)

Yep. To s to support that industrial sort of build out, right? And and not to mention the the large amount of tax revenue that the the state or the community is gonna see as a result of of you know of this of this implementation. I think what people do is they read the the stats. Like when you think about one gigawatt, how do you actually translate that? Wrap your head around what that actually means. One gigawatt is about seven hundred and fifty thousand homes. I know a five gig

Dawson Kluesner (18:24.234)

Right. Yeah, it's absurd.

Brett (18:26.304)

Yeah, I know a five gigaw if I did the math right, I know a five gigawite data center, which would be a particularly large data center, is about four million US homes. And so people think, my God, like that that is a huge amount of electricity. But if it is offset, you know, contractually and functionally, to your point around generating more electricity, building up better infrastructure to support the heavier loads, right? Then then people and and then you have a windfall of tax revenue coming as a result of the investment with data centers.

Dawson Kluesner (18:43.138)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (18:56.484)

you know, you're you're not gonna see the the pain in your wallet, so to speak, arguably, right? my my question to you is is all that can you know, considering all that, what do you think the biggest sort of loudest voices in the room in terms of opposition to AI, what what do you think it it it's coming from? Is it more environmental? Is it more the impact on people's wallets? Is it more

Dawson Kluesner (19:00.503)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (19:21.675)

Is it the lefty loons or the righty loons? Or or both?

Brett (19:24.048)

Yeah, exactly. And and is it is it or in and do you even see the argument that, hey, it's not gonna tr it's not gonna generate as many jobs, especially long term FTE jobs, as as maybe other industrial investment.

Dawson Kluesner (19:25.975)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (19:35.138)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (19:37.581)

Yeah, that's a common criticism. the jobs are temporary. Even if they are really good, like high paying electrician construction jobs. That that is a criticism. Sorry, Brett, I cut you

Brett (19:44.225)

Yep. Yeah, it's a it's like fifty to seventy five full time employees, sometimes a hundred and twenty five, depending on the size of the of the data center. You know, and all of the investments a lot of the investment in in in labor is up front during the construction and build out ph phase, right? And that's also largely where you see the the the environmental impact is during the build out of and construction of the data centers. So how do you I mean what are you hearing on the ground from the people as well as the the policymakers that talks to these topics?

Dawson Kluesner (19:44.383)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (19:51.596)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (20:03.01)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (20:11.68)

Yeah, you know, I I will agree with what you said at the beginning, Rio. Like this really is one of those issues that if you're

against this, it's it's you can reach across the aisle and shake hands, right? Like it is really a bipartisan issue. so that's it's not the lefty lose or the righty lose. it really is kind of all the above. Just if you're if you're opposed to it, it doesn't really matter what your political affiliation is, right? but you know in in Wyoming the workforce conversation is definitely a considerable one. but we also have a huge base of of blue-collar workers, right? So a lot of the jobs that we'd be able to source in state are those

Rio Longacre (20:32.491)

All the loons.

Brett (20:35.403)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (20:48.852)

those ones that that we already have a base for here, right? Is the construction. Yep, all of your you know pipe fitters, welders, like you name it. we do have a lot of them here.

Brett (20:51.914)

Yeah. Construction, electrical, all that stuff that's gonna go into the Yep.

Rio Longacre (20:59.701)

These are great jobs. These are high paying union jobs. And the thing is people people complain, the temporary yeah, the for the one data center is, but like the data center build out we need to compete in AI. This is this is like the next industrial revolution. People to understand the amount of capital going into this is is is unprecedented. And this is like the equivalent to us like the World War Two build out for for for military. It's like, but we're doing it in data centers. It is an insane number being built worldwide, but half of half of them are being built in this country.

So I don't think people realize the scale of this. So one data center is built, guess what? Those people are gonna be going build the next one, then the next one, then the next one, and it's really it's really not gonna the only way that'll stop is if we make it stop.

Dawson Kluesner (21:39.395)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you know, to to answer your question, I and I hate to keep harping on water constraints, but that is the number one concern that we hear. I mean, you go to these these town halls or these community events, you know, you're nine times out of ten you're hearing about, you know, how much water is this using, how is this gonna impact my well, how is this gonna impact my my water rates with the the Board of Public Utilities with the City of Cheyenne, or you know, it it really is water. once you start

Brett (21:49.793)

Yeah.

Brett (22:04.051)

And and and are you seeing that in the facts, and in terms of the environmental studies that are done for the region?

Dawson Kluesner (22:07.89)

No. No, I mean you look at you know the the data center and I don't wanna misquote the the data, I don't have the data in front of me, but you know, the the Microsoft data center that we had in twenty twelve, that is a little bit more water intensive, but again, we've had it here for fourteen years. You know, it's been operational here for fourteen years and it's Yeah, right.

Rio Longacre (22:25.241)

That's like two or three generations ago in data center lives right now, right? I it's been it's been it's been changing the the innovation going to this, yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (22:32.202)

Right. And so one of the one of the newer developments that's that's being cited right now, they said that they're using I think annually six hundred thousand gallons of water, which is equivalent to like, I think it was f five or six homes. And it's gonna be, you know, hundreds.

Brett (22:32.511)

Yeah.

Brett (22:46.771)

Which is remarkable if you think about it. Five hundred or six hundred thousand gallons and it's only five or six homes. So it's actually a re it's actually a very small segment of of like total total water usage. Well, and there was a there's a really good article in the Atlantic, I think it was this week, it might have been last, from Elias Wachtel called the data center Panic is overblown. And as you can see, Rio and I are generally on that side of the fence. you know, and they and they basically cited there was a there was a a

Dawson Kluesner (22:52.929)

Yep.

Dawson Kluesner (22:57.334)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (23:11.554)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (23:15.409)

A 2025 New York Times article about a the Geor you heard about the Georgia sediment story, right? Where they described a Georgia couple whose well water went dry after meta broke ground on a $750 million data center nearby. And they suggested that construction caused sediment buildup that damaged their well, right? And when they full when they fully analyzed what was going on, they realized that it was completely it was unfounded in fact. It was not it was not fully verifiable or proven.

But but it caused a lot of fear and concern in the build-out within local communities, especially in communities like yours that are that are s that are tight on water, right, to begin with. And you're saying that what you're seeing, at least from some of the preliminary data, is that it's not not the case that they're actually using a very small amount of water

Dawson Kluesner (23:54.583)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (24:05.195)

Agriculture, US thirty trillion gallons. Now obviously we need to eat, right? But thirty trillion gallons per year. You think about that. And like data centers are less than one percent.

Dawson Kluesner (24:05.196)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (24:08.425)

Yeah, yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (24:10.21)

Yeah.

Brett (24:16.233)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, one large all I read one large albed farm, a lar is e is is basically equal in water consumption to a one gigabyte data center. Something not a large gig data center, but like a just a good size data center. which again, relative. It's all relative when you actually look at the numbers. And I think there is, to Rio's earlier point, there is some some sort of hysteria, right? Hysteria around this, right? And and like I think I read a quote that

Rio Longacre (24:21.315)

Big Ahmed is a bar is a bigger problem, yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (24:31.308)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (24:44.509)

an empty c th th the d data centers have become sort of an empty canvas in which people can express their anxieties about job precarity, unfair economy, surveillance, you know, AI slop and doom scrolling, like all these things that we are worried about because of this coming, you know, sort of AI, however you want to look at it, a dystopian AI future, a utopian AI future, a coming superintelligence. I think to me, I would argue that that that fear of that

Dawson Kluesner (24:56.578)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (25:13.649)

of something that can actually outsmart the entire human species combined as an entity is what's driving that's the AI that's that we're sort of in the face of it.

Rio Longacre (25:23.713)

Yeah, Brett, this is an almost irrational fear. Like all you add up the arguments. The water argument, c basically complete BS, right? I mean like one percent, right? It's like n it's not that has no impact on on water, right? the the l the okay, the electricity one. Okay, well if if they were being if they're being built on the grid, right, then that would be a problem. But you as as you mentioned, Dawson, they're all being built off, you know, the the rule is to make them behind the meter, they have to bring their own power. They even have to pay for the infrastructure to to to deliver the electricity, right? Now that was another argument, right?

Dawson Kluesner (25:52.972)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (25:53.729)

And then I mean the only the I mean I guess the one argument you can say maybe is okay the the net new power is gonna generate a lot of f a lot of carbon emissions, right? But then again if you if you focus on nuclear and other things and other gre other green greener in natural gas, for example, ways to generate electricity, that that'll offset a lot of that, right? So in fact we if it was if it was all nuclear or renewables, there'd be no problem at all, right? So that can that that can be dealt with. So I I think just most of these arguments have been h

Dawson Kluesner (26:17.974)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (26:22.666)

A bit hysterical, I agree with you, Brett. but maybe turning Dawson to a second, like one are w like th there's been a lot of people complaining about data centers being loud or be or generating heat. Like thoughts on that?

Dawson Kluesner (26:34.016)

Yeah, you know the heat one, I I am not familiar with. I haven't heard that a lot. At least boots on the ground. like maybe a little bit, but yeah, I don't see any way to

Rio Longacre (26:44.28)

Well I guess if you lived under on the roof of one, you'd probably be in trouble, right?

Dawson Kluesner (26:47.553)

Right.

Brett (26:48.81)

You know, like the surrounding neighborhoods are rising five degrees, you know, Fahrenheit on average. I what

Rio Longacre (26:53.176)

Totally. I I think that r I I think that's the dumbest argument. People are like, it's getting so hot. Well what if you live literally next to your if your if your house is like built on the wall of one or you live in the roof, yeah, it's gonna really freaking hot. But like like that just tons of I I think the thing, Wyoming you have space, right? So you're not building them like in the middle of neighborhoods, I'm assuming, right?

Dawson Kluesner (27:07.158)

Right. And you know, I I just haven't been able to find any Yeah. You know, I mean

Some of are are within city limits or being annexed to to be so. but you know, I I just haven't read anything or seen any data to back up this this fear of, you know, direct heat, or really any way to even make that a benefit. You know, I I guess I I have read where, you know, people are looking to harness that for like agricultural uses or, you know, like just produced heat. you just using it for whatever. And I haven't s I just haven't looked in it enough to to to give you a a good two cents on on how we feel about it. the noise one.

Brett (27:41.12)

Yeah. Speaking of agri speaking of agricultural uses, is is Wyoming a big agricultural state? You're a big energy state. I'm I'm not entirely sure of of of your you know, you're you're not Iowa or Idaho or right or what does that look like and is there some competition inherent between you know, the data center builders and developers and the agricultural agribusiness play?

Dawson Kluesner (27:43.471)

Well, go ahead.

Dawson Kluesner (28:06.226)

I I would largely say I mean we are an agricultural state. not a huge part of our GDP or or state product is is based off of agriculture. I think it's something like three or four percent. you know, we are the cowboy state, so we're we're we're known for, you know, our wide open expanse is filled with cattle and cattle do outnumber our population pretty significantly. but you know, largely speaking, I've I've had more calls with landowners, like like ranchers, those kind of things, looking for, you know, opportunities with these developments rather than fighting against it.

Brett (28:15.882)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (28:36.1)

I'm sure there's a lot of researchers out there that that'll hear that and and be mad that I said that. and I'd be happy to have a conversation with them, you know.

Brett (28:36.834)

that's interesting. Yeah.

Brett (28:42.495)

Yeah. It it it just it just brings up ideas or thoughts or visuals of Yellowstone and sort of the the the continuous multi-generational battle over land, right? And land development and taking that land to develop it into X, Y, or Z, and the local communities fighting against that for numerous reasons, whether you're a a rancher or a Native American indigenous group that has tribal lands

Dawson Kluesner (28:53.473)

Right.

Dawson Kluesner (28:58.913)

Right.

Dawson Kluesner (29:06.55)

Yeah. Well, you know, I

Brett (29:08.669)

I is that the kind of stuff? Is that reality? I mean, on the ground in Wyoming or am I

Dawson Kluesner (29:13.236)

So I I grew up around Yellowstone. I was actually from the Cody area and you know, I love it. I don't think I would be happy if anyone tried to to build a data center on Old Faithful, you know. but yeah, you know, we're I would say generally, you know, people in Wyoming are are very pro private property rights. and most

Brett (29:16.159)

Yeah.

Brett (29:22.889)

Yeah, well yeah. It's the not in my backyard play, right? Which which everybody'll say, Hey, I yeah.

Brett (29:34.378)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (29:36.523)

large properties are doing some sort of dual use, you know, whether it be, you know, having a a pump jack for oil or gas in your backyard alongside your cattle or, you know, wind farms, solar, siding whatever, you know, just dual use property uses. and not saying that you would necessarily be able to do that with data centers, but I think that people are more receptive to the opportunity of of utilizing their land versus you know, this this crazy NIMBYism not in my backyard stuff. a lot of the what we're seeing is if there is opposition, it's it's the folks

That don't have the opportunity to be part of that investment, that are still, you know, like the visual impacts of having the data center, you know, right down the road. But you know, I'm not seeing the direct benefits of the investment as a property owner. so we're seeing a lot of that. and you know, honestly, that's that's pretty fair, especially when it comes to noise and light pollution. And that's where you know we take the approach of working with the developers to ensure that these issues are mitigated. you know, I think the lights, that's probably the easiest one to mitigate. You know, if if you have no one

Brett (30:16.234)

Yeah.

Brett (30:20.234)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (30:36.356)

Wants to have a light shining into their bedroom, right? Yes. Like there's there's OSHA standards though, you know, and you have to ensure that you're compliant with all federal regulations when it comes to lights. But there's way to ways to mitigate that stuff. Same with noise. and and we're largely seeing all these developers willing to come to the table, all these big companies willing to come to the table and address these concerns. but back to your question, you know, we we are just a big private property rights state. so you know, we are seeing a lot of the NIMBYism, especially we have

a this is kind of a a side tangent, but when it comes to nuclear development, we've had a lot of interest in the state for for investments in nuclear, not just generation, but also fuel fabrication, manufacturing small modular reactors, things like that. and there was

Brett (31:20.479)

Yep. And an interesting factor on that is that data centers are now, I think, officially less popular than nuclear reactors, right? And and and I think on the record, Rio and I will both say we're we're pro nuclear reactors as well. And especially when we've got fusion coming online in the next decade or twenty years, which is going to change radically change energy development, right? Much less space. it's very unstable now, but but right now we're dealing with fission technology. But that's all tied

Dawson Kluesner (31:29.078)

Interesting.

Dawson Kluesner (31:34.945)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (31:38.626)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (31:48.801)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (31:50.24)

to to some of the environmental concerns when you have a fallout, right? So there's stuff that has stuck in the minds of humanity across multiple, you know, from Chernobyl, etcetera.

Dawson Kluesner (31:53.922)

Right.

Rio Longacre (32:00.643)

Well, yeah, yeah, Brett. I think that's the thing that's so crazy. Nuclear power, if you actually look at like the number of people who've actually been injured or killed, is the safest form of power generation. It's not even close. Like like it's like in I know it's really scary because radiation is invisible, it freaks people out. And frankly, even some of our standards. Funny, my father, Dawson, you probably don't know Brett does. My father was a particle or nuclear physicist for many years. He used to work in these, you the

Dawson Kluesner (32:00.834)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (32:10.25)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (32:10.465)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (32:24.663)

like a lot of his time they'd spend it, you know, they with these theories, right, about this particle will do if you smash these atoms together, these this particle will exist and here's the properties it'll have. To prove that out, they would actually go into these particle accelerators where it'll accelerate either photons or gold nuclei or different different el different different particles around this accelerator close to the speed of light smashing together. But this creates actually a lot of radiation, right? So like so so I remember like they would have these badges on and after a certain time you'd you you'd badge out where you'd have

Once you once you absorb too much radiation above the normal cosmic background radiation that you couldn't work for for for a few months. And I thought it was interesting. So yeah, so so

Brett (32:59.274)

interesting. And this was out on Long Island, right? The superconducting super collider on Long Island that he worked at for decades.

Rio Longacre (33:03.809)

Yeah, they had r re relativistic heavy on collider, but he went he w he went to CERN, he went to the this Farambie lab is the one in the Midwest. So he he'd been to a bunch of different ones to do experiments. But the thing is, what I thought was so interesting about this is you're always getting it like it was it was never a question of were you exposed to any radiation. It was always how much were you exposed to. And I thought and and then because people don't realize just by going going in a plane, sit going to the beach, sitting in the sun, you're being exposed to some radiation. So you're always being exposed to

Brett (33:29.801)

Y walking through an x ray at the airport, getting an x ray at the dentist, you're yeah.

Rio Longacre (33:32.482)

Radiation, right? Like you're being exposed to radiation all day, every day, and humanity actually we grew up and evolved being exposed to radiation. So the optimal amount of the optimal amount of radiation is probably not zero. It's probably actually above that. Your immune system probably will function optimally with a little bit of radiation. Otherwise otherwise you might r you might actually get autoimmune problems, right? So if you if you had zero. Right. So that so I th so but but the but if you look at the standards like the government issues, it says you should have zero.

I'm not saying it's conspiracy or anything, what I'm saying is it's just not accurate, right? So and it scares people unnecessarily. I'm not saying radiation is good, it's certainly not, but but like but certainly like like I think people got unduly scared and and granted like what should happen in Chernobyl is is terrifying. So I I don't blame people for being scared of nuclear meltdowns, but like but you look at the number of nuclear accidents.

Brett (34:04.927)

Yeah.

Brett (34:17.948)

Yeah. Or Fukushima in Japan in the most recent example a after the tsunami, right? My wife is Japanese. That you know, it was devastating. I mean it's entire entire regions of countries that are uninhabitable for hundreds and hundreds and of potentially a thousand years. Right? So I get that there's this underlying concern in the disposal, but but you know, back to your point, Dawson, is that nuclear energy is is honestly the cleanest energy. and and the technology is far beyond what

Rio Longacre (34:23.417)

Well s yeah, it was terrifying for the people there. I mean absolutely horrible, right?

Rio Longacre (34:32.366)

thousands of years, yeah, yeah, some of these, yeah. But

Dawson Kluesner (34:44.086)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (34:47.272)

we were doing when we were manufacturing these things in the fifties and sixties.

Rio Longacre (34:51.065)

the new plants are so safe. And a lot of them are you know, a lot of them are using like small batch and different types of technologies. They're different even non non non uranium or plutonium, some of them too. which which so they're they're much, much safer. So

Dawson Kluesner (34:59.35)

Mm-hmm.

And it's you know, it's not just the nuclear facilities that people are scared of. I would say, you know, having been in the trenches, you know, dealing with the NIMBYism around nuclear in Wyoming as well, it's the the back end as well, like the fuel storage or the spent fuel storage, things like that. you know, I I had the opportunity of Yeah. Yeah, they think of, you the Simpsons and the green barrels of goo, you know.

Brett (35:14.482)

Yeah. Yep. It's the disposal process that's a that's a massive problem, right? That I think of the Simpsons when I think about nuclear all the time, right?

Rio Longacre (35:14.67)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (35:27.202)

But you know, I I've had the opportunity of going to the Idaho National Laboratory, touring their facilities, the naval facility where they store all the the Navy spent nuclear fuel from the the the ships and you know I've put my hands on the the casks that they store in. and it's as safe as you can get. You know, there's besides putting it into a deep geological repository for permanent permanent storage, that's about as safe as you could possibly get. Yeah, shooting it off to the sun.

Brett (35:45.928)

Yeah.

Brett (35:51.731)

Or sending them out into space, right? but again that's gonna change. I mean we're talking, you know, ten years from now, right? And and you know, that that fusion is probably going to come online and you don't deal with the same issues at all.

Rio Longacre (36:03.915)

It might, yeah, it certainly might. And more they're but they have the Tokamak in Germany that's actually begun like had a had a f I think a fusion reaction for like a minute a minute or two now. They've been able to sustain it. 'cause you you think it's things burning as hot as the center of the sun. So you have to contain it with like pressure mag and and magnets and stuff like that. The energy to do that, you know, they were actually able to have a surplus for a couple of minutes. So it is kind of a miraculous. But I think regardless of that, I mean y I guess getting back to the data center thing, Dawson, so if so clearly like we're

Brett (36:17.545)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (36:34.219)

R i if these things are powered by renewables or by let's say net zero power like nuclear, that that would be huge. And it sounds like Wyoming's making some investments in that area. Like what other like it's gonna take a lot of energy. What what other it like what other things do you think need to be done in order to support this?

Dawson Kluesner (36:40.183)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (36:48.908)

Well, you know, in terms of you know, the environmental footprint, you know, what what steps can we take? I would say one, you know, there's a lot of utilization of natural gas coinciding with

Carbon sequestration. So my in my past life, my first job was doing research at the School of Energy Resources at the University of Wyoming. and we did a lot of research around this, you know, utilizing deep geological structures to s to store CO two. And we're one of three states now. I think it's Louisiana and Texas are the other ones that have the primacy over the federal government to do this type of thing, do carbon sequestration.

Rio Longacre (37:25.379)

So you're sequestering it from the atmosphere or is this from power generation?

Dawson Kluesner (37:28.738)

So this is from direct capture, so from the power generation specifically. So you you would you know burn the natural gas and then take that that combustion and deposit it in a a jeep deep geological

Brett (37:32.084)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (37:43.047)

structure, I guess. and and multiple projects here in Cheyenne are are planning on doing that. there's one that's Tallgrass Energy. they're a natural gas company and and an energy developer. They're they're building out a facility that is gonna be using natural gas with carbon sequestration and they already have the the carbon sequestration wells drilled. the natural gas infrastructure is being built out right now. So it's gonna be really interesting. one of the first projects in the state to to do that direct capture that isn't a research facility.

Brett (37:44.948)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (38:13.11)

so it'll be it'll be really interesting to see. and I could go on for hours talking about that one. It's just super fascinating and we're one of the few states that's actually leading the charge on on utilizing these technologies and doing it economically at that.

Brett (38:13.406)

Yeah.

Brett (38:25.182)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I'd love and what what kind of science have you read on that? I mean I you know, I I the only thing that comes to my mind is is just having read articles about the unsettling of the geological structures which can cause things like earthquakes and and or maybe that's more Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and may and maybe that's more the extraction process versus the sequestration. Did I did I pronounce that correctly?

Dawson Kluesner (38:38.722)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (38:38.841)

Well fracking will do that. If you frack on a fault line, it'll definitely do that 'cause you're ejecting tons of water, right?

Dawson Kluesner (38:46.21)

Mm-hmm. I think it's a you know, it's a totally different ballgame than than really what you'd be looking at for geological formations with oil and gas. And I'm no geologist, I will say that. most of my work has been looking at the actual economic feasibility of doing stuff like that. but you know, what I have learned is it's incredibly deep where we're we're putting these things. You know, I think the deepest well in the in the state of Wyoming that was drilled for oil and gas was about twenty five thousand feet. And that's about the ballpark of what we're looking at for for carbon sequestration wells. so well below

Brett (38:52.328)

Yeah.

Brett (38:58.995)

Yep.

Brett (39:14.218)

Yep.

Rio Longacre (39:14.457)

Twenty five thousand feet. That's like four and a half miles. That's crazy.

Dawson Kluesner (39:17.665)

Good.

Yeah, yeah, twenty five thousand feet. and you know, it's so far away from the water table. the monitoring requirements are ridiculous. I mean kind of what we were talking about with nuclear regulations, it's kind of the same with carbon sequestration, just 'cause there's this fear of, you know, what could happen if we pump all the CO two down there and then it gets out. But I always tell people, you know, otherwise if you don't sequester it, it was going in the atmosphere, you know. Like that's the really the alternative is is putting it into these these jeeplo geological structures. so

So all that to say that's that's one of the steps that that developers in Wyoming are taking to to mitigate the the footprint. Wyoming is also a huge player in in wind. and while wind isn't necessarily reliable, there's a lot of developments happening around battery storage and then just coinciding. Super windy. Cheyenne should have been called the windy state or the the windy city.

Rio Longacre (40:04.739)

By the way, for those who haven't been to Wyoming, it's very, very windy in Wyoming. Once you go over the border, it's just like the wind hits you. It's crazy. Yeah.

Rio Longacre (40:15.097)

That's too funny. So let's talk let's talk jobs for a second. Like like how many jobs I don't know if you have the numbers at your fingertips, like like let's say someone wants to build a data center. I I brett you throw out a couple numbers earlier, like how many jobs does it create, short term versus long term? What's the econom I'm sure you're asked about what's the economic impact, and I'm sure you're also gonna ask about community benefits agreements as well, right?

Dawson Kluesner (40:16.406)

But but yeah, a lot of window.

Dawson Kluesner (40:34.304)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so you know, in the jobs I don't have the numbers readily available, but like you said, it is true that the construction is significantly more than the the FTEs afterwards. you know, I think a decently sized

data center would be looking at, you know, couple hundred full time equivalent jobs, working shifts, you know. That is the thing. You know, data centers are twenty four seven. so you're gonna have people, you know, there's gonna be more employment on a daily basis with these roles than there would be at a at a, you know, nine to five kind of deal, right? but still it's not anywhere near what you would have with peak construction. it is definitely gonna go down after that. but nonetheless they're still high paying jobs, you know. and you know another thing, I don't want to go down

Brett (41:11.954)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (41:20.288)

You know, the tax wonk rabbit hole. But Wyoming is one of the few states where for our taxpayers, you know, we are so subsidized. Our tax, our tax structure is so subsidized by the energy and minerals industry. About two-thirds of our tax revenues come from those industries. And when you look at at the you know, the more I guess residential taxpayer, there was a study done by the Wyoming Taxpayers Association and it looked at the taxes paid by an individual versus the services that.

That they receive. And it's for every one dollar that the individual pays into the system in the state, they get about $13 in services from all levels of government. So it's about it's a one to thirteen in terms of your your tax pay the high. yeah, and I mean it's I I don't know if other states have done that comparison, but regardless, this kind of incentivizes there to be

Brett (42:00.328)

Hmm. Well and I w yeah, I wonder how that compares state to state. Yeah, that's interesting.

Brett (42:09.831)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (42:14.038)

You know, not not attracting more of a workforce from outside of the state. So if there's if there's an opportunity to bring in an industry that doesn't require a huge workforce, but it broadens our tax base away from the energy industry, like that is a huge win for the state, right? so so all that to say absol I mean honestly it's probably the the best fit in that category. like our best opportunity to to diversify our our tax structure.

Brett (42:26.813)

Yeah. And and data centers fit into that category, right? Yeah.

Brett (42:37.479)

Yeah, that tax revenue ends ends up g providing those thirteen dollars per one dollar of services to your average citizen and Yep.

Dawson Kluesner (42:41.664)

Yep. And it's it's all levels of government, right? You know, you have we have sales tax on electricity, which which benefits literally every level of government. we have property taxes, which again that it doesn't go into our state coffers, but it it benefits K through twelve education, you know, all of our our services like emergency emergency services, you know, fire, all of our our special districts. So if you need your roads plowed, you know, the the mills being levied for the property taxes that are paid for by these data centers, it's it's paying for that as well. So

Brett (43:11.155)

Yeah. And and that and that to your point with yeah, with econom with an economics background, I mean that's how you that's how you can incentivize people to support particular either voting for people that support particular causes, right? Or or to s incentivize industry to to to make investments because they know there are tax benefits of some sort. But yeah, so I've got some data on permanent staffing. I think at the national level

hyperscale data center often employs around 20 25 to 150 so that depends on the size of the the facility permanent workers and the construction crews to your point are commonly between 1800 to 5000 and leave within a six to eight eighteen eighteen month period but like virginia as an example their department of taxation said for every new job they're giving 1.2 million in tax breaks

Rio Longacre (43:52.643)

That's a big number, yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (43:55.67)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (44:05.026)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (44:05.105)

And they're receiving 1.5 million, this is of 2025, one point 1.9 billion in tax benefits. and they had sixteen hundred and ten jobs statewide because Virginia's known to have invested heavily in data centers. So I mean there seems to be a pretty strong economic argument to your point around the thirteen dollars for every citizen. if if you assuage the fears of environmental consequences, electrical rake heights,

in these other things like heat and noise and et cetera. I mean I think people need to think about this as any other industrial investment. Right? When when auto OEMs were building manufacturing plants, were people out on the streets you know fighting the the construction of good jobs developed now arguably OEMs produce more jobs, more permanent jobs when you're on you know you're at a GM or a Ford or a Toyota facility.

Rio Longacre (45:00.736)

Not anymore. I mean, like there's this th those auto plants now, like they're mostly automated. They put they have very few p very few full time p workers. It's interesting. And but I guess Brett, that's an interesting topic you bring up, right? Because there's there's a big debate about the subsidies and the the tax abatements that these data center developers will get, right? And I guess in the the and for those who don't know that you know that the argument goes that in order to win these data centers, these municipalities will offer them, you know, tax breaks, tax abatements, different incentives, right?

Brett (45:04.169)

They're being automated.

Brett (45:17.671)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (45:29.27)

in order to sweeten a deal for them, knowing that again, there's gonna be eighteen hundred to two thousand like workers working, paying taxes, and then you know, maybe fifty to a hundred people full-time doing that. Plus they are they're able to shake down these developers for a community benefits agreement, a CBA. And in that they'll basically say in order to get the zoning for this, you have to, you know, fix the sewer system, put in new transmission lines.

Dawson Kluesner (45:49.59)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (45:57.313)

build a park for kids. Usually they'll throw things in, they'll requ they'll mandate them. I I'm not against I'm not against that, by the way. I think that could actually be a qu quite a good thing, right? 'Cause if you're gonna build here you should give give back to the community, right? So so that's kind of the quid pro quo. We'll give you these tax breaks and in exchange for that you have to agree to these benefit this benefits package that the community gets. And if people complain about the the tax breaks and stuff, which are costly, but to your point, Brett, is that they end up paying taxes over time. So I don't I don't know. Thoughts on that, Dawson, is that is that something that's being

Brett (45:59.313)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (46:09.26)

Mm.

Rio Longacre (46:27.138)

Th that's being seen as controversial in Wyoming.

Dawson Kluesner (46:30.922)

So it's it's definitely a discussion. I will say that. You know, we're one of I think thirty six states that have this it's a similar

sales tax exemption across the board, but it's more on like the the hard like software or excuse me hardware things like that that you're paying sales tax on to install into the data center itself. That's the only exemption that we have on the books for them at the state level and I don't believe that municipalities have the authority in Wyoming to to levy any sort of of subsidization in that regard. Now onto the the community benefit agreements, industrial or excuse me, the community benefit agreements in Wyoming we have two different

Avenues that can that really be taken. The one is the industrial siding process, which essentially is more of a state level thing. If you're not going through the second path, you're going to be working with a state board, the industrial siding committee, and they're going to be the ones that are defining what kind of community impact payments that you're going to pay. Whether it be you know a new fire truck for the municipality that's affected or whatever, you know, that's kind of that path. And they're also deciding if if you

you're suitable for the area that you're trying to be sited at, right? the other one is the municipality can decide to zone an area to be an industrial park. And if they do that, then that's essentially bypassing this industrial siting review.

but it still follows all the same regulatory requirements from the state level. You know, you have to go through the Department of Environmental Quality. you have to do all the same steps that you would otherwise. it just gives the municipalities the ability to to form their own community benefit agreements. So it's really two avenues. both are are pretty similar, but to your point, you know, it it just provides the the municipalities or the state the ability to to ask for

Dawson Kluesner (48:19.794)

You know, impact assistance, really. I mean I I like you said, I I think it's completely justified and ninety nine percent of the time these large industrial players are are willing to to make that commitment otherwise or anyways, you know, even if there wasn't anything in statute to force them to come to the table and and make these payments, they would anyways. And they are. And they're usually going above and beyond doing so.

Rio Longacre (48:38.604)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I think it's funny how the same people who are against the tac the incentives they they won't mention the C BAs, right? Like they're certainly not against those and like su and like I actually I'd be fine if they got rid of all the incentives, right? I think data centers are such a profitable business, such a growth business, but and I I think that, you know, the

Dawson Kluesner (48:55.01)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (48:55.014)

Yeah. And well and it may not be a one to one play here, right? From from the tax abatements and the C BAs, right? I'm sure you're not it's not a dollar for dollar exchange here, right? so I'm sure people fear feel that that, you know, these industries are just saying, Yeah, we'll build a children's park. We'll we'll we'll throw a couple hundred thousand dollars at at something that we got tens of millions of dollars in tax abatement. Yeah.

Rio Longacre (48:58.41)

No, it's not.

Rio Longacre (49:15.212)

Yeah, for millions or or billions of dollars of like of in of incentives, right?

Brett (49:18.19)

So yeah, so they probably think it's like throwing peanuts at the at the people in the economy class, right? You know, I guess nobody can eat peanuts now, but you know what mean. It's like yeah, it's not a one for one.

Dawson Kluesner (49:27.884)

Well and you at the end of the day, these exemptions are simply to make Wyoming, you know, a player at the table to cite these projects, right?

Brett (49:34.898)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (49:35.251)

and you know, economic development, I think people get stuck in this, you know, immediate gratification, immediate results, immediate taxpayer ROI. but that's not what economic development is, especially if you're trying to diversify away from you know our legacy industries like this. If you're truly trying to do economic development, you're playing the long game. And you know, players like data centers are a great opportunity for that. And you know, kind of going back to what we were talking about with employment, you know, that construction job might be, you know, for for two years, right? But that's maybe just phase one of the project. A lot of these data centers.

Brett (49:43.559)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (50:05.144)

that are being cited in Cheyenne are multiple phases, you know, gonna be going constructing for a decade, you know, building out their facilities. like this is not just you know, year long investment and then we're just gonna, you know, pay our property taxes and wipe our hands and, you know, use the data.

Brett (50:11.762)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett (50:21.244)

Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Yeah, I mean you if you think about like the the and what surrounds the investment into big industry, sort of tier one sort of manufacturing. Think of you know, auto, I think auto is just such a good example. When you build a home based auto industry, OEM industry, the tier ones that are actually manufacturing the cars, they're surrounded by a whole number of different suppliers for parts, for tires, right, which are sub manufacturers, tier tier two, three, right?

That are supplying, you know, so it creates an entire industrial base, right? Which which I think the concern over the last you know couple of decades is that you had all of this manufacturing in flight, and we lost that entire industrial base for especially for kind of basic manufacturing, right? and you're seeing right now, I mean, like in my my son goes to Syracuse in upstate New York, and I'm sure you saw that news recently: the micron hundred billion dollar semiconductor.

megafab in in in Clay, New York, which Syracuse is doing a lot to partner with. but think about that. That's part of the supply chain into data centers, right? They're building semiconductors to be used by data centers to power our economy, to power it's not just AI. People tend to kind of put that sticker on it and say it's terrible, it's horrible, it's destroying our kids. you know, but to me it's a larger

Dawson Kluesner (51:18.646)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (51:41.404)

To your point, industrial base that you're building that has a bunch of other manufacturers associated with it, just like auto blew out, and it's gonna have long-term benefits for our organization. But right now it that 90% of all semiconductors, I think it might be even higher than 90%, are produced in Taiwan. That is a major geopolitical yeah, strategic risk for the US. I mean, think back in World War Two when when with rubber.

Dawson Kluesner (51:46.401)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (51:59.917)

Yeah, I mean what happens if like like when when China invades, we're gonna be in big trouble.

Brett (52:09.305)

Right, you know, Japan was was invading Southeast Asia because that's where the rubber plantations were, and the US was forced to innovate in in in in in actually manufacture rubber that did not come from rubber trees, right?

Rio Longacre (52:19.904)

synthetic rubber but but people don't realize too like that like some people might say it's a big deal so Taiwan got's gets you know take in the AI companies wherever their chips boohoo but actually people don't realize like you tr if that happens good luck buying a new car you know how many chips go into your car these aren't the high end chips but you know they're still they're still chips and most of them are manufactured actually in Taiwan today so if Taiwan stopped shipping chips over here

Brett (52:33.605)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (52:43.532)

You would not be able to get a new car within a couple of months once the existing ones are gone. Like no new cars to be manufactured. Now that needs to change and there is a an effort to reshore some of that technology and some of that manufacturing. But the reality is it's a it's a major supply chain risk. I totally agree.

Brett (52:58.245)

Yeah. Yeah. So so I think I think Dawson to your point it's i you're building out a manufacturing base that has long term benefits for the states that they're in, for the at the national level, at the geostrategic and geopolitical level, right?

Dawson Kluesner (53:04.458)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (53:12.32)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you know I I

Rio Longacre (53:13.474)

How is this impacting Wyoming like day to day? Like is this changing the workforce? Is it changing in how's it changing the state?

Dawson Kluesner (53:19.138)

Yeah.

That's exactly what I was gonna touch on. I you know, I earlier I said, you know, we do have an existing, you know, blue collar workforce, and that's absolutely true. You know, our oil and gas industry, our coal industry is is built that up. But also, you know, these companies are wanting to come to the table because they recognize how big of a problem it is that there isn't enough workforce, not just for them, but also for the communities. Like if you steal all the plubbers from the community, it's gonna be a a three-week wait before you're able to get your toilet unclogged, right? So they recognize that this is an issue across the board. so they've actually been coming to the table and we work closely, it's called the Wyoming.

Brett (53:44.165)

Yep.

Dawson Kluesner (53:49.403)

innovation partnership and what they do is is work with initiatives to try to increase our workforce especially in the in the trades. And so they're working with all of our community colleges and working with these data center companies to build out better pipelines from our community colleges to ensure that in five years when these projects start hitting the ground, you know, we have a workforce that's ready. And I think people forget that you know these trades, like once they get these degrees and they're they have the ability to to do these trades, that doesn't go away, you know.

We maintain that workforce here in the state and that's a huge advantage versus the rest of the country, you know. If we actually invest in a pipeline to create a workforce like that, then we're that's gonna attract industrial partners outside of data centers for decades to come, right? So a huge, huge asset to the state.

Brett (54:24.253)

Yeah.

Brett (54:37.008)

And these are all the trade trade trade oriented schools for electri electrical, right? st you know, plumbing, all everything yeah.

Rio Longacre (54:44.323)

Plumbing, HVAC, probably all that stuff, right?

Dawson Kluesner (54:45.824)

Yep. Yep. Welding, you know, steel workers, you name it, honestly. We have a huge network of of all of our community colleges do a great job at at doing this. And so right now what the Wyoming Innovation Partnership's trying to do is kind of double down on that and make it to where you can go from working or from getting that education to going right into the trades and ensuring that that you're connected to the right places to to utilize your education, right? So

Rio Longacre (55:12.665)

Yeah, it's funny. I Faya, there's been a big emphasis in PE firms buying up these these you know HVAC plumbing electricians business the last few years because they're number one, they're cash cash cows, they generate tons of positive income. And then on top of that, they you know, they're you know, there are a lot of them, there are a lot of small ones, and there's a lot of them undercapitalized, right? So it's funny. A buddy of mine, he owns a small IT company, he was saying, I got into the wrong business, man. I should have, I should have become an electrician. I would have sold to a PE firm by now and be cashed out. He's funny, he's joking about

Dawson Kluesner (55:41.602)

Well you're in

Brett (55:42.844)

Yeah, yeah. No, and I've kno I've known people from the industry that have gone into the they've they've given up sort of data tech and mark marketing technology, the space that that Rio and I work in, and gone and taken jobs in HVAC. Like this was decades ago and I'm like, Wow, that's a that's a that's a career switch but

Dawson Kluesner (55:54.947)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, you know, people play down these construction jobs and these trades jobs with the data centers because they're short term. But if you actually look at the salaries that come with these jobs, like I chose the wrong profession. Like I straight to trade school and and and gone this route, kind of what you're saying, you know. like we're talking, you know, a hundred and thirty to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars just for a like a beginner right out of school. You're making you're making significant six figures. a crazy opportunity. Yeah.

Brett (56:08.109)

Yeah.

Brett (56:12.934)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (56:17.559)

Right out of school. Right just after a couple of years a right, that's

Brett (56:22.939)

Yeah. And in Wyoming, where the cost of living is a lot less than a place like New Jersey, I mean that goes a long way. You could probably buy a pretty damn large house for three hundred thousand dollars, four hundred thousand dollars max, right? So that that is a very so what kind of projects are you working on right now that almost like a case study question, that that, you know, aligned to data centers, is are there some active projects right now that you can tell the audience a little bit about and what those look like?

Dawson Kluesner (56:27.691)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (56:32.79)

Yep. Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (56:49.174)

So are you are you talking you're talking specific data center projects?

Brett (56:52.069)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (56:53.196)

so I think the most recent one that was announced was it's called Project Tembo. it's a Google data center campus. I think it's gonna be 1.7 gigawatts, around 17 billion dollars of initial investment. and it's gonna be, gosh, I don't remember what the dates were. I wanna say 2030 is when they're gonna hopefully finish the first stage phase of construction. so that's that's probably the most exciting one that's happening right now. there's a few other companies across the state that are equally as exciting. I'm really excited for it's a company called Prometheus Hyperscale.

They're investing outside of Cheyenne, which is actually unique to the state. One of the few projects that's looking out outside of Laramie County. And I think they have a 1.2 gigawatt campus on the western side of the state that's going to be I think they're in the sighting process right now, as well as one in Trona County outside of Casper, Wyoming. That's going to be like 1.45. And I don't want to get the numbers right or wrong. It's it's hard to keep them all squared away in my head what the exact specs are of each of these projects, but super exciting.

Brett (57:23.099)

Yeah.

Brett (57:48.464)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (57:52.933)

You know, I think that I had the numbers in terms of you know projects in the state right now, but we have 10 current, I believe, data centers that are active in the state. 15 that are under construction or in their planning stages, and then several other across the state that are looking in the in the siding phase. So significant investment in the state, you know, billions of dollars. and and like you said, it's it's kind of a trickle-down effect across across the board. We're seeing a huge uptick in in our

energy industry. know all of our all of our energy companies are super excited about this opportunity. All of our our utility companies everyone kind of come to the table is is seeing this as a huge opportunity. So I could go on and on about the specific projects going on in the state. A lot more I think are gonna be announced in in the coming years.

Brett (58:38.906)

Yeah. What surprised me is how long it takes to develop a data center of that size. Is that is that is it look is that what we're looking at? I mean, like a four to five year build project, is that right? typically.

Dawson Kluesner (58:48.948)

Yeah. And and you know, there's there's a lot of I would say there's a lot of constraints that would otherwise make that process go quicker. You know, I I'm sure you guys have heard about the supply chain issues that we're seeing, you know. I think there's natural gas generators, there's something like a four or five year lead time to to source those in the States. so there's a lot of constraints like that. Unless you

Brett (58:57.159)

Yeah.

Brett (59:06.673)

Okay.

Rio Longacre (59:07.403)

Unless you're Elon. Elon got he put set up Colossus one in like two months or something like that. He like it it's crazy the story.

Dawson Kluesner (59:14.058)

Right. Yeah, I mean, if you're willing to pay, I think you can get it done a lot quicker. but right.

Rio Longacre (59:19.033)

Yeah, if you've got Tesla stock to to trade, right? You can yeah, it doesn't really matter at that point. Yeah, so for those of you who don't know, he actually spilt a whole new data center and connected to his own natural gas. He basically went and connected it to Nash Natch natural gas pipe, purchased all the purchased all the gas and s on his own, and then I was able to power a new data center. And like it everyone said it would take two years. I think he did it in like two or three months or something, some crazy and classes two he did it again. So it's kind of it's kind of crazy. And then but the thing is

Those investments are already paying off. He's leasing all of that extra compute to Anthropic and Google and a couple of others. there's such a the there's there's way more demand than there is supply right now, which is really fascinating.

Brett (59:51.879)

Yep.

Brett (59:57.81)

Yep, yep. And and you yeah, you can make an argument that all of this is gonna, you know, however you look at it, it's gonna have some positive downstream impacts to the for the future of this country, right? I mean there's a lot of dystopian views on data centers and their impact on AI and and you know, and I think there's a there's a good quote that like if you solve 'cause i the AI ha it it it has a huge effect on all of technology's and and research and capabilities. Like it raises all boats.

when we get to this level, you know, the medical field, the the technology field, the right, it raises all of those things as opposed to the biotech field, as opposed to just benefiting one industry, right? So it has this this, you know, kind of exponential growth impact in terms of research and discovery across multiple industries industries, just with the investment into AI. So it's different than any technological rollout that humanity's ever had.

Right. I mean some people are comparing this to electricity or the discovery of fire. Yeah, or fire, right? Like in terms of the the huge sea change in human evolution through through the investment in in what fundamentally is data centers powering these these capabilities.

Rio Longacre (01:00:59.467)

I think it's as important as electricity, yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:01:14.349)

Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize that like it is an AI race, right? The US is, you know, w we with the frontier labs, right? You know, that would be, you know, obviously Google with Gemini, OpenAI which had GPT, and then you know Anthropic with Claude, right? And there's obviously lots of other companies building AI, their own AI, there's the you know, the and and people building harnesses for it. So I guess the whole industry around it. But you know, let's say just the hyperscalers, right? The frontier models, right? Where

Anywhere from six months to a year ahead of the Chinese and you know, half the AI developers in the world are in China, just so people know. they're very, very smart people in that country.

Brett (01:01:46.235)

Yeah. And they've cut off they've they've cut what was like a six year deficit, like in terms of being behind to about one year at this point, is from what I've read.

Rio Longacre (01:01:54.156)

About a year, yeah, maybe six months to a year, depending, right? Like, you they'll they'll and they'll you know, that there's they'll do things to jump ahead and then you know, they had the deep seek thing with them. Apparently, like a a lot of the some of their breakthroughs recently were some of them are in question. But the thing they're they're they're not far behind. And I guess the concern a lot of people in the AI field have is is some that recursive self improvement or RSI, which is you know th you know theoretical, but it's at some point I believe it probably will happen when the AIs get so good. Right now training a new model takes you know, you have to put it through it's

Pre-training, you're feeding it stuff, you're actually like putting it through scenarios, you're rewarding it. It's it's wild. It takes lots of people, months and months and months of like really long days and nights doing this in order to get these models ready so you can actually use them. At some point, the theory is a model will be smart enough to train the next model, right? And then which would be called resurfacing, then you don't need people anymore to do it. Then the models start racing ahead and maybe like instead of having a model, a new model, it's

that's maybe three or four X better every three or four months, you can have one every three or four weeks or even three, four days if the AI if you have enough a swarm of agents big enough doing this. So, you know, the concern is that if China or anyone else gets to do this first, do we really want to is that a race you really want to lose? So I mean that's a little more theoretical, but I I actually think it is a valid concern.

Brett (01:03:12.955)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the it's it's sort of a race to develop the most powerful, you know, inscrutable, uncontrollable technology and the problem is if this is done under bad incentives, right, which is, you know, let's say countries battling battling against each other or or, you know, a few a f like a five five core companies battling against each other, which is gonna

Rio Longacre (01:03:33.122)

Y well or do you want do you want do you want an authoritarian regime that doesn't believe in in our values to to have that power, I guess is is the main concern, right? I mean I don't want any one company to have that power, just to be clear either. I think that would be dangerous too. But you certainly don't want the Chinese Communist Party, I don't think, having it. I I I think that's part of the debate, right? I d I know that that's maybe for someone who's sitting in Colorado or Wyoming who's paying their taxes and worried about pollution and noise and electricity rates. I mean, that might seem like an esoteric debate at this point, right? But I think it's part of it.

Brett (01:03:37.199)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brett (01:03:41.69)

Yeah.

Brett (01:03:50.266)

Yeah.

Brett (01:04:02.809)

Yeah, it sound it sounds like sci-fi bullshit, right? But but it's there's a great movie out on on and sorry Dawson, we so we we sometimes go on to into these these these AI rants, but no, there's a really good doc for everybody on the on that's listening, called The AI Doc or How I Became an Apocalyptimist, right? So so and it's this director, his name's Daniel Rower, and this guy Charlie Turrell, that

Dawson Kluesner (01:04:11.842)

I'm sitting back with my popcorn.

Brett (01:04:30.171)

basically interviewed everybody who's anybody in the entire AI space, right, and technology space. And you have sort of the doomsayers, you have the sort of techno you know that that sort of dystopian viewpoint or for people that are that are legitimately afraid that if we develop a superintelligence, AGI and ASI, that is smaller than all that is smarter than all human beings on the planet Earth combined, that the next

kind of next step is that there's a tremendous amount of power in that type of intelligence and recursive self-improvement, meaning it can continuously improve and better itself to support its own interests. That that's that's sort of the doomsayers, but then the optimists are like, it's gonna radically change the world, right? Like it like the like DeepMind, Google DeepMind had a had a quote that they they said their mission statement is like solve intelligence, that's step one, and then use that intelligence to solve

Everything else. That was sort of my earlier point about how all these boats rise, right? And there's people claiming that it dwarfs all the capabilities of all other technologies ever invented by humankind combined. So think about that. And that's what people are afraid of because it just sounds like so outlandish and Arthur C. Clark science fiction like, right? You know, but but this is the people that are in there developing and building these things, saying.

Rio Longacre (01:05:47.041)

It does.

Brett (01:05:54.074)

We don't fully understand what happens once you train these models because they go and they make their own decisions. And they actually go into some self-preservation approaches, right? Where they'll prevent themselves. You heard about that example of of the devo Yeah, no no hugging face, but there was an example of of an AI, I think it was anthropic, where the AI

Rio Longacre (01:05:59.482)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:06:07.223)

Yeah. Hugging face, yeah.

Brett (01:06:19.355)

There was an email that one of their head developers sent this that said basically we've got to stop this. We've got to shut this down, right? And the AI had access to all of their systems. So it was reading all of their emails and it saw this and then it went and basically spread that spread a rumor. It wasn't a rumor, it was actually a a the guy was having a an affair and it was caught in email and so it started to s to basically blackmail the guy in order to preserve itself.

saying that we're gonna spread this across the entire globe that you had an affair.

Rio Longacre (01:06:48.311)

Yeah. Well, some of the behaviors are definitely not what people would have predicted, which I think is kind of wild. And you know, you don't realize like you're you you put this LLM together, you stuff it with all this information, you pre-train it, then you and you go through these training runs, and then and the crazy thing is that when it's all done, right, you're like no one really understands exactly how it works. It just kinda like gives you these outputs, you know, which which is kind of which is kind of wild, right? they know how it does, but they don't really understand how it gets to some conclusion. It is a little of a mystery, right?

Brett (01:07:08.475)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:07:16.481)

And and and for those who didn't read it, I did write an article which is called Will AI Kill Us All, which which I think I think do we do we yeah, and I and I can my my my conclusion was I don't think it's going to, but you know, you can come to your own conclusions. Like we'll we can put it in the show notes. I d I i I think it's a funny read. but but but but yeah, I think that's you know I think people but I understand why people get scared, Brett and Dawson, because you know, people have we grew up like watching Terminator and The Matrix and

Brett (01:07:20.583)

Which is a which is a popular topic. Yeah.

Brett (01:07:44.071)

Battlestar Galactica and you know, other

Rio Longacre (01:07:45.827)

Yeah, like so all of my like every one of my favorite shows and movies growing up, right? Was it dystopian show like where like the some kind of AI takes over and decides humans are a pain in the ass and gets rid of us. So I don't know. So I understand, but I I think the chances of that happening are pretty low.

Brett (01:08:01.413)

Yeah, and I think and I think it shouldn't cloud people's judgment. I mean, i there are fears here, and there needs to be some level of oversight and regulation, and I think all the the industry's calling for that. But I don't think that should cloud people's judgment on how you view data center and in in in sort of the industrial build out that this country is going through with that. Because I think you you kind of have to separate the issues, I think. Because again, back to what I said very early on, Dawson, right? The that data centers are powering everything we do in our modern lives.

Dawson Kluesner (01:08:23.266)

Mm-hmm.

Brett (01:08:31.119)

Right, from our banking to our daily work to our cloud storage to the to the television. You're Yeah, the show you're watching on Netflix, it's all being powered by data centers. So this isn't anything new. I think it's people's fear of AI, which is some rational and some irrational, that's really driving the pushback. and then they take again nationalized data, right, and specific sort of high-profile stories.

Rio Longacre (01:08:35.256)

If you have a smart fridge, just powering your damn fridge, right? I mean

Dawson Kluesner (01:08:36.758)

Right. Right.

Brett (01:08:57.379)

and say, hey, it's gonna destroy our wells, it's gonna destroy our our clean air, it's gonna raise our electrical prices, right? But when you and you've suggested this, Dawson, that that the data's not really showing that. you know, you still have to assuage those fears and talk to the communities, right? And ensure that they're they're with you, right? That we live in a democracy.

Dawson Kluesner (01:09:10.646)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (01:09:18.892)

Mm-hmm.

Rio Longacre (01:09:18.914)

Well it it does so what could the AI industry do better? Like as yes so is in Wyoming, I I would argue, I mean, my point of view from being here coming from Colorado is you're doing as a state doing a better job. Maybe 'cause your constituency is different, I don't I don't know, but you're doing a better job selling this, certainly than than other places. You know, we have a moratorium here in in Denver, for example. You despite having a very you know, a tech governor and a very pro tech mayor who's amazing, right? I like Mike's incredible, right? So despite that, we still have the moratorium, right? So

What would be your advice to politicians or to some of these these tech companies in terms of selling this?

Dawson Kluesner (01:09:55.043)

You know, I I would say, you know, the success that I've seen from the companies that come here is largely from doing community engagement as soon as possible. and really making feel people feel like you're working with them and not forcing them along, you know? like that is so important. You know, people don't want to be told that this is happening, you know. They wanna say, How can we do this with you?

Brett (01:10:10.171)

Yeah.

Brett (01:10:16.037)

Yeah.

Yeah. It's it's leadership, isn't it? It's k it's leadership at the grassroots level, at the community level, at the political level, the house, the senate, all the way up to the president, right? It's leadership. And leadership involves winning hearts and minds.

Dawson Kluesner (01:10:20.994)

A hundred percent.

Dawson Kluesner (01:10:28.576)

Yeah.

You know, and working with with our municipalities, if there was one r like big red flag where I'd say, you know, if if they're if they're not doing X, you should reconsider, you know, taking this project on. it's it's that, you know, from the get go, being willing to come and talk to the community and answer questions and because, you know, it is the responsibility of all these local elected officials to to get answers, but at the same time it's also industry's responsibility to communicate that as well, right? so that's that's what I would say. You know, if you're gonna come to Wyoming, especially a state like Wyoming,

Where, you know, a handshake means the world and you know there's six hundred thousand of us, you know, go into the town hall, you're gonna see, you know, everybody. Or if you don't see everybody, they're gonna know everybody, the people that are there. like that, it's just it's it is. It is. So I mean it's a it's a big difference from you know, your metropolitan areas like Denver or or New York City. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Brett (01:11:10.788)

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's still kind of a small town relationship built political environment.

Brett (01:11:22.404)

Yeah, or like or like my county, Essex County, New Jersey, which is ha has more than six hundred thousand people.

Rio Longacre (01:11:25.248)

Okay. Okay. Okay, it's funny. Actually I actually I have a funny New Jersey story speaking at Exit County Brett. So it's funny, my wife used to work for a consulting firm in in New York and they used to do consulting for some some telcos, right? And like they were trying to get more more this is earlier in the the the telco like I think they're back in two G, right? Built the build out in for an initial cell network, right? And I T Mobile was the client and they were trying they you they they were new to the they were new to the you they were new.

Brett (01:11:47.653)

Yeah.

Rio Longacre (01:11:53.219)

Like they had just come to the country and they're trying to get these cell phone towers built. And Verizon knows everyone. They which palms degrees. They know they know all the local electeds, right? But T Mobile didn't, and they like, we'll just go and build them. And they're like, No, it's not that easy. In US, it actually local these local municipalities have a lot of power and influence. So they just went in and they like, we want to apply for this and you had to go for a hearing. My wife said they're and it she kept warning them, it's not gonna be easy. You better prepare, you better talk to the people, and they didn't do it. And then apparently she said one of these hearings they're in front you know, they're they're in front of the board.

And then they're there it was about to get approved. And then a guy came in with his daughter and and said, My daughter's sick, it's from the towers.

Everyone voted no is done. And I she's and like there's d probably like zero zero correlation between the t or causation between the two. But the guy came in, he said his daughter was sick from the cell phone towers and you know, and they they hadn't reached out the community and done their due diligence and actually like won hearts and minds. It's your point, Dawson.

Brett (01:12:35.203)

Okay. Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:12:51.018)

Mm-hmm. Yep. Hundred percent.

Brett (01:12:51.824)

Yeah. Well, this has been awesome. Should we should we go to great quick hits?

Rio Longacre (01:12:59.04)

Let's do it.

Brett (01:12:59.684)

Yeah. so hey, so when we Dawson, when we revisit why I won't go like I my question was originally twenty thirty. That sounds almost you know, in in two years, two to three years. Twenty thirty seems like a a lifetime away, even though it's not. what measurable result would convince you that this boom, the data center boom specifically, not the AI generally, was a success for residents in Wyoming?

Dawson Kluesner (01:13:25.13)

Yeah, you know, I think you know success wouldn't be measured

by you know how many data centers you cite or you know how many gigawatts were added or you know whatever kind of tangible infrastructure. Like that's that's an added bonus, sure. But I w I would say you know it's it's whether those projects left Wyoming communities in a better, stronger, you know, financially situation than they were before. You know, I'd I'd say, you know, number one tax base, you know, like did these projects materially expand the local and state revenues after counting accounting for the incentives that we were talking about earlier.

Brett (01:13:36.676)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:13:59.005)

the public costs that are associated with the projects, right? the ratepayers, you know, I would say if if the ratepayers were left worse off than they would have otherwise been, I think it's a non-starter to even begin with. and then just communities in general, you know, did the communities gain that that infrastructure and economic capacity, the workforce capacity, without creating those those uns unsustainable demands on on water, you know, the utility infrastructure, the local services. really is it is it more of a a

significant net positive versus the risks that are associated with the project. no, I think that's that's

More or less what I would say. You know, it's not a numbers numbers in terms of, you know, how many data centers you get to the state. it's a matter of how how much of a impact did they actually have because, you know, I'm I'm here with an organization that's advocating that they are gonna be, you know, the best opportunity for our economic diversification. And I wanna see that tangibly be true, you know, in in three to four years from now. And I I firmly believe that it will be. but yeah, we'll see. I I'm excited to see. You know, all these projects are really exciting. It is super early on in the

Brett (01:14:37.787)

Yeah.

Brett (01:14:54.959)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:15:06.016)

the investment phases that we're seeing, even though it feels like every day it's just ramping up and ramping up and ramping up, especially if all you watch is national headlines. but yeah, super exciting time and I I think that so long as Wyoming communities are left net positive across the board, that's that's what I would deem successful. So

Brett (01:15:14.276)

Yep.

Rio Longacre (01:15:26.825)

If a data center uses enormous amounts of power but ultimately creates v relatively few permanent jobs, do you can still s do you still consider it a good trade or an and a success for Wyoming?

Dawson Kluesner (01:15:38.839)

Yeah, I mean like I said, Wyoming's an energy state, right?

I I I think that we're we're one of the few states that that can safely say that even if the industry coming in doesn't provide significant employment, as long as it provides that economic value, it's it's a win for the state, truly. So kind of a redundant from my previous answer, but but yeah. I I don't think workforce is as big of an issue in the state or like really needing, you know, hundreds or thousands of jobs to come with these data centers. I don't think that's as much as a of a, you know

Brett (01:15:59.686)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:16:11.708)

red flag compared to states that are, you know, land constrained. You know, if you have a huge, you know, data center I just saw those numbers. I wanna say it's it's lower than the national average. I think the national average right now is like four percent and we're at like three point two or three point four percent. Yep. So yeah, we have really good employment rates in the state. That's why, you know, if we have the land, right? We have the resources.

Rio Longacre (01:16:15.724)

What's your unemployment rate? It's gotta be very low in Wyoming, right?

Rio Longacre (01:16:27.232)

Which is basically full employment, yeah.

Brett (01:16:29.605)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:16:37.511)

employment's not as big of a non starter as as other states would be. So

Brett (01:16:41.434)

Yep. How can a how can a smaller Wy on that topic, how can a smaller Wyoming town capture the construction opportunity? without overwhelming s things like housing, new housing bu build, right? or other public services that would ordinarily capture that that employment base.

Dawson Kluesner (01:16:57.792)

Yeah, I mean the f the first thing I would say is, you know, economic development, like you don't have to say yes to every single project, right? If you're if your local municipality does not have the capacity to take on a giant project like this, like it's within your rights to to figure out if one, that is true. Like if if you actually can't fulfill the the needs of of taking on a a large project like that, then you sh probably shouldn't take it on, right? and we've worked with communities where that's that's largely the case. but you know, just working

Brett (01:17:22.949)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:17:27.756)

through step by step, you know, getting your strategic partners in the room with you and figuring out what the constraints are before you even start citing the project and figuring out how you can can solve for X I would say is is the most important thing. Like don't don't be re afraid to as a community, you know, as as local elected officials or economic developers, you know, don't be afraid to get all of the players at the table early on and and solve for X. That's that's what I would say. Because there's going to be constraints that are going to be hard to overcome. You know, like we I mean so I

Brett (01:17:56.059)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:17:57.589)

I talked about terapower, the the nuclear reactor that they're building. You know, that's in a a community that is very small, you know, hundreds of people. so housing is a is a big concern. You know, there's gonna be thousands of construction jobs, it's gonna, you know

Brett (01:18:05.722)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:18:11.892)

explode the the city's or the town's population relative to what it has been for the last few decades. so it's it's but they're solving for X, you know. They're they're figuring out creative ways to solve for the housing problems, the housing constraints, the the infrastructure constraints, you know, water and sewer. it's about the most boring thing in the world to talk about, you know, water and sewer infrastructure, but incredibly important, right? so just solving for those issues as they come. but but

Brett (01:18:18.939)

Yeah.

Brett (01:18:35.206)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:18:39.394)

doing it proactively and and and before the the project is is fully cited, right?

Rio Longacre (01:18:49.272)

Cool. All right. last one and then we'll like we'll we can wrap up. I know it's near the top of the R Dustin, you got to go in a minute. So what is a what's the like for data center developers, what's the c what's the criticism do you feel that gets understated or overlooked until it's, you know, very often too late?

Dawson Kluesner (01:18:55.074)

Yep, no worries.

Dawson Kluesner (01:19:08.39)

in terms of, you know, what's most often overstated, I think I would I would go back to are are you talking like data center like concerns with actually developing the projects?

Because again, I would go back to water, like especially in a state like Wyoming. Water and electricity, our our resource constraints, you know, it's every time I go to a community engagement or a town hall or something like that, that's two things that are talked about almost constantly. You know, question after question, just getting berated with water and and electricity questions. And Wyoming is proactively, you know, working to to one, ensure that these developers are are coming with the right technologies to to work within our resource constraints, and also ensuring that ratepayers

Brett (01:19:23.045)

Yeah.

Dawson Kluesner (01:19:49.316)

So that's definitely

Rio Longacre (01:19:52.992)

You're already here, folks. If you're if you want to build a data center, make sure you've done your homework and you've done your due diligence and you have some really good solutions and you're ready to answer some tough questions about those two.

Brett (01:20:02.33)

Yeah, don't make don't make the T Mobile mistake.

Dawson Kluesner (01:20:02.56)

Yep, and if you're Yeah, right. Yeah. Don't make the T Mobile's. Come come to the table, have a conversation with us. and and you know, if you're a you're a policy wonk out there, I would highly recommend you look at Black Hills Energy's large power tariff. it's a golden standard for if you want to ensure ratepayers are are kept whole with these large industrial players. So

Brett (01:20:25.232)

Well hey, thank you, Dawson. this has been a great certainly a an a di a conversation we wanted to have and thank you for having it with us around data centers because it is one of the hottest topics in politics countrywide. Every state, every community, every sh every music show I go to, there's there's a musician up on stage saying, No to data centers. so you wanna cut through the hype and and see what the the real reality is on the ground and and thanks for helping make that

Rio Longacre (01:20:27.072)

Good fun.

Dawson Kluesner (01:20:32.204)

Hmm. Yeah, thank you.

Brett (01:20:54.904)

super clear, right, and how you're thinking about it. So appreciate the time. Everybody that joined us, visit us at w dot signal and noise dot ai. subscribe to our newsletter as well as to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or where else wherever else you you watch or listen to our content. thanks everybody and thank you, Dawson.

Dawson Kluesner (01:20:56.118)

Mm-hmm.

Dawson Kluesner (01:21:16.332)

Yeah, thank you guys.