Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior | All-In DC

[Music] We're here on the Celsius Galway in Sabine Pass uh just outside of Bowmont, Texas with the Secretary of the Interior, Doug Bergam. The crew is giving us a tour. This is an amazing export facility, the largest in the United States, second largest in the world. We're going to talk with the secretary in a minute about American energy independence and the role that this company, this facility, and this process plays. So excited to have the conversation with the secretary. [Music] [Applause] [Music] What' you think? Well, I he was fantastic, but to be on a brand new ship

like this is pretty special. I mean, like brand spanking like this is the first cargo it's taking. This is like this is like not even out of the showroom. Brand new. Yeah. I mean, look at that. Those are spotless. Yeah, this was definitely coordinated for you. I have a suspicion. But it's beautiful. I think they coordinated for you. They heard you were coming, Doug. They were saying in 2008, this facility was basically bankrupt. Yes. And this has been a development project since about 2012 and it went from practically nothing to the largest LNG exporter in the world in 13 years. In 13 years. And prior to that, when it was originally built, because this is before the

amazing miracle of the of the whole shale revolution in our country, right? without that this was being built as a LG import facility. That was the original thing. We're going to have to import LG to America. Now LG is the number two dollar export on the alltime list for the country. It's the second most highest dollar value we export. We went from from being like, oh, we're going to run out of oil and gas to today uh we're energy independent on a net basis and we're on our path towards becoming energy dominant. I'm going all in. All right, besties. I think that was another epic discussion. People love the interviews. I could hear him talk for hours. Absolutely. We crushed your

questions in a minute. We are giving people ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion. What do you guys think? That was fun. That was great. Welcome to the all-in interview here today with Secretary Doug Bergam, the 55th Secretary of the Interior of the United States of America. We are here in beautiful Sabine Pass in Louisiana today at the Shener LNG facility. It's been an amazing tour this afternoon. It's a little bit windy, but it's still a beautiful afternoon. Thanks for joining me today, Doug. David, it's great to be with you. Thank you for coming down and uh seeing this amazing facility. So, we just took a great tour here. Why were you here today? And what are we checking

out? Well, I think President Trump, one of his core goals, if we talk about energy dominance, which is beyond energy independence, it's not just a a slogan. It's really about how do we have the power to power AI in America? How do we power the remanufacturing in America? And then how do we sell energy to our friends and allies so that they don't have to buy it from our adversaries. And what what we you and I had a chance to see today is the largest LG export facility in America, the second largest in the world. Yeah. I was struck. I didn't really realize how quickly this facility grew up just about a dozen years ago. There was nothing really going on here. And now it's the second

largest export facility of methane in the world. And methane is seeing a a massive resurgence around the world because it has a lower carbon footprint. There's demand. It's transportable. So there's a lot of reasons why there's a massive growing market for for liqufied natural gas or methane. Absolutely. And part of the amazing energy transformation that I think is not fully appreciated by most Americans is when this plant began uh in the early 2000s, it was meant to be an LNG import facility. America was running out of oil and gas and they said, "Wait, we got to be ready to start importing it just to meet our needs." Well, along comes the shale gas revolution again driven by

technology. That technology of horizontal drilling, that ability to, you know, fractionate rock uh and get oil and gas out of places that people thought was just impossible that we would ever be retrieving uh that those resources from those from those hard rock shale locations. And so then this thing after the financial crisis turned around and began its life as an export facility and now as you say the only one larger in the world is in the Middle East. So I I want to go back a little bit and how you ended up in the seat, how you ended up um not just being the secretary of the interior but you're also the chair of the National Energy Dominance Council. I really want to talk

about the importance I talk about on the podcast a lot about the importance of growing energy production in this country. But you're a tech entrepreneur who is from North Dakota, became governor of the state, and I'd love for you to just do your highlights, how you ended up there, what you did with respect to energy, um, and also how that translated into a surplus of jobs and economic prosperity for that state. It's been quite a journey. uh you know starting out in a town of 300 people in North Dakota with all gravel streets and no computers uh to end up having an opportunity to uh to be part of a software startup you know grow that

business take it public have a great run as a public company get acquired in an all stock deal by Microsoft stayed there for seven years uh you know helping grow Microsoft from 40,000 people to to 90,000 people and there was 2,000 of us at great plains when we got acquired there was 1,200 in Fargo 400 rest in North America, 400 rest of the world, we become a this improbable global software company uh coming from the from the great plains. And then when I left Microsoft to uh uh presumably spend more time with kids, retire uh that was an epic fail. Ended up in uh two more startups within six months. Uh was involved in three more software IPOs and dozens of other uh businesses and I mean

software businesses. And then uh in 2016 at a time when we were having an energy collapse in prices uh there was an open seat for governor and I threw my hat in the ring and uh we were uh down at 6910 in the polls in January. The primary was in June. Uh Katherine was who became the first lady was like, "Oh, we've got a great life. Let's why would we why would we get into politics? Why would we get into that?" And I assured her that we had no chance of winning and she didn't have to ever worry about being first lady. but this would be fun for six months to create some competition. But we ended up winning that primary and and

then went on uh got it was a good year for outsiders. So we took office the uh about in North Dakota you start middle of December. So about 36 days ahead of President Trump we were sworn in had four amazing years uh working with President Trump as a governor. There was a win behind our back and then second term uh we got reelected by the largest margin in the country of any race. But then that was I was serving as a governor under the Biden administration and in a state where we'd become we're rapidly becoming a very ris resourcerich state. Uh we had climbed to being the number two oil producer in the country. Uh we had you know tremendous coal resources, incredible agriculture

resources and in ranching and the Biden administration really was having a war on on on whether it was timber grazing, oil and gas, coal, critical minerals. I mean anything that had to do with extraction uh there was a regulatory battle going on and and I and I would have to say that a part of me uh not just became frustrated I became very concerned about the future of the country and that led to you know jumping at the national level and saying hey we've got to have a policy uh because if we don't if we don't have energy security we're not going to have national security and that's what really uh drove the to sort of this us sitting

here right now today. So, you ran for president. You ran for the Republican nomination against President Trump and others. And then, um, obviously, President Trump got that nomination. Did you keep in touch with him after that? And how did you kind of work with his staff and his office as he was moving his campaign forward? Well, we were we were in touch uh because we you know we knew each other as a governor would know a president, but I was never really running against President Trump. And I think the record shows that I was really running against these horrifically dangerous uh and uh you know unsound, unsafe uh policies of the Biden

administration, which are almost, you know, too numerous to enumerate. When I left office last December 15th, just December 15th of of 2024, uh, as governor, I was involved in 30 lawsuits against the Biden administration. You know, many of them including against the agency the the agency that the bureaus that I'm now leading uh because the regulatory regime was such that it wasn't about regulating oil and gas. It was about eliminating oil and gas from America. and and and if there was some sort of false god around climate ideology that they were that was being chased, it was like, "Oh, if we stop the supply coming from the US, we're going to somehow save the planet." But there

was no reduction of demand. The demand was just being filled by by, you know, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and they and they were funding wars against us. So, I mean, I thought it was closest thing to insanity that I'd ever seen. And so when uh when we when we dropped out uh very quickly uh I was the first of any of the other candidates to endorse President Trump uh and uh and then spent last year campaigning for him. Yeah. And then there was, can I say this, some rumors that you might have been in the running for vice president, but you obviously stayed close with the the president and and his staff and found your way into this role. How did that process go for

you? How did you end up in this role that you're Well, I it's a I love what I'm doing and I love the role. Uh because of course as a western uh western governor uh we have all the things that interior has as governor of North Dakota which is a jam-packed fun job. Uh you've got you're chairman of the land board and just being governor. Well then meant you know dealing with land and minerals and all the leasing and all the issues with the energy industry. You're also the uh head of the water commission. Uh interior has the bureau of reclamation which is the second largest hydroelect electric producer in the country and manages you know the miracle of irrigation that the

Roosevelt came up with. We wouldn't have agriculture in Arizona or California without that. Uh and then Bureau of Indian Affairs is part of Interior. Uh and that's a uh something I had a lot of experience with and all the challenges that we face in terms of healthcare and education on the tribal areas. So across the whole realm of interior everything that I had in North Dakota is part of my job today except one thing uh and that's offshore oil production because uh North Dakota as you would know is the center of North America. So if you're afraid of sharks, you should move to North Dakota because it literally is the furthest place in

North America from any ocean. So we had no offshore, but uh today earlier today, I had a chance to get on my first offshore platform and and uh and see uh the innovation and entrepreneurship there that's uh again now providing about 16% of the uh oil for the America. So I mean let's talk about the energy problem, the energy opportunity. Before we do, I think 50% of the potential audience of this conversation cue out and say this is evil. There's good and there's bad. This is bad. Exploitation of natural resources. Extraction of natural resources damages the planet, ruins the environment, puts carbon in the

atmosphere, drives climate change. and they won't listen to any conversation about the pragmatism of energy security and the importance energy plays in prosperity. Taking people out of poverty, raising them up, raising living standards and giving access to things around the world that every individual wants, which is more prosperity. And one statistic I always quote is that if you go back 500 plus years, you can see and there's all these studies that have tried to understand energy production versus GDP, which translates to prosperity per capita. And there's a linear relationship. The more energy that's produced, the higher the GDP per capita. And that's what we see around

the world in developing markets today. So I guess maybe you could just take a moment to talk to those folks. Share a little bit about your perspective of the relationship between taking care of the environment and the planet and the importance of energy demand and energy security before we get into the things that are going on. Well, I I think you're uh you're spot on. I mean, human flourishing depends on on everyone. And I think if you're talking about access for everyone, uh you just take a look. I mean, we have we could have as many as 800 million people on the planet uh you know, shy of a billion uh that don't have access to electricity and they they

need more energy. Now, with AI coming, the demand for power is going to go up. Uh the demand for advanced manufacturing. So, we're not in any kind of energy transition. We're in an area where we need energy addition. And if we want human flourishing, if we want to reach our planet's fullest potential and if we want to take care of our environment, which you we can do all these things at the same time, that even that requires uh requires energy. I mean, if you if you if you're worried about, you know, water sources, well, desalination, which we can do, requires a lot of energy. Uh you know, transportation of goods requires energy. Uh so whether you know it's the the

clothes on your back, the food on your table, the the transportation drive, there's an energy component to all of that. and electrifying stuff doesn't change. It just changes the source of the we still need to create the electricity. So I feel like that if anybody is concerned about the environment, they should want to have it every ounce of a liquid fuel and every electron produced in the United States because if you compare us to any other any other country, we produce it cleaner, safer, smarter, and healthier than anyone else. that I learned in North Dakota over those eight years as governor where we were always on the top of the list of, you know, cleanest

water, cleanest air, best soil health, all of these things that we were able to achieve. And we were going up the charts in terms of energy production. These things go hand in hand. They're not it's not either or. It's it's a plus when you can do both. And we were just talking to this crew on board uh the ship we just visited. They're on their way to Taiwan and they go to Japan. And so if we can produce liquid methane in this country with a lower carbon footprint, then that methane might be produced elsewhere, which is the case. We use we have cleaner methods for production. And that demand exists regardless of whether or not the United States produces it. It's important that the United States take

advantage of the opportunity to produce it cleaner, more safely, and with a lower footprint and and build economic prosperity for us as exporters. Yes, absolutely. I mean, so the the the net formula that you've just described is the more energy that's produced in the United States, the better it is for the globe and the better it is for American prosperity. And I would say it's not just for the globe environmentally. It's also for for peace. It's not just prosperity at home, but literally the two the two proxy wars that we've been involved in with Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine and after uh you know Iran funding 24 different terror groups, they were funding those wars against us

with their oil and gas sales. And so if if we can replace their customers with US sources, they have less revenue. They have less funding literally to fund terrorism. So it is prosperity at home, peace abroad, it's nothing short of that. So let's talk about the energy demand equation. The US is forecasted to increase its electricity production capacity from 1 to 2 terowatt by 2040 15 years from now. During that same period of time, China is going to go from 3 to 8 terowatt. And that China forecast, by the way, excludes any of the Gen 4 nuclear reactors, the new hydroelectric facilities, and the new thorium, or if that ever scales that they're

considering rolling out in addition to what they've already planned to roll out. So, in the next 15 years, China is adding five Americas. Yes. In electricity, production capacity. And if everything gets automated, factories are automated, AI becomes the great accelerant of the global economy, China is hugely advantaged relative to where we sit today. What do we need to do about it? Well, this is the if you were to ask me what's the thing that keeps me awake at night. Uh this is this is the issue and it's so thrilling and refreshing that you understand the scale, the magnitude and the importance of this uh the AI arms race which is really driven by access to electricity.

And China last year brought on 94 and a half gigawatts of coal powered electricity. One gawatt is Denver. So they brought on 94 Denvers just last year. That's more than all we have today for all of California and all of New York is less than 94. So they added a New York and a California worth of electricity last year just from coal. They're still getting 60% of their base load from coal. And people people may they stop listening when they hear the word coal. But coal from an electricity standpoint, thermal coal uh is fantastic base load. uh it has, you know, all the characteristics to allow you to maintain

amperage and voltage to keep a system going. And I think we just saw in Spain, you know, they were celebrating on April 12th of this past month that they'd shut down their last coal plant. And then a week after that, they were celebrating the fact that they had their first day of 100% renewables on their system. And then the next week, uh they were global news story because people were trapped in subways. Uh all airline flights canled. uh hospitals were panicking with a lack of power uh because they had a uh you know a rolling blackout and grid failure because it just defies physics. You can't run an electrical grid with just intermittent power. You cannot run with something that is based in

intermittent is the definition of solar or wind because the sun doesn't shine at night uh and the wind doesn't blow every day and you can have have it and so we in America we became dangerously close to that right now. We've got parts of our country that are at risk for those same kind of of what I'll call the Biden brownouts and blackouts to happen because we overs subsidized the intermittent and we overregulated uh all of the base load in an idea to quote save the planet and all we're doing is potentially putting our own country at risk. So it was regulatory action that's been taken and I've got to imagine it's

not just the Biden administration. This has to go back cuz this is in 35 years in this country, we only added6 terowatts of electricity production capacity to the grid. What's gone on in this country that's made it so hard for us to operate more efficiently in terms of adding new energy capacity to the grid? Is it regulatory only or are there capital, social and other reasons that this has become a challenge for us? Well, the the regulatory uh attack was a whole of government. So, it did attack the formation of capital. I mean, you you came up with regulatory rules that made it impossible for for base load power uh

from fossil fuels even, you know, get a permit. Well, if you can't get a permit, then you can't get access to capital. You can't get access to insurance. Uh and then you had, you know, protest and social media and everybody going online saying, "Oh, we've got to exit from all this." And this same phenomena happened in Germany. Uh it's I think it's very clear right now that a lot of that a lot of what I call the social mediadriven uh concerns were part of you know scops operations from places like Russia. I mean it was Russia's great advantage to get Germany to shut down nuclear to shut down all their coal production and hey we have a solution just buy all your

natural gas from us. So Germany spent a half a trillion dollars$500 billion dollars on the quote air quotes transition to to green energy. They were transitioning to wind and solar. H half a trillion, $500 billion. They today produce 20% less electricity. And that electricity cost three times as much as it did before they began the transition. And now we have the the war, you know, with Russia inventing Ukraine. What are they doing? They were scrambling to try to reopen coal plants. They were scrambling to try to get back in the nuclear game. They were saying, "Wow, we overshot the mark. We went too far." Uh

again, highly subsidizing uh intermittent sources. And so it it's like I think part of the awakening that is occurring right now is that if the the greatest existential threat to the planet and to America is not one degree of climate change in the year 2100 because guess what innovation will solve will solve any challenges that we have with climate change with innovation and we won't have innovation without electricity and actually losing the AI arms race to China uh is the real threat. I do agree with you. I'll be declarative on this because a lot of people ask me I started a company called the climate corporation. We talked a lot

about climate change. I believe deeply in a lot of this climate science, but I also believe more deeply that innovation will solve a lot of the challenges that may arise. And there's a whole series of solutions that are developing. And we can talk a little bit about some of those longerterm solutions that ultimately yield to unlimited free scalable energy production. And when that happens, you know, all bets are off. No. And some of that could and we have line of sight to that. Yeah. And some of that could be coming in the next decade. It doesn't help us today cuz today uh we've got to shore it up. And I think one thing that you know having

spent 30 years in tech, we never used more than 1% of the nation's electrical production and it was because uh computers were getting more tech. Yeah. Tech the tech industry. Tech industry. We used 1% and no one paid any attention and the tech industry didn't pay any attention to power generation because they didn't have to because PCs got more efficient, software got more efficient and then America was rich. we everyone was buying appliances that were more efficient. So there was wasn't ever really a demand curve on electricity. But then today with AI, the demand curve is just flying in the face. And when I was at at uh Sarah Week, which is the biggest uh energy conclave, uh when I

was speaking to the group, I said there's something different here this year. And what's different is the five biggest tech companies in America showed up at that conference with $300 billion dollar of capex. you know, the big ones have got 75 billion 75 billion a piece, you know, for the top ones on that chart. And and I'll reflect back to not that long ago, a couple decades ago, I was a corporate officer at Microsoft for seven years. I never went to a capex meeting, right? Somebody said, "Well, weren't you invited?" I said, "No, there were no capex meetings." You know, we hired salespeople and software developers, and if we needed an office

in Singapore or Munich, we rented it, leased it, and so there was no capex. And now they showed up at that conference and I had to speak to all the executives and said, "Look, these guys aren't here trying to sell you software. They're your biggest customers. They need power and they will do anything." And the regulated uh power providers and some in the industry have just have never seen a demand curve. So, it's like a collision between high-tech and the power generation in America. And and coming from that, we've got to figure out a way to break through this. We just got back from DC. There was this hill and valley forum this week. Every single speech, every single talk, every

conversation in the hallways was all about the energy demand coming from AI. I don't think the public realizes, I don't think the broad business community realizes how energy hungry AI is and how this is going to ramp up like no one's ever seen in history. And by the way, we haven't yet seen the ramp up of robotics and automation. There's going to be a breakthrough in the next year or two that's going to unleash this additional demand curve. We're going to have a 100red million robots in the United States that are all electrified. They all got to get charged up. That power has got to come from somewhere. So, this feels like a massive challenge for

America, like going to the moon, fighting World War II in Europe, a Manhattan Project style set of solutions are needed to address this. What is this council that you're leading, the National Energy Dominance Council, doing? What are kind of the top three things that you think unlock the energy potential in the United States and meet the demand curve that's kind of tidal waving its way across this country right now? Well, I'd say that the the good news is that we have a president of the United States that understands this. Yeah. And that's why on day one in office, he declared an energy emergency. some folks that aren't familiar with what you've just described, uh, this

awareness that we've we're facing a crisis, uh, were, you know, questioning whether we had an energy emergency, but as you've just described, we have a huge one relative to our grid, grid stability. We don't have enough power to win the AI arms race. And AI arms race means without that, we lose the defense battle because it's not just robotics in manufacturing. you know, if we're going to have a golden dome, if we're going to have any, you know, ability to defend ourselves from hypersonics or, you know, protect our fleet uh around the ocean, not to have them all wiped out in the first hour of a conflict, we have to have AI uh both targeting and a defense

standpoint. So, you can't separate defense from AI anymore either. So, this is it's mission critical. So, with that with that energy emergency, then we have to pull out all stops. So, back to NE DC. Uh, which by the way, for those that are easy to remember, it's like AC/DC. It's NEC. And then we could even have a little lightning bolt in the logo. I don't know if you're going to get there, Doug, but but you know, t-shirt have t-shirts with I actually might make that t-shirt for you. I'll I mean, I think it's You guys sell swag on this podcast. I think that's going to be the new one. Uh, new bestseller. Anyway, with with the You could sell that swag. You know, we could fund a new energy program.

Yeah, we go with with the but with our We're not a organization. We're like a small tiger team and think of it more like a governor's economic development super super team. President Trump is asking us to find things that are critical to the infrastructure where they're running into roadblocks and then help them. I want to say white glove concier service. Help them get the permit, help them get started. The capital is there. It's often a regulatory thing that's stopping uh you know like natural gas getting into New England. We've got I mean we're never going to build an AI data center in New York or in New England if the price of natural gas is three times higher than

it is in Pennsylvania. And yet they're still campaigning on, hey, we blocked this natural gas pipeline. You know, I mean, everybody in Pennsylvania loves that because they'll get all the data centers, they'll get all the advanced manufacturing. I mean, we've got, you know, in Arizona, you've got, you know, the TSMC plant coming there that's going to require enormous amounts of power. uh people want to put data centers there and yet you know their utility is just shutting down a coal plant and it's like okay how are you going to power this stuff and so one of the goals we have is don't shut down any more base load preserve what we have uh and help you know get other get new sources of power

permitted does that include nuclear some of the reactor shutdowns that are planned yeah we got to keep everything going and we got to go fast on the small modular nuclear and but again that's really kind of in the 2030s so there that's that's in our next it's it's in important uh but it's a little less urgent. We need to fasttrack all that stuff long term. That's where the solutions will likely lie. But in between now 2025 and 2030 uh a lot of it's going to come back to LG because that the fastest thing we can get online uh for more electricity generation is uh LG power plants. LG power plants. So that's number one. I mean, just to frame things up for folks, you know, you

mentioned the city of Denver utilizes about a 1 gawatt of of electricity, a standard Gen 2 scaled nuclear reactor facilities producing about a gigawatt. And these small modular reactors, these SMRs as they're called that China now has demonstrated 5 megawatts. They can be small, they can be located in an office complex or in a downtown area of a city. And they're designed to have redundant systems for safety and not having meltdowns and so on. talk a little bit about the opportunity for nuclear. You know, you're seeing the 2030s. Meanwhile, China's got several hundred that they're in construction on. There's clearly technology available today. Uranium is not hard to get. We

have a lot of it. Thorium is not hard to get. We have an incredible amount of thorium. Those are the two fuel sources. Why can't we move faster with nuclear? What's the hold back? And why is the US so different than China in being able to scale up nuclear? A big difference is again back to the regulatory environment. I mean the the regulatory environment on nuclear uh has been so burdensome uh in terms of adding to the cost and the time frame and bring it on that and then when that cost was put onto a utility and then utility felt they had to put that back on the rate on the on their on the uh the rate payers their consumer customers uh there was in some ways a revolt and it wasn't safety

related. It was like oh you want nuclear but now my electricity is going to cost twice as much. I'm not for that. So we have to be able to get that regulatory regime down and allow them to go faster. And of course on the SMRs once that design gets approved we should be able to have essentially like a manufacturing where we've we've we regulate the design the design is proven and prove out. As long as the manufacturing plant is producing that same design then we don't have to do this stick built show up you know you work for a week the inspector shows up oh this is off by you know one millimeter you got to redo it. I mean

some of that is where you end up with doubling of co I mean you can't I mean some of the projects that have just been completed you know that took you know close to two decades on nuclear and then had double the cost and double the time you know that's that's not economically sustainable. So part of it is we've got to streamline the process, but these smaller amounts, they can be daisy chained. They could be great solutions. And then the other piece which you love about having the small moducer is we can spend money on power generation as opposed to money on transmission because transmission is also it's really hard to build a transmission line in this country because whether it's a linear

infrastructure which includes natural gas pipelines CO2 pipelines oil and gas pipelines or transmission lines those become the focal point for protests because if they have any nexus an 1100 mile long pipeline could have one mile that touches federal ground. That is where the protest is going to occur. So, going back to your deregulatory action, can you do that in the seat that you're in? Who can take that deregulatory action? Do you need Congress to get involved? I I've got a great partner, Chris Wright, uh, incredibly talented, arguably uh, the most qualified Secretary of Energy we've ever had leading that effort because the Department of Energy has got most of the

responsibility related to nuclear because they also are in charge of our nuclear stockpile. I mean for the military I mean DOE has got direct defense responsibilities and and as part of that uh they we've also got the 15 national labs and there's been great work that's happening in Los Alamos and Scandia. I mean uh you know you go around the whole country and we've got an incredibly talented group of people and and research dollars have been flowing but we've got to get some of that commercialized and out to the public. So but again you think of it literally as a Manhattan project. These were the these were the places where we did the Manhattan project. when you

think of Los Alamos and others. So, we've got to mobilize these government agencies to help us on the current the current crisis we're facing, which is this energy emergency. We should talk to Chris Wright. Um, yes, you should. And then what's your what's your point of view on the timeline for the SMRs? Do you think it's 2035, 2030 when you have that approved design and you stamp them out? Is it 2040 or is it still Well, the fun thing when we the fun thing when we meet with all of these uh people in the nuclear industry, if you were doing this 5 years ago, you'd have been talking to regulated utilities. Today you can talk to venture funded venture funded

startups and there's at least 10 that are out there today uh that are chasing new designs. There's people that are changing chasing not just vision but fusion and so all of that is exciting. Uh and if you think about our think of us having an air base in Alaska I mean think of being able to daisy chain some SMRs there and not having to build transmission. I mean the applications for the military purposes and for other and then if you have distributed it's harder for the enemy to knock out your power source because it's not all sitting in one spot. Do you think America has a risk tolerance problem? My view is we've gotten so wealthy and comfortable and we have such prosperity

in this nation just like what happened in Europe. You eventually say I don't want to take any risk anymore and everything gets regulated to the point that you don't want to have any damage or hurt or downside. Like this is the whole thing with self-driving cars. Elon just put out a tweet saying he's seeing one car crash every 5 million miles or something on self-driving versus 1 million miles when there's not self-driving on. So it's a safer technology, but the focal point is if it's new technology and it causes any harm or any loss, it's worse versus looking at the calculus of the whole. Have we lost that ability as a country?

And how do we grade leadership to rethink a risk-taking America again? Well, I don't know if we've lost it or it's just the enumery of being selective about what industry or what form of transportation because on the automobile side again, we'll track this year between 38 and 40,000 deaths on highways in America. Half of those are because of impaired driving either from people texting or or uh you know impaired drug or alcohol use. And and apparently everybody's okay with that because you know we lose a 100red people a day and there's never a story about it. I mean more than 100 people a day, but you know if you lose 70 you lose 70 people in the

first first airline crash in 12 years in America and we're still talking about it 3 months later because because that somehow that is news and and people dying on highways is not and and in a nuclear it's the same thing. Uh I I actually checked on this because of course we've had no n deaths from anything related to nuclear power in our country. Uh yeah, in the in since inception, but the the best I can find on the federal safety statistics is there's about 37 people that have died from getting angry at vending machines and then pounding on them and then they tip over and fall on them literally and they and they crush them. Where do you

find that? Yeah, you just go go search online, but it's it's out there thing. But I mean it's like so so it's like if you're if you're afraid of nuclear, you know, then take a wide birth. If you see a vending machine, steer clear of it. And or the same thing. I mean, I when I was uh when I was, you know, campaigning for President Trump and I said I was pro- nuclear and someone said, "Well, would you know, oh, really? But would you live near one? Would you raise your family near one?" And I said, "Well, I would." And they said, "Well, how can you say that?" I said, "Well, I raised them on a farm in North Dakota and our farm was near a

road." And they said, "What do you mean a road?" I said, "Well, there's it's more risky than a nuclear power plant." Yeah. It's like way more. I said when the kids were out, if they were out on a, you know, going to going to a dance at high school on Friday night, I was worried about them, not on the road, not not about anything else. Okay. So, the the the the crisis that we're in from energy is not the only crisis America faced. We're facing a a debt and deficit crisis um that's going to challenge this nation in ways we've never been challenged before. 38 trillion of debt, $6.75 trillion budget, $2 trillion deficit. The numbers are staggering. It's frightening. There's a lot of

economic studies that show you can't tax more than 18% of GDP or else you lose GDP. We're at that point. You've talked a lot about America's balance sheet as a way to unlock opportunity to grow GDP and grow our way out of this deficit debt problem. Talk a little bit about what you mean when you say America's balance sheet and what does that entail. Well, first of all, I love David the way you're framing it. And I would just add, you know, that two trillion dollar deficit means that in the last year of the Biden administration, 2,000 billion 2,000 billion more was spent than came in. And and coming in, we have other ways to bring money in other than taxes.

And how is that possible? Well, it's because of America's balance sheet. Our balance sheet isn't just the financial assets. It includes the fact that just within Interior alone, there's 500 million acres of surface land. within throw in US forest service add another 200 million that's like nearly a third of US land yes and then we have uh 700 million acres of subsurface sometimes connect continuous and some discontinuous but we own all these minerals that are underground uh then there's about uh you know between 2 and a half and three billion acres of offshore that contain critical minerals and oil and gas minerals all of that is under the federal purview if interior

was a standalone company it would have the largest balance sheet in the world by so far. I mean, you know, Saudi A Ramco wouldn't even come close. And then you'd say, okay, well, if that's if you have this this, we all know about the $ 38 trillion in debt. It gets, you know, hammered all the time. It's used in campaign things. But I was uh, you know, even at the Hill and Valley conference this week, I without asking the audience, okay, how many, you know, how many know the 38 trillion? Everybody, how many of you know what our balance sheet on the asset side is? Well, nobody knows because none

of the senators know because we haven't calculated, but we're working in the Trump administration to try to come up with that number. And in and one estimate this week is we think just on a just on public land alone, there may be 8 trillion dollars of coal resources. And I know coal is sometimes, you know, it's a dirty word. It is. But, you know, it's uh we need to also remember that if we're going to have steel in this country and we need and we all agree we have need to have a steel industry. We need to have for defense. We need to have it for advanced manufacturing. We also need to have a shipping industry that comes back to our country. You need steel for that. Well, guess what you

make steel out of? Well, part of it you make it out of you need you need coke. And coke comes from a certain kind of metallurgical coal. So, if we kill the coal industry, you can't have a steel industry unless we're going to have somebody ship metallurgical coal to us. In the coal resources around our country, the coal is also filled up with the critical and rare earth minerals uh that we need to go in this battle with China. Particularly now with China just in weeks ago putting on export controls on a number of minerals that we need for doing things like you know batteries that we need for electric motors for whether it's cars or home drills or or

you know rockets missiles. I mean the the the the magnets that are at risk now because we became so dependent on China. So when you take a look at the the this balance sheet you know we need it for defense, we need it for national security. But theore Roosevelt who was be instrumental in putting away these hundreds of millions of acres in the original intention that said this was there for the benefit and use of the American people. And it al he also said very explicitly that that conservation meant meant you know sustainable use not just preservation because we saw what happened you know following the uh the the extremism that that landed around the spotted owl which is oh we've got to

stop not just the harvesting of certain old growth timber and it killed the timber industry in America and when we killed it back in the 1990s uh then and it has never come back. And now what's happening 30 years later because those timber companies that would get a lease from the federal government, they would have the responsibility for going in and thinning and cleaning and responsibly managing that and they would send a check to the federal government. We'd have revenue instead of revenue today, we have expense. We burn more board feet of lumber in this country every year right now than we are harvesting because because of the wildfire because of uncontrolled wildfires. And then the

uncontrolled wildfires are some of our biggest emitters, you know, in terms of CO2. You burn a tree, it releases the carbon. So again, the folks that wanted to, you know, reduce emissions, save the planet, you know, help the wildlife, we're actually doing the opposite of that. So we have to get back in the business of of, you know, grazing our lands, managing our forest, developing our our our resources and our critical minerals, getting back. We have to mine again in this country. Mining can't be, you know, if we want to be a strong country, we've got to do that. Uh, and of course oil and gas. You do all of those things that I just named. All of

those involve selling a lease to a private company. They send a check and then they develop the resource and then they send us a royalty. The little company that I just met with this morning out on the platform on the Gulf of America in its inception. This is a company with 450 people. They have sent 1.2 billion dollars to the US Treasury over the life of their company. You know, show me a tech company that's done that. I mean, impossible for a lease to access that resource. Well, the the lease and and they they lease it up front. So, they write a check up front to have the to have the opportunity to take the risk. They take all the risk. They build the platform. They hire the

people. They do the seismic. They figure it out. And if they hit a dry hole, it's all on them. Taxpayer nothing. But if they score, then they pay us a royalty. And what do we use that for? We use it for, you know, we use it for paying down the deficit and the debt. We also use it for coastal restoration. You know, along this beautiful Gulf Coast, you do coastal restoration. With that, the dollars go back to the states. the largest funer of coastal restoration in this country is the oil and gas industry uh you know here in the Gulf. So again the it's you know if like I said if you if you've driven on an in on an

interstate highway in your life or if you've gone to a public school you should send a thank you note to the the natural resource industries because they were helping to pay for that. But what's happened if I if there's a hundred trillion dollars on the balance sheet, just say that. And and now and you're a finance, tech, venture guy, you could say, "Okay, we'll we'll allow uh the federal government to be the worst. You guys can have a 1% return on your natural assets. That would be $1 trillion." Okay, last year, Interior brought in 22 billion. So, so we're off we're off by a factor of 50 from having bad performance on getting a return on

investment for the American people. I guess you know the assets only count if you can access them, utilize them, monetize them. We all know from a finance perspective there's goodwill that could sit on an asset line and doesn't mean anything at the end of the day. If you can't monetize it, it's not worth much. So, how do you think about the target you're going after? Is it a trillion? And then when do you develop and deliver a plan to the American people that says, "Guys, here's our target. Here's when we're going to get there." Do you think about it that way? We don't have a target yet because we don't even know what the base unused resources. I mean, we're trying to get

our hands around, you know, what what is our timber worth? What is our, you know, oil and gas? And that goes back to the core mission of the US Geologic Survey. Its original core mission was to map. So, when we say it's, you know, it's it's map, baby, map. uh because then that can tell you, you know, where you're supposed to mine, baby mine, where you're supposed to drill, baby drill. But getting back to the mapping and working with the private sector, who's outstripped, who's outstripped. I mean, ground penetrating radar, uh, is, you know, a new advancement, uh, that's, you know, more accurate than seismic and

less intrusive. And we need to really understand what America's balance sheet is. And some of that's going to take some work for us to get out there and really survey it. And, and then when we have that, that's public domain. publish that information and that'll help the private sector steer where they should put their resources to help develop this. Let's talk about mining. The United States used to mine. You and I had a dinner a couple weeks ago. You gave me a statistic which I hadn't heard before, which is we only graduate 200 people in degrees in mining today. Why did we stop mining? Why did we stop developing our own natural resources and shift to a model where we're buying

dependent and now have critical supply chain dependencies? What happened in the United States? Well, I think there was there was some, you know, our country was a powerful and great minor and it was when you think back to, you know, even the early 1900s, you think about where we were, you know, what we were doing in gold and silver and then, you know, through World War II, uh, and even up into the 1980s, we were still very strong as a mining country and a mining industry. And then and then uh there were some environmental issues that environmental awareness you had some super fund sites and and it just became you know one of the focal points of the attack of of uh of hey then it sort of

was all a sudden all mining was bad as opposed to one operator in one location uh that you know maybe wasn't maintained right and so then I think whether it was young people choosing careers or whether it was press whatever but then the regulatory environment piled on in a heavy way to the point that you know it's just amazing one of the resolution copper. We're just in the process now of issuing them a permit. It's taken about three months here in the Trump administration. They started this process over 29 years ago. Wow. I mean, this is this is this has gone three decade long saga to open up a copper

mine. And guess what? We need copper more than we've ever needed before. I mean, it's it's part of, you know, every electric motor. It's a part of all of the advanced stuff that we're building. And and so, I mean, it's thrilling that we're going to open a copper mine in America. And then some of the mines that have barely hung on uh but are still going whether it's gold or silver uh or others uranium in some cases uh along with that mining process there are critical minerals that are adjacent. I mean we can add a critical minerals refining because it's not just that we aren't mining those raw materials. China has got the corner on the refining not just mine to refine. So when they're in

they're in the you know the the Congo in Africa pulling out those those those those rich research rich minerals they're bringing those back to China. We've got examples of companies in America that were mining in America but there was no process. They were sending it to China and China was doing the refining. Well now we're in a we're literally in a in a in a war around these critical minerals which we need for defense. Uh and and we don't have a stockpile. So part of what we're concerned with right now and said you know how do we get capital flowing back to mining? How do we start building stockpiles in America the way we have the strategic petroleum reserve across

the top 20 most important critical minerals? And then how do we derisk it, you know, if someone's going to get into mining? And do we need uh like a sovereign risk insurance, but not because you're working overseas because you're working here because the next administration may use an EO to wipe out your mine. Uh, and so again, giving giving the capital providers the confidence that if somehow they're regulated out of business, they'll get compensated through an insurance program. And what about in your role administering the EPA, looking out for environmental standards, protecting our environment, protecting our communities,

there were toxic super fund sites. What's the thinking from your point of view on making sure that we're doing this in a clean way and how important that is in this calculus? Well, Lee Zeldon, uh, our EPA administrator is is also a key part of the energy dominance council, as is about half of the cabinet. I mean, we've got, you know, Howard Lutnik, Scott Bessant, uh, Brook Rollins, you know, from a with US forest everything. There's literally about half the cabinet. Uh, transportation, Sean Duffy's on there. Uh, everybody's, you know, part of this team of trying to solve this larger complex thing. But I would say that the one thing we forget

about when we often there's these national discussions which is that every state also has a regulatory environment. And in my time as governor, one thing I learned was that there was I had I never met a bureaucrat from DC that cared more about the land, the water, the soil health or the air in our state than the people that lived there and the people that worked for our own DEEQ. And so when people say, "Oh, you know, we're reducing headcount at the EPA. The world's going to fall apart." No, we have two issues with regulation. One is is the overreach which is you have people going beyond the law on their original charter and regulating things

you know regulate when they're supposed to be regulating water and I need and a water permit should be about turbidity and temperature and is the fish in this area going to be affected as opposed to oh oh we're not giving this permit because we're worried about climate change is because the thing in your pipe is natural gas. I mean that's a real example. That's how Cuomo knocked out a a permit that was, you know, way beyond what the law said. I mean, if there was an issue with how the company was crossing a water course, like 38,000 other LG crossings of of water courses in America, if there's a real problem, then tell them that and they'll horizontally direct drill it 50 feet

below the bottom of the river. It'll never touch the river and give them a permit. Instead, they'd be like, "No, you know, there's no permit because we're concerned about climate change." That's overreach. But the overlap that occurs every day is that the federal government infrastructure is overlapping with the states. And there isn't a need to do both of those things. And and you might, you know, go to path for, you know, two years, three years and get your federal permit and then find out, oh, that a state like New York is is not going to provide it. Or you might get a a permit in six months in a in a state that's that can efficiently do permitting and get all the work done and

take care of everything and then find out that the federal government's going to sit on it for an entire presidential term because they're ideologically opposed. When we do that to ourselves, then we have no chance against a country like China that is focused on on on an outcome which is they're going to achieve prosperity. they're going to achieve uh all of their environmental goals by having the power to have all the solutions as opposed to uh the uh the environment we have now which restricts that that innovation. President Trump's uh just finished his 100 days in office. Are you glad you took the job? What's been most surprising for you since you've been in

the role? Well, I'm I'm having a blast. Uh and I'm thrilled to be in this position where we can have an impact. you know, you get up every day and it's a little bit like the old uh, you know, World War II uh, you know, Marines in the Pacific would say, you know, the bad, you know, we're in a foxhole. The bad we're in a foxhole, we're on a beach. The bad news is, uh, you know, we're surrounded. The good news is we can attack in any direction. And and so every day you can get up and go make a difference in in people's lives. And and that's and for anybody that's in tech or anybody that's listening, you know, that poo poos public service, they ought to really think about the fact, I mean, we

need people that are, as Teddy Roosevelt said, that are willing to get in the arena because in these jobs, uh, that are, you know, really purposeful, you can make a difference for a lot of people thing. But what's surprising about the job was I I knew that the from a tech standpoint because I lived through it eight years in North Dakota where where where state government wasn't up to speed on just basic technology and basic business systems and all the things that that uh that that reduce productivity and create uh I say agony for state or federal employees. I mean, we we asked them to do mind-numbing and soul sucking work for like 20% of their time because we

haven't given them the basic tools that everybody in the private sector has had. And so, it's not like that anybody's bad a bad people, but you could get rid of 20% of this of the quote work by just bringing in the tools that are there. I mean, you could have 20% less people, then the people would have a more meaningful, more purposeful job, more productive. Yeah. All of those things. And so, what I thought was it can't be worse than it was in North Dakota. And then I got into the at least in the department of interior and uh we are we are further behind. I mean we're going to you know this is a the land of you know decommissioning main mainframes and

then we could just you know take them straight to the Smithsonian to the 1980s exhibit. I had dinner with a couple CIOS CTOs that are that have now been put in the government and um the stories are incredible. Totally echo what you what you're saying. Secretary Bergam, thank you for this opportunity to join you here on this beautiful day. I really appreciate the work you're doing. It's fantastic to hear that there's someone in the administration with your perspective, your experience doing this work. And so I just want to say thank you. And David, I want to return that. I want to thank you and all your compatriots at Allin because uh you're you're really uh allowing an opportunity

for America to have a dialogue that goes deeper than the sound bite. Yeah. And I I think that all of you may underestimate the impact that Allin has had. Uh I know that uh that it's a you're influencing policy. You're you're you know helping people understand the complexity and both the opportunities and the threats of big things that really matter to all Americans. And so and and thank you for being so well informed and thanks for coming all the way down here to Louisiana to share this beautiful day on the coast. Thanks. Thank you. [Music] I'm going all in.