Breitbart News on Monday hosted Interior Secretary and National Energy Dominance Council Chairman Doug Burgum for a policy discussion titled “Harnessing American Power,” during which Burgum said he is confident in America’s technological leadership but concerned about barriers to building AI data centers.
“I don’t worry about us not having technological leadership. I worry about us on the ‘build, baby, build,’ because there are some states that literally are passing bans on AI data centers, and it’s not organic and local,” Burgum said.
“Some of this is foreign source dark money coming in, and the people that used to fight on climate change have shifted. They don’t talk climate change because they realize it’s a losing argument,” Burgum said before characterizing their messaging this way: “‘I can’t get people excited about one degree of climate change, but, man, I can lie to them about why their electric bill went up.’”
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“And I say lie, because there are elections occurring in states right now where people are running on the affordability of electricity, and there’s never been a data center built in their state, and there won’t be a data center, because these data centers are not going to go to places where you’ve got two to three times higher electricity,” Burgum continued.
“100 years ago, you wouldn’t put a wheat mill someplace where there was no water, no power, and the wheat costs three times as much. Why would you do that? That’s so these, these arguments are specious,” Burgum added.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum speaks with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle during a policy discussion on Monday, May 11, 2026, in Washington, DC, titled “Harnessing American Power.” (Matthew Perdie/Breitbart News)
Burgum pointed to a North Dakota project from his time as governor as evidence that data centers can benefit communities.
“And then, in my own state, when I was still governor, we put a $1.2 billion data center in a town of 800 people. You know what happened to electric rates? They went down,” Burgum said. “You’re like, that’s impossible. When you bring in AI, the rates go up because they use so much power. No, we brought them in, and it’s a fixed cost. The thing called the grid, you bring in a new customer who’s willing to pay a premium, and they bought down the rates for all the 800 local farmers, ranchers, and small-town folks that had a meter, they bought it all down.”
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He said the data center builders also agreed to build housing after residents raised concerns.
“And then the townspeople said, ‘Yeah, but what about housing? They’re going to come in our little town, they’re going to drive all the housing up,’ and the people building the data center for $1.2 billion, which is more than the entire tax base of the entire county, said, ‘we’ll build 30 new single-family homes. Is that okay?’ And then, like, ‘Do you need any, like, special breaks or free land?’ ‘No, we’ll just do it.’ You know, they just did all that stuff,” Burgum said.
Burgum said local officials later told him the builders had not turned down any requests from the town.
“And then, I asked them when, as governor, I said, ‘did you ask anything of the data center builders that they said no to?’ And they said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘why?’, they said, ‘because you didn’t ask enough. You should have asked for a new gym and new uniforms and new everything,’ because it’s like there’s so much money to be made in manufacturing intelligence,” Burgum said.
“And so there are ways to make this work, and there’s ways around the country where it is working, and it’s not voodoo economics, and it’s not subsidies. It’s you take a fixed cost grid, then you add a new customer payer on there,” Burgum stated.
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