In a compelling All-In Podcast interview titled Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior | All-In DC, former North Dakota governor, tech entrepreneur, and now U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum delivers a sobering message: America is in the midst of an energy emergency—and artificial intelligence is at the heart of it.
Speaking with David Friedberg against the backdrop of a massive LNG export facility in Louisiana, Burgum paints a picture of an escalating global arms race not only in geopolitics but in compute—and by extension, electricity. “If we don't have energy security,” he says, “we're not going to have national security. And if we don’t win the AI arms race, we lose the defense battle.”
Burgum cuts through the political noise to deliver a clear thesis: AI, robotics, and automation are on the verge of causing an energy demand spike unlike anything the U.S. has ever faced. "The public and much of the business community don’t yet grasp how energy-hungry AI is," he says. Burgum points to the exponential growth of data centers, AI models, and robotic systems that all require vast, reliable power sources. “You can’t run AI without power. And you can’t innovate your way out of global challenges without AI.”
His warning is both technical and existential. With China on track to add five Americas' worth of electricity capacity by 2040—much of it coal-fired—Burgum argues the U.S. risks losing technological dominance unless it radically accelerates power generation capacity. “AI is not just powering apps,” he notes. “It’s powering defense systems, advanced manufacturing, and the next wave of global economic growth.”
Burgum highlights a dangerous mismatch: the U.S. energy grid has only expanded by 6 terawatts in 35 years, while AI's power demands are about to spike. Meanwhile, regulatory bottlenecks, local protest movements, and outdated permitting frameworks are crippling the nation’s ability to build new baseload generation—especially fossil fuels and nuclear.
He contrasts this with China’s centralized approach: “They added 94 gigawatts of coal-fired power in a single year. We can’t build a transmission line without a decade-long fight.” The Secretary warns of “Biden brownouts”—rolling blackouts that could soon plague American cities due to an overreliance on intermittent renewable sources without adequate baseload backup.
With a background in enterprise software—Burgum sold Great Plains Software to Microsoft—his perspective bridges Silicon Valley and industrial America. During the podcast, he recalls attending CERAWeek, the world’s leading energy conference, and seeing an unprecedented change: “The top five tech companies showed up with $300 billion in capex. They’re not there to sell software—they’re the biggest energy customers now.”
His broader message to the tech industry is clear: stop treating energy as someone else’s problem. “When I was at Microsoft, we didn’t even have capex meetings. Today, data centers and AI inference clusters are driving the biggest infrastructure wave since the interstate highway system.”
As chair of the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC), Burgum is spearheading what he describes as a “tiger team” to unlock stalled energy projects. His council, which includes half of the Trump cabinet, is tasked with offering white-glove support to projects stalled by regulatory gridlock—from LNG terminals to SMR (Small Modular Reactor) nuclear deployments.
Their priorities:
In one of the interview’s more innovative moments, Burgum lays out a macroeconomic vision: treat U.S. public lands and subsurface mineral rights like financial assets. “Interior oversees 700 million acres of subsurface land. That’s not being accounted for,” he says. “We brought in $22 billion in royalties last year. That should be $1 trillion annually.”
The logic? The U.S. has a $100 trillion asset base in its natural resources. Unlocking just 1% could close the federal deficit and fund next-gen infrastructure and defense. But that requires a national shift—from preservation-only policies to productive stewardship.
Burgum concludes with a reflection on America’s fading risk tolerance. “We’ve become so prosperous we’ve lost our appetite for risk. And we regulate innovation to death.” He believes nuclear fear, permitting inertia, and political overreach have become structural threats to U.S. competitiveness.
His call to action is blunt: “We need a Manhattan Project for energy. Or we will lose the AI race to China. And with it, the century.”
