The US has not invested in upgrading and hardening its electric grid since World War II, and even without AI, the baseline demands of electrification, reshoring, and normal life will cause blackouts, brownouts, and surging electricity prices — the biggest bottleneck is craft labor.

Dreyfus argues the grid hasn't been meaningfully upgraded since WWII. Even excluding AI demand, replacing gas boilers with heat pumps and increasing EV penetration will cause shortfalls. A single 1GW AI data center running on solar would require 35,000 acres — larger than San Francisco — and there simply aren't enough electricians and linemen to build it. ✦ AI generated

Dan Dreyfus · All-In Podcast · 2026-06-10 · original ↗

We have not invested in upgrading and modernizing and hardening the electric grid since post-World War II. We just let it go... Now, if we simply just want to achieve our objectives to re-industrialize, reshore, electrify... Not even talking about AI. Not even talking about AI. We're going to have shortfalls just from that. Just from living our life. So what happens? Blackouts, brownouts, blackouts, brownouts, and we're going to have to... Rising electricity prices... Here's a good stat for you. So a 1 GW AI factory, if you wanted to do all solar, okay? And I'm a big solar bull, okay? If you want to do all solar, because solar's capacity factor is 20%, because the sun doesn't shine all the time, with a capacity factor at 20%, a 1 GW data center needs 5 gigawatts of solar. Each GW of solar takes up 7,000 acres. So at 5 gigawatts, that's 35,000 acres. That's bigger than San Francisco. So where are you going to find the people? Where are you going to find? That's the biggest bottleneck we have, by the way, is craft labor.

verbatim transcript · starts at 22:33