Topline
Americans opposing artificial intelligence will become the “biggest political crisis” the country faces, Amos Hochstein, former U.S. energy advisor and managing partner at investment firm TWG Global, said at the Forbes Iconoclast Summit on Wednesday.
Amos Hochstein at the Forbes Iconoclast Summit on Wednesday.
Jamel Toppin for Forbes
Key Facts
Hochstein, who served in the Biden administration, said concerns that AI data centers are raising power prices, requiring massive amounts of water, creating pollution and taking jobs, threatens the ability to quickly build the necessary infrastructure for AI.
He added the country is building enough capacity to carry data centers through about 2027—maybe 2028—but little beyond that, adding that the constraint isn’t raw materials (the U.S. has more natural gas than it can use) but actually building the infrastructure fast enough.
Hochstein was joined by Bin Lu, an executive vice president at Schneider Electric, and Sadiq Malik, a managing director at DigitalBridbo speak about how the energy industry is powering the growth of AI by providing energy to data centers.
“This is really the first time where energy is becoming the primary constraint of economic growth—not labor, not technology, not capital,” Lu said.
Crucial Quote
“The biggest political crisis that’s coming to this country in the next six months to two years is going to be Americans opposing AI,” Hochstein said.”That will translate to opposing data centers and power plants.”
Tangent
Hochstein, a former senior energy adviser and Middle East negotiator in the Biden administration, is now managing partner at TWG Global, an investment firm with holdings across AI, technology, energy and finance. During his time in government, he brokered the 2024 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire and led U.S. efforts on AI cooperation and infrastructure investment with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He remains a closely watched voice on energy markets and geopolitics.
What To Watch For
On Wednesday, Hochstein warned that investors wrongly assume oil will flow freely the moment the Middle East wars end. In reality, he says, the U.S. is living off finite oil reserves now at 20-year lows—and as that cushion shrinks, borrowing costs and inflation will rise, making the AI buildout even costlier.
Key Background
Americans have been opposing the massive buildouts of data centers, the giant, warehouse-scale buildings full of computers that power every AI chatbot behind the scenes. Tech companies from OpenAI and Anthropic to Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet and Alphabet are all racing to build them nationwide, but they guzzle electricity and water, raising local utility costs, and swallow huge tracts of land. A Gallup poll published May 13 found seven out of 10 people oppose AI data centers in their local area, with nearly half saying they “strongly” oppose them. That anger is spilling into county meeting halls and the streets as local campaigns have sprung up since 2024—delaying or canceling dozens of data centers in 2025. The issue has crossed party lines with bipartisan opposition hardening even as developers and state officials cast the buildout as an economic and national-security necessity.