This is one thing. I'm David Rind, and what you type into chat GBT comes with a cost.

There's so many chips in these facilities are so large that these facilities now consume as much energy as large U.S. cities.

How the AI boom is showing up in your electric bill in just a bit. Stick with us.

At the heart of the nearly two-week-long government shutdown is a debate about affordability.

Specifically, affordability in health care. Affordability is also an issue for both parties in key governor's races this year in New Jersey and Virginia, where Elizabeth Martyrana lives.

We've lived in Prince William County for 49 years.

So like this area is home through and through for you?

Definitely. My husband and I moved here in the summer of 76. We raised our children here. They

attended schools here. Liz is retired. She lives in an active 55-plus community in Gainesville,

Virginia, about 45 minutes outside of Washington, D.C. And she loves just about everything about the area,

except for one thing.

There were people on a Sunday morning going for a hike in our National Forest Park,

which is right adjacent to my community, and they couldn't figure out what this humming was.

And the humming can come from the 24-7 air handlers on top of all of these data centers.

She says over the past couple of years, huge data centers have been popping up all over her county.

Data centers have been a thing, of course, ever since the modern internet was born.

But as more tech companies go all in on artificial intelligence, they need these buildings to house the computers that are doing massive complex calculations 24-7.

And Virginia is quite literally the data center capital of the world.

According to a 2024 state government study,

the state accounted for 13% of the world's data center operational capacity.

13%.

Loudoun County has been dubbed data center alley because of how many centers it has, and nearby Prince William County, where Liz lives, is quickly catching up.

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