Why America Must Lead the Global Race for Digital Infrastructure

I am super, super excited to be joined by these three folks up here. We'll get right into it with some introductions, if they're necessary. We were joking backstage that Harry might drop in from the ceiling since this is his stage and make a grand entrance, but he was modest enough to walk up with us small folk here.

​

Lisa Hough, who for me is the first lady of Bitcoin, we'll start with you for introductions. For those who somehow don't know the three of you, we'll let you kick it off, Lisa, and get right into it.

​

Thank you so much for coming. I know it's 4:30 and you probably want to be anywhere else, but thank you very much. I was a gas trader 100 years ago. I led PJM and East Coast trading. We had 4,500 megawatts of generation and a whole bunch of other energy assets. I found Bitcoin about 2018. I started calling myself an expert in Bitcoin mining in 2020. I totally was not, but I started working in Bitcoin and have been here ever since. Now I am developing data center sites.

​

I'm Harry. I work at CleanSpark. We're a large-scale digital infrastructure developer, a large holder of Bitcoin, and a strong believer in the American backbone for future innovation. I want to pause on some of our introduction and just say that if you asked any of the colonies here in the U.S. whether or not we were too far behind the British to win our independence, they would have said we were too far behind. I don't subscribe to the viewpoint that we're too far behind anything. When strong people have strong wills, they make amazing things happen.

​

I can't get more patriotic than that, but I'm Will Su. Great to be here. I work at BlackRock, a large asset manager. I am our head of public energy investing, so I've been through this journey for almost two decades. Similar to Lisa, I am a recovering commodities trader, mostly focused on oil and natural gas. BlackRock is on a journey with all of you. We've gone from zero dollars in digital assets under management two years ago to $160 billion. This is not the top of the first inning. This is batting practice. I'm really proud to be here and really look forward to the journey ahead.

​

Let's jump right into it. I think the question that a lot of us have been asking on the side and in the rooms is whether this is really an AI discussion, really an HPC discussion, or whether that is the wrapper for capital investment in infrastructure. I'm going to start with Harry. I know you guys really lead a lot on infrastructure first and foremost. That's been your ethos at CleanSpark. What are your thoughts? Is this a compute discussion, or is it an infrastructure battle that we're having?

​

I think we're having a conversation about the American economy fundamentally. Two of the crown jewels of the American economy are our capital markets and our electric system. When you look at the goods and services that we benefit from every day, energy is one of the key inputs that goes into those goods and services. It's the reason why a deflationary cost curve has been available to us as the innovation edge and frontier has continued to be pushed forward. Whether that's from innovation like the internet or innovation like the steam engine, the energy intensity of modern life has been part of what gets pushed forward every time we make that step-function improvement.

​

Why are we able to keep pushing forward? It's because the U.S. capital markets have been able to capitalize entrepreneurs in such a way that they're able to innovate and push forward to the edge. I view the American energy backbone and the American capital market system as the reason why we've been an innovation leader over the last 150 years. I'd say 250 years, but the first 100 were tricky. Ultimately, why are we going to be successful headed into the future? It's because we're going to continue to tether the benefits of both of those tools, and more and more those tools have converged over time.

​

I think it's undeniable. Plenty of studies have been done. Our economic viability across the globe is tied to energy access and energy abundance. That comes down to infrastructure investment, private, public, whatever it may be. It really boils down to being that simple. Lisa, I know you've been involved in some major projects over the last few years on the development side. What do you think? Is this an infrastructure-first question? Is it an economic question? How do you come to this question?

​

It's hard to come after Harry and answer any question. I think this is about the American family. I think it's about the American dinner table. I want us to be prosperous, and I want us to be economically optimistic about our futures and our children's future. I think anyone who stands in the way of infrastructure development is expressing an absolute hate for their children and their grandchildren. We must have energy stability and infrastructure so that our family tables continue to exist in this country.

​

Let's talk about the capital investment side. You mentioned zero to $160 billion in two years. That's bananas, and you said it's batting practice. Love to hear that. When we talk about the largest global allocator of capital, maybe in the history of the world, we know that what makes U.S. digital infrastructure more investable than other regions in the world matters. Capital finds its most efficient outcomes. We're patriotic. We believe in the American dream. But capital markets have rules, and they're going to follow that efficiency. What makes the U.S. more investable right now, and how do we maintain that status in the world?

​

There are so many advantages that it's hard to start. I'll start by visualizing the degree of advantage we have in this country from a resource perspective. It is completely unmatched. The amount of natural gas that flows through the country right now is roughly 110 billion cubic feet per day. That's enough to fill 9,000 Empire State Buildings every single day. Visualize how much gas that is and how many tens or hundreds of thousands of miles of infrastructure it took over the years to supply that, and then understand that that's only 40% of our electricity supply.

​

This has always been an energy addition, not an energy transition, not an energy substitution, because every single year, every single form of energy continues to ramp.

​

You asked about why the U.S. is the preeminent place to invest. We have the best entrepreneurs. We have the best corporate leaders to actually make these things happen. We have the best below-the-ground resources. I do think there has been a lot of improvement in terms of permitting reform and allowing things to happen. We have to do a whole lot more, because right now it takes ten years to get new grid investments brought online, and in China it takes three to six months.

​

I'll give you a really interesting data point that I found. If you look at the hash rate around the world today, I don't think anyone would have thought that Ethiopia, of all countries, would be in the top ten. They are now 3% of global hash rate. The reason they're doing that is because a five-gigawatt dam was brought online, providing power at less than four cents per kilowatt hour. A lot of foreigners are coming in to take advantage of that. But that actually reveals a fundamental weakness in not planning the grid correctly. They built generation, but they didn't build proper distribution. As a result, you're mining Bitcoin, you're the eighth-largest hash rate provider in the world, but a lot of folks in the country don't have adequate access to cheap electricity, and GDP and people's well-being are lagging behind.

​

It is so important to remember that we are the leaders and we will continue to be the leaders because we have above- and below-the-ground advantages. But the way we lose this fight is to lose sight of the advantages we have and serve our own goals while others are catching up and taking advantage of that weakness. It's so important to continue that investment and that focus on an all-of-the-above solution to energy and energy abundance.

​

I want to share a little context. Harry and I were just backstage, and I said to Harry, one of these facts I find fascinating as a student of energy history is that the phrase energy transition was first used when we were talking about the atom. It was 50 or 60 years ago that we were having this conversation publicly for the first time. People always think, if we move to wind and solar, we'll use less hydrocarbons. But it was really the same conversation with John D. Rockefeller. People thought we would quit burning all of this wood and forests would be prolific, but what ended up happening, of course, is that we took the wood and, instead of burning it in our homes because we now had hydrocarbon products, we used it to make barrels.

​

This is so important: to know the long arc of history as it relates to commerce and energy. If you look at the 53-foot trailer that's on trucking lines all across the country, the freight that moves over the railroad, and the shipping container that sits on ships moving all across the sea, all of those means of transportation are fungible with each other. They are the same unit, which is the container that moves across all three. The width of that container is able to draw its history back to ancient Rome, because that is the width of the road such that two horses could pass one another on the roads of Rome. The reason you're able to move goods across every inch of this globe actually starts over 2,000 years ago in a civilization that we still have the honor to learn from today.

​

I just learned that right now. I did not know that. That's fascinating. Let's talk about those investments. Capital is not the problem. I think we can agree on that. Institutional capital is certainly not the problem. What's the disconnect right now between what institutional, private, and public investment wants to see happen and what is happening on the ground? Lisa, what do you think?

​

To me, the disconnect is somewhat just the narrative that energy usage is bad. I think it's this overarching idea that Elizabeth Warren wants us all to be poor and sitting in the dark. We've got to lose that, or we lose this race with other nations that are building power plants and building AI data centers, and that are not afraid of energy, not afraid of a family table, and not afraid of people coming out of poverty.

​

What do you think the disconnect is between capital and execution on the ground?

​

I think there are a few different disconnects. One of them is a fundamental lack of optimism. If you want to believe that the future can be better than the past, then you have the will and the wherewithal to make the hard investments and choices to action that future.

​

Somewhere in the last three to four years, we broadly woke up to the fact that we're not generating enough electrons in the U.S. I think the reason we woke up to that is because we didn't realize how important an energy-native form of technical innovation was going to be in the form of the large language model and the form of digital intelligence that could offer to us. Until we realized that was really useful and valuable, we sort of thought energy was a nice-to-have.

​

But if you look at what energy is actually used for right now, we use way more energy on air conditioning than AI. My argument is not that we should use less air conditioning. Lord, let me tell you. My argument is that we should probably use about as much energy running AI models as we do air conditioning, because the productivity gains from being able to work in a temperate environment and the productivity gains from having an intelligent machine available at your fingertips are somewhere in the same zip code.

​

These energy-intense productivity gains were not something we had a working language around until very recently at the broad level. I think Bitcoiners knew this much before the AI natives knew this, and that's why some of the companies are best positioned to action this change. Ultimately, when the world of atoms collides with the world of bits, you're forced to make very challenging engineering decisions. It's not good enough to say we want to generate more. We need to do so in a way that is integrated into our electric system, transmitted and delivered in a way that's useful, and capitalized in a way that produces positive outcomes for the investors who take the bet on this better future rather than a worse past.

​

Energy is not a nice-to-have. It's non-negotiable.

​

I echo all of that. I'll repeat my favorite quote on this: since the beginning of time, knowledge is power, but for the first time, power is knowledge in the age of AI. It raises the stakes to a completely new level. I don't think this is a disconnect, but I think this is a growing risk, especially for AI. AI has a PR problem, and by association, if AI has a PR problem, then Bitcoin mining and anything else that's energy intensive has a similar PR problem.

​

The PR problem is in the local communities where you're building out the power and the data centers. There's pushback because the communities don't feel like they're aligned with the economic upside, and they have a lot of perceived economic downside, whether it's higher power bills, construction noise, or whatnot. The trend we have seen is that a lot of these data centers are moving to more sparsely populated places. Helios by Galaxy is a 3.5-gigawatt site being built in Dickens County in the Texas Panhandle. The population is two people per square mile. The site in Clearwater that they're converting is 10 or 20 people per square mile.

​

I think the way out of that is BYOG: bring your own generation. One of the ways the Bitcoin mining community provides that is, as Scooter said earlier on your panel, ASICs don't have feelings, so they don't care if it's 90 degrees. You just shut it off. I think that's a very economically viable way to provide that much-needed power. But at the end of the day, there's no substituting your way out of this. Demand is going higher, whether it's for Bitcoin mining, AI, or simply for more petrochemicals production. This is the place to do it. We have the resource. We have the security. We just have to deliver it through the last mile to the customers that are in need.

​

One of the things that is interesting to note is that we were talking backstage about how this is a must-have. It can't not happen. What I really like about this transition, the big pivot we're talking about, is that it is being led by Bitcoiners. Bitcoiners don't like to be told no. They don't like to be told we can't do something. I think it's going to take that kind of moxie to really do this and do it the right way.

​

I don't think we could be in a better position domestically with the people who are leading the charge to say this is an absolute must. These are people who are used to making decisions, taking risks, and willing things to happen. There is a mentality and an ethos that Bitcoin and Bitcoiners can really bring to what we have to do. We have to win. We have to do this.

​

Let's talk about the stakes of this whole discussion. This is a microcosm of a discussion about what really matters. What really matters is the cost domestically, not just economically, but the cost to us as a nation if we don't win this battle and don't make this commitment. Where are we in 50 years? Where are we in 75 years? Lisa, what do you think?

​

I'm going to draw you back to history and tell you the story of the Big Inch pipeline and the Little Big Inch pipeline. You should Google it if you've never heard this story. This is very similar to what was discussed on the panel previously, where some equipment is being marked as national security imperative equipment. From 1941 to 1944, we built pipelines in record time. They threw all regulation away and said, we are going to build these pipelines. They originated in Longview, Texas, and went all the way up to a tiny town just outside Philadelphia. Eighty percent of the energy that came out of Texas during that time frame went to our allied forces abroad.

​

So yes, I think this is very much a battle of our own national security, food on tables, and diplomacy. Obviously, our military might makes up the third leg of that stool, but it is very much a battle for peace and prosperity around the world in the way that Big Inch and Little Big Inch were during World War II.

​

We can do this, and our might at home, on our shores, within our borders, within the United States of America, is a way for us to export prosperity, freedom, liberty, and property rights abroad. We can do this. We are doing this.

​

I didn't know about that, so I'm going to go back and Google it. That's such a great example. I would just say this: relevant to Bitcoin, hash rate is energy politicized. Whoever has the most abundant and affordable power, energy, and electricity literally gets to vote the most in the most important monetary network ever created in human history. That's the table stakes for digital assets and Bitcoin.

​

You can expand that sentence however you want to AI and what you control there. If we look just within Bitcoin, the current hash rate is roughly one zettahash a second. I think that translates roughly to 150 to 175 terawatt hours. We are on top. We're 35% to 40% of that. We came from a very low base just five years ago, and it's the ingenuity, a lot of it development in Texas, but also Georgia, New York, and New Hampshire, that has taken us to this place.

​

Look at who's in two, three, and four. It's China, Russia, and Kazakhstan. You add them up and they're right there on our heels. It's very important to keep building that up. I talked about the Ethiopian dam earlier, and maybe I'll conclude on this point. That was a big dam. Five gigawatts is a lot of power. China is building a hydro dam in Tibet called the Motuo Project. It is 60 gigawatts. That's 12 of the Ethiopian dams. That's three of the Three Gorges dams, which to this point is the largest hydro dam in the world. When it comes online in 2030, that's more power than the United States brought on in 2024 and 2025 combined.

​

We are in the lead, but the lead is ever fragile, and it's one we have to constantly reinvest in. AI is a big zero-sum game. You're talking about algorithmic trading. You're talking about optimizing ads on TikTok. These are things that will demand ever more energy. It's very important not to lose sight of the fact that while that is the key driver for power and energy demand, there are other important parts, like securing the Bitcoin network, and securing food, fertilizers, natural gas, LNG, and LPG, that require power. That's the table stakes we have in this very classic setup between the incumbent superpower, the U.S., and the clearly rising superpower, China.

​

Maybe you can check me on this, but I believe I read recently that China in the last four years has built and brought on as much generation as we have in the U.S. in our entire history of electrification. That is wild. It's crazy. They also have roughly 33% to 35% of generation resource adequacy in reserves. They're ready to go. Obviously, the environment we operate in is very different than the CCP, but we have to wake up and we have to go. There's really no way around it. We have to make this a national security priority. We have to make this an American family priority. It's non-negotiable. I just keep coming back to that.

​

If you take nothing else from this panel, maybe let's all join forces and shift the narrative. AI is good for us. Progress is good for us. It's not going to rob us of jobs. Our kids need to learn how to use it. Embrace it full throttle. Let's go. Let's build great, innovative opportunities for people that we haven't even dreamt possible.

​

Harry, I'm going to let you take it away here. This is a perfect moment for you.

​

The rugged individualist has not been treated well in the press recently. So on behalf of a rugged individualist, to a room full of rugged individualists, the answer is not to have high-minded ideas about global national security. The answer is to go join or start a business. Go call a utility and ask them for power to build something that has positive economic output.

​

That's what we, at least on the CleanSpark team, are doing every day. We view this as a boots-on-the-ground, hand-in-hand, face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder opportunity to take what we believe is a hugely positive economic activity, which is building data centers, mining Bitcoin, working on behalf of the intelligent tokens that are required for the future, and go do it.

​

I don't know that I'm going to convince the U.S. to plug in a ton more power. But I do know that we can go to Sandersville, Georgia, and deliver an outcome. I know that we can go to Sealy, Texas, source power, hire people, put our economic capital to work, and make change. By taking a massively microeconomic approach, we are able to build a huge business. Everybody in this room is able to have a powerful force for change. Take it down to the rugged individual level and make that change in every single household and every single business, and we might actually end up where we're supposed to go.

​

I think the way you just spoke to this room is the way that we have to have leadership in this country speak to television screens and let people know this is how it's got to be. This is about our freedom, and it's at an individual level. That's part of the messaging issue we have going on. Companies come in and want this opportunity, and they're speaking around the fact that they're trying to deliver an outcome for themselves, as opposed to speaking to the people around the kitchen table and saying, no, this is an American must.

​

I want to thank you for taking that approach. I want to thank each and every one of you for your time, for your content, for what you've given here to the room, for what you've given to this community, to the Bitcoin community, to the energy community, to this stage, and to this event. I could not have been more excited. A big round of applause, please, for Lisa Hough, Harry, and Will Su. Thank you very much.