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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

It's a Numbers Game: The Truth About AI Data Centers: Electricity Costs, Water Use & Local Impact

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

iHeartPodcasts

Politics, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Daily News

4.511.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are AI data centers making your electricity bill more expensive? In this episode, Ryan sits down with Axios tech reporter Maria Curie to break down the growing debate surrounding AI infrastructure and the real-world impact of massive data center expansion. They discuss rising energy costs, water consumption concerns, tax subsidies, local community effects, environmental questions, and whether AI growth is moving faster than regulators can keep up.

Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.6

Guaranteed Human.

0:04.8

Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Grudowski.

0:07.0

Thank you guys for being here.

0:08.4

I hope you all enjoyed Monday's episode where I talked about Kevin O'Leary and his fight in Utah and my interview with Chad Bianco from California.

0:16.1

He's running for governor.

0:17.6

I'm going to spend the rest of this week doing deep, deep dives into AI and data centers

0:23.2

and the backlash over AI and data centers. I've gotten a few of your emails and you're saying,

0:28.0

Ryan, you're being too negative about AI. I want to express something off of the top as best as I

0:33.7

possibly can because sometimes I do trip on my words. I don't know everything about AI.

0:38.4

And I'm trying my hardest to separate spin from both sides and corporate narratives and

0:44.7

hyperbolic, duming that the world's going to end and trying to find out as much truth as

0:49.7

possible about a very complicated subject matter that's changing rapidly.

0:54.8

On its face, I am not anti-AI.

0:58.2

I think I can and should.

1:01.0

I think it can and should be used to better people's lives.

1:06.0

My frustration, though, with the conversations around AI is from people like Kevin O'Leary that you know he says

1:16.0

AI is important and we need to do everything that I want to do to build it up or the bad guys win

1:23.4

like they don't make this an all or nothing scenario.

1:29.8

We can't, we are not China.

1:37.1

We do not, we do not purposefully inflict our population with subpar living standards to have this economic boom or this technological advancement while we all live like in really terrible conditions.

1:46.1

I don't want to live in that country.

...

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