Crucial Quote
“The biggest political crisis that’s coming to this country in the next six months to two years is going to be Americans opposing AI—that translates to opposing data centers and power plants,” Hochstein said.
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Tangent
Hochstein, a former senior energy adviser and Middle East negotiator in the Biden administration, is now managing partner at TWG Global, an investment firm with holdings across AI, technology, energy and finance. During his time in government, he brokered the 2024 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire and led U.S. efforts on AI cooperation and infrastructure investment with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He remains a closely watched voice on energy markets and geopolitics.
What To Watch For
On Wednesday, Hochstein warned that investors wrongly assume oil will flow freely the moment the Middle East wars end. In reality, he says, the U.S. is living off finite oil reserves now at 20-year lows—and as that cushion shrinks, borrowing costs and inflation will rise, making the AI buildout even costlier.
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Key Background
Americans have been opposing the massive buildouts of data centers, the giant, warehouse-scale buildings full of computers that power every AI chatbot behind the scenes. Tech companies from OpenAI and Anthropic to Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet and Alphabet are all racing to build them nationwide, but they guzzle electricity and water, raising local utility costs, and swallow huge tracts of land. A Gallup poll published May 13 found seven out of 10 people oppose AI data centers in their local area, with nearly half saying they “strongly” oppose them. That anger is spilling into county meeting halls and the streets as local campaigns have sprung up since 2024—delaying or canceling dozens of data centers in 2025. The issue has crossed party lines with bipartisan opposition hardening even as developers and state officials cast the buildout as an economic and national-security necessity.
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