Hello and welcome to the Times Tech podcast, where each week we unpack how technology is reshaping business, culture and everyday life. I'm Katie Prescott covering all things tech here in the city of London. Now, Danny isn't here this week. He's AWOL somewhere, but

stepping in is another brilliant member of the tech team. My colleague Mark Selman, who's

tech correspondent for the Times. Hi, Mark. Hello, and good to be back. Very good to have you.

Now, listen, when you took your job as tech correspondent at the Times, did you think you'd also be covering real estate and energy?

No, but then again, I don't think I really knew what I was letting myself in for.

I think you did. It was pre-chat, GPT, wasn't it? Well, today we're going to be talking all things, real estate and energy.

And by that, I mean data centres, the large warehouses that

contain the physical infrastructure needed to power AI. Yes, but they're a bit more than just that.

They're very boring looking, but very, very important. In fact, some people are even calling them

the new frontier of warfare. And that's because

over the last few weeks, Iran has been bombing US-owned data centers in the Persian Gulf, damaging

physical infrastructure and disrupting cloud services across the region.

They really have become a new front line.

But they're so important, and this is an extraordinary statistic, a big moment here in the UK

this week, when the combined value of new data centres approved last year overtook office

buildings.

Yeah, and if you think about that, that means that we're no longer building spaces for

people to work in, but instead building homes for the silicon that could be replacing them.

And as you said, Mark, they are, you know, incredibly boring to look at,

but they are the heartbeat powering the AI revolution.

But there is this massive question about how on earth we're going to find all the energy

needed to power them.

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