The Data Center Panic Is Missing the Point

This week on Seeing Red, Garrett Fulce talks with Doug Kelly, CEO of the American Edge Project, about what data centers actually are, why they matter in the U.S.-China AI race, what communities get out of them and why the panic over power and water may be aimed at the wrong target.

Doug makes the case that data centers are not the villain — they are infrastructure. AI exposed the weakness in America’s grid. Now the question is whether Texas builds for the next boom or lets somebody else do it.

Later in the episode, Garrett breaks down the State Board of Education’s debate over Bible references in Texas curriculum and reflects on the one-year anniversary of the Camp Mystic floods — what Texas learned, what it still has not fixed and why disaster preparedness cannot be a press-release exercise.

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X: @gwfulce
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Guest:
Doug Kelly, CEO of the American Edge Project
American Edge Project: americanedgeproject.org
X: @dougkelly
American Edge on X: @americanedge

Chapters:
0:00 Why data centers matter in the U.S.-China AI race
5:47 Jobs, tax revenue and local benefits
13:28 Energy, water and the Texas grid
20:18 AI, automation and the future of work
26:15 SBOE, Bible references and Texas curriculum
34:10 Camp Mystic floods and disaster preparedness

Find us at seeingredpodcast.substack.com for full episodes. Follow us on all socials at @theseeingredpod and online at our website Seeing Red Podcast. x.com/gwfulce 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thank you so much for joining. We got a whole new look, whole new me, whole new show format. We're going to be talking to Doug Kelly today. He is the CEO of the American Edge Project. And we're going to be talking about data centers. Like, what are they? Where are they, you know, what why do we need them? Why are they building so many of them? And what does the public get wrong about this? Like what's I believe is the next major utility we're going to have to figure out how to provide. We're going to be jumping into the SPOE. That's the state board of education. They made a lot of news. They had a big quarterly meeting last week. And we're going to talk about the one-year anniversary of the Camp Mystic Floods. But before all that, do me a favor, subscribe real quick. It helps keep the lights on. And there's quite a few of them. And so make sure you subscribe. We have an incredible guest today from the great state of Ohio. But I hear he's originally from Michigan. The CEO of the American Edge Project, Doug Kelly. Doug, thank you so much for joining us today. And I'm looking forward to learning a little bit more about what you're doing. Tell me a little bit about American Edge Project.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me, Garrett. I'm excited to be on your show. The American Edge Project, we are a coalition of about 24 different groups of all different stripes, technology organizations, grassroots organizing organizations, and other groups that represent America's need for the world-leading technology. And what we do at American Edge is we advocate for American tech leadership, especially in the race against China, to make sure that we have the strongest possible economy, the strongest possible national security, and that technology helps advance our values all across the globe. So that's what we do. We're unabashed about it, and we got to make sure we win this AI race with China.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Absolutely. Well, I know a lot of people on this issue, they hear a lot of things when it comes to a lot of scary things about data centers. What really is like at its core, what is a data center?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yeah. So, first of all, data centers have been around for 60 years. As long as we've had computers, we've had data centers. What they are is a collection of chips and servers and other things like that that basically help us with our digital life. The modern day data center has a series of AI chips, has a series of servers that help stream up your online banking, your social media, your Netflix accounts, all the different things you do on life with your digital life. And then also, some of them contain AI chips, which help do the training of different AI models, uh, and then also search and request for different AI usage overall. So if you think of basically as AI factories, that's probably a better way of thinking about what they are. They're essential infrastructure for us to be competitive with China.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Okay, so that's a great explanation of like kind of what it is. But like if you were to walk into a data center, what does it look like? What are you gonna be seeing?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

You're gonna see a lot of electrical wires, you're gonna see a lot of servers, you're gonna see a lot of significant computers on racks, you're gonna see a lot of different AI chips in there, and you're gonna see, you know, basically what the modern day economy is built upon. It's not, it's not like walking into a Costco or anything like that. It's not it's not that exciting, but what's happening inside there is exciting because this is this is our digital future being built in real time right now in every single state across the country.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

I mean, when you explain it, it sounds like you kind of walk into like the uh the buckies of server rooms, right? Like you walk in to a server app, and it's just like goes on for as long as the eye can see.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, what they think about 100 pumps, you know, it's exactly like that.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Well, what is you know, your your focus is kind of on the national security side. Why does it matter if we have these data centers when it comes to fighting cybersecurity like threats like China and Russia? Look, it's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

First of all, let's just start out with the US-China competition, right? The US and China are in a neck and neck race for AI leadership globally. And the winner of that race gets decades-long advantages in national security, in economic competitiveness, and in advancing that country's values all across the globe. So that's just the starting point here. And so the reason why it's important for us to win this and how AI fits into this is that AI is essential to protect us from a cybersecurity standpoint. It allows us to have offensive capabilities against China should we decide to use those on the cyber front as well. It helps our troops be able to go through lots of different data quickly, so it helps our intelligence gathering system, and it's really key to a lot of different autonomous things that we do to make sure that we're protecting our country overall. So it's a great enabler in the national security side of the house. But on the economic side of the house, it's equally as strong because it's powering up every single industry in the country. It's given our country country a significant economic advantage in the industries that are fast adopters of this. And China is trying to do the same thing, right? They're integrating AI across all the different industries. So when I say it's a race, it is a race. And you know, unfortunately, there's no finish line on this. We just have to stay continually ahead of them. And that requires building and it requires investment.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Well, when we talk about building out new data centers, a lot of that's where we get most of the pushback. It's not from existing sites, though. I'm sure there's some. But we see most of the pushback from the community, it's at new sites. What are kind of like what are the pros of a data center coming to a particular community versus just kind of the pros of having data and and having a you know the capabilities necessary to fight AI? That sounds great, but why should it be in my backyard?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Right. So uh just to give people a sense of where we were, right? When when AI was first commercially available about four years ago, we had roughly 4,000 data centers already in existence all around the country. Now, between now and five years from now, we're gonna build about 2,500 more of them. So data centers aren't anything new to our country overall. The difference is the is that we're kind of at a moment in time where we're building more of them quicker than we ever have before. They're bigger than they tend to be. But then people are also worried that AI is gonna take their job, that AI is gonna make it harder for their kid to find a job and things like that. So there's a very kind of visceral worry that people have about uh data centers. The great news is that data centers aren't the big bad wolves that the opposition like to say. Data centers are a tool and a piece of infrastructure that we're building across this country that does a lot of different things for a community. First of all, it creates thousands of short-term jobs in construction and supply chain and local businesses as they're building that data center overall. So you think about your local suppliers of servers or of racks or of metal or of steel, all of these companies are being purchased from by that company that's building the data center. So there's a lot of short-term jobs. There's also a significant amount of long-term jobs that are developed here when you build a data center. Maybe not the thousands to start with, but hundreds overall. But there's also you have to maintain that data center as well, like upgrading its wiring, upgrading its servers, et cetera, that just keeps a perpetual stream of vendors locally coming in there. The second big thing that data centers do is they're a massive chunk of tax revenue for that community with one meta facility in Louisiana. There's a portion of the sales tax that goes to teacher bonuses down there. Teachers this year are getting up to $50,000 a year bonuses because sales tax revenue went up by 2,000% when this data center is being built. Like that's a stunning amount of a bonus coming into a teacher. Now, not every state or communities set that up like that, but there's millions and millions and millions of tax dollars that come into communities, many of whom have been hard hit in the past by losing manufacturing jobs or other things like that, that this is vitally needed revenue. So those are just the two biggest things from a tax revenue standpoint and a job standpoint that that benefit communities overall.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah, I hear I hear what you're saying on that, because you know it's not just construction, it's it's the long-term, high-end, high-tech jobs. I always kind of find it funny because like the way you described it earlier, it's like a mega computer all kind together, whatever else. The the the origin of the term Luddite, which is somebody who's like anti-technology, were these people who were anti-Loom, a loom being something that created clothing and textiles, which was actually the very first computers. They had algorithmic punch cards that used binary, they were mechanical computers, basically. So we have that we've had this opposition to you know more and more computers and computing power for time immemorial. And you know what? Those Luddites were right. We don't have people running looms anymore, but we have a much different, much more vibrant and greater economy because we're taking labor, things that require a lot of manual labor uh and finding new new things that need that labor. Why is Texas all of a sudden, feels like at least, becoming such a hot spot for so many data centers? I saw a reporting and included in an op-ed I wrote for the Houston Chronicle a couple of weeks ago that said that Texas is is set to overtake Virginia as like the number one place for data centers in the country. Why is Texas like jumping up so high so fast?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah, a couple of reasons. One, Texas has committed itself to becoming a AI infrastructure and tech innovation state. I mean, you have good supportive laws that spur innovation, you have a favorable regulatory climate, and you have decision makers who move quickly on a hey, we're gonna get to yes, so that you can either build here or build wisely here with as few onus requirements as possible. Those are all very attractive when you're trying to build a data center in very short order. So Texas has kind of put a welcome for business side outside the state and are welcoming people in. The second part that Texas has it has a great skilled workforce. You have a lot of different universities there that build a pipeline of talent to help accelerate innovation in the state around these data centers as well. And you've got a really good skilled labor group too. And you guys got plenty of energy down there as well. So those are kind of the handful of things you need to catalyze data center development. Now, contrast that with my state of Ohio. If Texas is number two, we're number five in data centers. And Ohio used to be this manufacturing muscle, muscle-bound manufacturing state, but we lost a lot of manufacturing jobs due to short-sighted policy decisions that shipped a lot of those jobs over to China. So Ohio's worked really hard to become an advanced manufacturing state and a tech leader overall. But they just tried to put on the ballot here in November a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited most construction of data centers. Now, fortunately, it did not get enough signatures to be on the ballot this year. But if that got on the uh ballot and it passed, that would put a big we are closed for business sign on the outside of Ohio. And it would undermine thousands of jobs here, hundreds of millions in tax revenue, and would have really hurt the state overall. So all these different communities are trying to pass moratoriums on data center building too. They're in effect saying that same thing.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah, I mean, I I hear that where they're coming from. I I get it because they're so afraid of their costs being increased. They hear about these tax dollars coming in, but they haven't necessarily seen it come in yet. But many, many places are still approving it. My question, and the one I don't really have a great answer for because I just don't know the answer, is like, why is why do people think that their their energy or their utility bills are going to go up if a data center goes in? And are people actually seeing those those things happen?

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Right. So you are putting your finger right on the challenge here that data center builders face. One, there's really organized opposition all across the country with a lot of misinformation up out there. But the biggest points are data centers use so much electricity that it's boosting up my uh electricity bill, and that, gosh, they sure do use a lot of water. Well, here's the reality on these pieces here. For 30 years, there's been government reports decrying America's poor state of energy infrastructure in our weak grid. And all these reports go back to the 80s and 90s and have been consistent long before AI was developed. They said we do not have a 21st century grid. If we are going to try and do any type of ambition, this country does not have the grid to support it. And each year they've called for more and more transmission lines to be built, but each year we've built fewer and fewer transmission lines overall. So, what happens is when you build a data center and AI is using a lot of electricity, it's not the fault of the demand. All that AI demand is doing is exposing the 30 years of failure to invest in our grid. So now that we have this guaranteed demand by data centers, now's the time to leverage that moment to build that 21st century grid that we need for whatever our future ambitions, whether it's in AI, electrification of transportation, or even reshoring of jobs overseas or building big semiconductor plants. All of those things require electricity. And if we're able to build and meet that electricity need, then our ambitions as a country are going to come to fruition. But if we don't build that, we are always going to struggle with this issue. So rather than causing the problem on electricity, AI merely exposed it, and now's the time to fix it.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Well, my guess my follow-up question would be that is I know a lot of times when you have these forecasts. So right now there's a forecast that Texas will need to like produce two and a half times more electricity than it does currently to supply the amount of power needed to do what's already in the pipeline for data centers in Texas. And Texas already produces the most power in the state by a good chunk. So like you look at that like, oh, how are we possibly going to generate that much power? Is this a thing? Is this a problem where we're gonna get five years down the line and we're just not gonna need to use as much power because we figured out cheaper ways to cool or to you know do the wiring? Or is it a problem that's gonna be have to be fixed by just building more nuclear and thermal, oil and gas, wind, solar, whatever, more power where generate more power wherever so that there's just more energy to use?

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Right. Well, first of all, all of the above, right? We want renewables, we want thermal, we want nuclear, we want all these different things to be able to generate more electricity and power overall. The second thing we need is to invest in transmission lines that move electricity from one part of the country to the other. One of the reasons why people's prices are going up in certain parts of the country is that there's a lot of transmission bottlenecks right now that while the cost of generating electricity has decreased, the cost of transmitting electricity across those older dated wires or inadequate supply of wires, that has gone up a lot. So that we have to be able to do both on this to make sure that we can solve our problem. Now, some people say, well, that can't be done. You know what? It can be done. It's just a matter of national will and determination of are we going to use this AI as our modern day moonshot moment to make sure that we accelerate all the different infrastructure that we need to build. Because here's the thing China's outspent us for the last 15 years on investing in their electricity grid from renewables to transmission to battery storage, et cetera. And over the last 15 years, it's paid off. This year alone, they're going to generate twice as much electricity as America does. Let's hear that again. 15 years ago, we were tied. Now they generate twice as much electricity as we do. So when they look at AI's demand for electricity, they're like, eh, it's a solved problem. We took care of it. Now, we shouldn't take a backseat to anybody when it comes to generating electricity because it's the key to all of our ambitions. So we just need to need to have the national commitment and the regulatory reforms and knocking down barriers to creating electricity and transmission lines so that we can actually achieve our various ambitions.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Absolutely. Well, I guess let's talk a little bit about water. Water is one of the key issues. We talked about power. One of those issues I feel like is mostly kind of a tech a technological solve. But what are you useed? What are your thoughts on the push towards mandating closed loop systems, which aren't truly closed loop, it's not like an air conditioning system. They do require some recharging, but it def it significantly diminishes the amount of water being pulled in. And the secondary is in areas where you can use non-potable water to make potable water. What are you seeing that kind of technology? Is it developing? And what are the what sort of water strain are we seeing?

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah, so people claim there's a lot of water strain on this, but the reality is that most of the new data centers are becoming closed loop systems overall. So for the non for the non-policy longs of your audience, which is 98% of the people, I had to look it up myself. It's basically you fill your radiator up in your car once. You drive around. When you get an oil change 3,000 miles later, they top it off a bit. That's what a closed loop system is, right? It helps cool all the different heat-producing chips in that data center. It allows it to cool it in a way that doesn't use a lot of water. Another way they're doing it is spraying uh water directly onto those chips. So the overall plant can run hotter, but the chips stay cool. So there's a lot of technical solutions that are going on now for solving for this water challenge. But again, innovation is going to help solve a lot of these different challenges overall. So, from an electricity standpoint and a water standpoint, the technology is catching up with the demand and the concerns from local communities to the point where it's becoming less and less of an issue for those data centers there.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

So we've talked about water. Another big concern people have, or just a kind of a question, is a lot of the jobs people presume that are fueling when people talk about jobs with data centers, end up being kind of more temporary construction jobs. Because, you know, once a construction project's over, it's done. There's only so much maintenance you can do. What sort of permanent jobs is it creating? And how much kind of more or less permanent construction jobs is it is it creating as people move from building one data center to the next?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah. So there's jobs in a couple different levels here. There's first the immediate build overall. And those are jobs for your construction workers or plumbers, pipe fitters, electricians, you know, data center technicians, et cetera. Those those jobs, you need thousands of those people at each site. And then a lot of times those people migrate to a different site once that data center is done and built to help build the other ones. So it's a whole set of construction-related jobs that are the data centers help create. But there's a second round of jobs as well. People are worried about AI and job loss. Boy, it'll make it hard for my kid to find a job. It may take my job. In almost any case of new technologies, what happens is the new technology replaces tasks and not the work itself. So when you think about the automobile, the personal computer, the internet, ATMs, et cetera, all those changed how people work. It reshaped occupations and it created entirely new industries. But, you know, in the case of the automobile, yes, there were fewer carriage makers and there were fewer horse farriers for, you know, the shoes of horseshoes, but there were whole new supply chain industries that were built off of this. And so there's going to be a similar thing with artificial intelligence. You know, when the internet was first built, there was a lot of predictions like, oh my gosh, this is going to create a permanent class of unemployed people. Well, the reality is we gained 30 million jobs since the time the interround the internet was developed. And all of these new industries like search engine optimization, social media strategists, those jobs didn't exist before. There's going to be a whole set of classification of jobs that are going to happen with AI as well. So I'm less concerned about the job loss. There'll be some job shifts, but overall it's going to create new jobs and it's going to create a very exciting time for people overall in this workforce.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

I mean, that's been my personal experience with AI tools thus far, is that it's taken task off my plate or helped me automate certain things. Maybe help me with research and things like that, but it didn't take over like anything like where I would hire somebody thus far. And so it's been really helpful with helping me streamline a lot of things. And I think that's going to be largely how it's used, at least for the time being. Because that's kind of how modern business. Is built anyway, it's just making things more efficient. It'll make things more efficient, which opens up more time to do other work.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Let me just let me just add on there, Garrett, that the tech companies too recognize that we have a short-term challenge in building these data centers. So they're creating free programs for people who want to become a data center technician, a fiber optic layer of wire, a construction worker. They pay for the classes, they certify you, and then they guarantee you a job on one of their many different sites to become employed. This is an amazing opportunity for people who may not be saying, I want to go to college, but they want to make sure that they're gaining skills. This is a great way for them to gain that.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Absolutely. Well, tell me a little bit more. Is there anything that you think people who are kind of thinking about data centers don't know that you think they should know about data centers and AI?

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Yeah, I would say that there's been surveys that show a lot of people who are against AI either don't live near a data center or have not really used AI, or they used it many years ago before it became really refined. I would just urge everybody to download one of these free apps, to use the model of your choice and give it a second moment of truth and see how much it has grown and how much it has gained and what its capabilities are. And I'll give the example of my 85-year-old dad, Bob Kelly. Dad was kind of skeptical about it. I said, Dad, come on, you're a great electrician. Ask it your toughest question. So he typed in the question. It was a really tricky question. Five seconds later, he got the answer back. And now my dad is a super user of AI, using it everything through plan vacations, to plan how he's going to redo his garage and that, because it offloads these tasks onto something that's really smart. So then he can do his highest value of installation and other things like that. So people should try AI again, see how it can help you on basic tasks, and then just become a super user of it. And you'll, I bet they'll have the same experience my dad does.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us with us today and look, you know, just giving us a little bit of new knowledge or reminding us about this the power of technology and what we can do if we're the leader in it as a country. Where can people find more information about you and American Edge Project?

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Yeah, people can come to our website, AmericanEdgeProject.org. That's AmericanEdgeproject.org. If you think about technologies or edge, that's how you can remember it. And take a look at what we have there, right? We've got a great bipartisan board. You know, we don't lobby, we advocate for positions, and you'll see a lot of the different content that I've talked about here on that page where you can find it, download it, and see how your state is doing compared to others.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Well, thank you so much again for joining us. And we'll make sure we link it into the description if you want to learn more about Doug and the American Edge Project. You can find it there. Thanks, Doug. Hey, thanks so much. Thanks again to Doug Kelly for joining us. Tell us tell us more about data centers and what they're actually doing. What is a data actually data center actually is and how it works? But we're gonna talk real quick about what's going on at the state board of education. State Board of Education, contrary to what a lot of people might think, is basically in charge of the curriculum and curriculum standards in the state of Texas. And so one of the things that they are really, really, really in charge of are these things called TKS. T-E-K-S. And the TEAKS are what everyone, everyone in a given grade needs to learn in a given year. And there's certain curriculum that goes into defining that. A lot of things are happening there right now. One that I'm not as fluent with is this thing called Texas Blue Bonnet, which is state-developed curriculum that a lot of schools are using and are incentivized to use through a number of different programs through the Texas Education Agency, the TEA. But one of the things that they were also talking about this week are social studies teaks. And what got a lot of attention was the fact that Texas is the first state to mandate the that certain elements of the Bible be taught in public schools. And this is, you know, understandably, given the framing from the media, is a way of kind of disparaging Texas as being super conservative and they're trying to put the Bible in schools, which we are super conservative and we are trying to put the Bible in schools. But one of the problems is the Bible is a foundational text to the Western canon. And what that means is the canon of literature, which is it's a canon with one N, is the body that makes up the body of work that makes up like what English literature is or American literature is. And if they're not directly referencing the Bible, they'll be referencing people who are referencing the Bible. And so it is very, very difficult to teach English literature without also touching on the stories of the Bible and the how the Bible was written and how it is consumed in the times and in the eras that key pieces of literature are taught. And so, unlike how the Bible was taught in through the 1950s when it was taken out by court orders, where it was more of a Bible study, or you're reading, reading, reading the Bible a lot as an actual course, the way the Bible is being reintroduced to the Texas schools is through English and historical literature. And so stories like David and Goliath are going to be taught. David and Goliath is a very, very common idiom, obviously, and it's helpful to know the full story that the idiom is derived from. The book of Job, some stuff from Lamentations is in there, these things that are alluded to in other places, and they make sense. I know when I was scanning through it as I was an English minor, the where the Bible is being taught as it's currently constructed makes sense, and what's being taught makes sense for why school children at those ages would be we would be engaging with that work. Let's be careful here. I'm talking to fellow conservatives. We don't want atheists and radical progressives, some of whom are teachers, to be teaching the Bible incorrectly. And so there that's why Sunday school and your church and your home faith group is where you should your children should be learning what these stories mean and how to apply them to your life. And if you are if you homeschool or classically educate your child in one way or another, I would highly encourage you to teach and have or have someone teach your child in depth the just Bible study and Bible literature, because for any number of reasons, it will help your child when it comes to engaging with literary works and creative problem solving and all the things that come from social studies generally, it will help them have a far greater understanding of those works. And so, more way more so than what's we're going to be taught in this in the school. But this the what is in the curriculum, I believe, is a great first step. And I think there should probably be a lot more added to the curriculum because we've gone too far down the this line of trying to there's been a there's been battles in academia to try and push more newer works and authors and revive some people who were not large in their own times and add them into the canon. I think we need to go back to and reset to a time before really the postmodern influx around the 70s from the from the French school into Yale into the Yale school of thought. I may have lost you there. That's uh there's a lot going on there, and I would love to engage with that topic a little bit more, but that's a little outside outside the scope of this conversation. But one person I know who's really on this is Mitch Little. We've had conversations about this on this show in the past, and I think that there is good work to be done on what is what can be added to our curriculum. And I so you're gonna be hearing a lot about the SBOE, you're gonna be hearing a lot about oh, this radical stuff is happening. But if you actually go and read what these students are being asked to read in the context of the other things that are being taught in that same grade level, that's a good thing. It's also born from a bill that's requiring uh at least one book be read in each grade level. Now, thankfully, the SBOE took that mandate and really expanded it because far too many teachers have gotten far away from teaching whole books and have really kind of bought into the that kids don't have the attention span to read real full books anymore. And one of the things that this this plan is trying to do is reintroduce the some well, not just with the Bible stories, but with the entire social study teams as a whole, is actually requiring students to read whole books again, several per year, way more than the what was mandated by I think it was HB11 from a couple years ago. But regardless, it is a great push for trying to get our kids' attention spans back, get them off of doom scrolling on short form video, and getting them to actually read. And in that context, when you're having 10 to 20 works required in a year, making sure that the students understand the biblical references that are peppered throughout all of the English canon, literature canon, social studies canon, and the American history as it's known is a key thing. And so I I think that we've done the SBOE did a good job of fighting back against a lot of crazy rhetoric, and I look forward to seeing how this plays out for our students uh when it's officially implemented in the 2030-31 school year and how it works. But we're gonna we're gonna take it down a little bit, we're gonna bring it to a little more of a solemn place because uh just over a year ago, a tropical weather event from the Pacific found its way across the Chihuahuan Desert and across Mexico into the Texas Hill Country, and thanks to local weather conditions, it just sat and dumped water tons and tons, several like more than a foot of water in a very short amount of time, over an area that is unpermeable, meaning water doesn't soak in rock or doesn't rock soak soak in quickly, rock with lots of steep and channels for the water to go to. And floodwaters came down the Guadalupe, killing well over a hundred people, 25 of which or more were at the location of the camp of Camp Mystic, which is a girl, all-girl summer camp in the Kerval area. Over the past year, we have seen some legislation pass because there was a special session that was called while all this was happening. And we've seen some a lot of news being made around this. And I wrote a story about it or an op-ed about it at the time. A lot of hurt, a lot of darkness. A lot of folks who passed in the prime of their lives or in the beginning of their lives, and a lot of families just you know have filled the reckoning, felt the reckoning. Legislation passed was passed quickly, and it's a lesson that sometimes if you pass legislation quickly, there are a lot of unintended consequences. And there have been some unintended consequences in the how the law was written. Primarily, there is a requirement that there be certain levels of broadband for alerting systems at some areas that are camps that are often in very rural areas that don't have ready access to broadband internet, and so there really wasn't a provision in the law to make that happen. And there's some things happening behind the scenes where you know maybe a law that's on the books uh isn't being enforced correctly, and there are people who are making you know making that part of the issue. But, you know, the key point I made at the time, and it's a point I still think is relevant, was you know, while there are certain amounts of blame belong on the owners of property along the flood path, and those are going to be adjudicated in court. There was a certain level of blame that needed to be leveled at both local government and the state government. And now the state legislature has done a number of investigations into this, but I think somebody needs to look into what the state could have done to prevent this type of problem. And right now, there's a lot of reactionary stuff happening. There's been money and there's been reporting of new flood systems going in along the Guadalupe River and other rivers to fix this kind of problem. But Texas isn't just prone to one type of natural disaster. We're prone to this type of flooding in the hill country, we're prone to hurricanes, we're prone to there are several different areas that are highly prone to wildfires. Let's not even talk about the fact that the net nearly the whole state's prone to tornadoes. There are certain things that are predictable and that they will happen, but they're unpredictable on when. And the state should be spending a good amount of its time and efforts figuring out ways to mitigate that damage and to prevent that damage from occurring so that we don't have as big of tax bills or as big of a paycheck to pay as a society, as a community, after these disasters happen. And so my solution at the time, which I still think is something that should be explored, is that the state should be held or should be held liable and be subject to suit, saying, which is to say, victims and the families of victims should be able to sue the state if they did not adequately respond. I heard a lot of criticism at the time about just how it would be implemented. I don't know exactly how it would, because I'm not an attorney nor am I a lawmaker. But I think it's something that should be talked about. I think that the I think that officials across the state and once the the basically the problem is the incentives are skewed, right? Obviously, after a disaster happens, you're gonna want to fix it, you make sure that that disaster doesn't happen again. But when you only have when you're a county and you only have a few million dollars to spend on infrastructure, why would you spend money on an emergency preparedness infrastructure when your county needs new roads or a new community center? Something that your community will need and not just tourists. And so the state needs to do more to step in, especially in areas where there are a bunch of Texans and people wherever else, if the tourists are going to some location, maybe the state needs to spend more money making sure that that location is safe. So it's something that can needs to continue being talked about. It will continue to be talked about. But I didn't want to take a moment to again talk about this major issue that doesn't get nearly enough attention on this very sad first anniversary of what was one of the worst natural disasters in my memory in this great state that I love. We're gonna end the show on that segment this week, but I want to thank you again for staying with us. Please subscribe, and we'll see you next week. Okay, bye, guys.