Sep 15, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min · 10 segments
**Episode description** JoAnn Garbin is the first returning guest on Lead with Purpose. She led innovation work on the data center of the future at Microsoft, co-authored the bestselling The…
And it says, uh, Americans, this is the headline from Yahoo finance, but it's, it's based on, it's based on this Gallup survey that, that you're very familiar with, no doubt, that Americans would rather live near a nuclear power plant than an AI data center, which just completely, as a person who grew up and when I was young watching Three Mile Island on TV, it blows my mind that this is kind of, this is the place where we're at today, that there's some, for some reason, you know, hey, a nuclear power plant in my backyard would be better than a data center.
I mean, the data, first and foremost, I'll say, which I don't think a lot of people are saying, they're kind of the same thing.
When you talk about a gigawatt scale data center, it is the equivalent of a gigawatt of power in a nuclear power plant, which is the only way we we can create a concentrated gigawatt of energy today is in nuclear power.
So One, when we say I'd rather have a nuclear power plant than a data center, you're kind of contradicting yourself because you're asking for the same thing from an energy and water perspective.
And also from a construction perspective, I would say even from a safety perspective now, because they're equally safe.
But the other side of it is I think nuclear gets an advantage over data centers because we understand the benefit it's bringing us.
We've all in the U.S. gotten accustomed to, I walk into a room, I hit a light switch and my power comes on.
That that expectation of our power grid is well established now and it actually freaks us out when it doesn't work right and now we're seeing more people put residential solar with residential batteries so that they can ride out storms my my brother's house was offline i'm getting
exactly um whereas data centers aren't haven't haven't been ingrained in our life long enough for us to just expect them and understand what happens when they go offline, but they're behind everything in modern life right now.
Your work, if you're not in a physical labor job or a service job, your work directly relies on data centers.
And it says, uh, Americans, this is the headline from Yahoo finance, but it's, it's based on, it's based on this Gallup survey that, that you're very familiar with, no doubt, that Americans would rather live near a nuclear power plant than an AI data center, which just completely, as a person who grew up and when I was young watching Three Mile Island on TV, it blows my mind that this is kind of, this is the place where we're at today, that there's some, for some reason, you know, hey, a nuclear power plant in my backyard would be better than a data center.
I mean, the data, first and foremost, I'll say, which I don't think a lot of people are saying, they're kind of the same thing.
When you talk about a gigawatt scale data center, it is the equivalent of a gigawatt of power in a nuclear power plant, which is the only way we we can create a concentrated gigawatt of energy today is in nuclear power.
So One, when we say I'd rather have a nuclear power plant than a data center, you're kind of contradicting yourself because you're asking for the same thing from an energy and water perspective.
And also from a construction perspective, I would say even from a safety perspective now, because they're equally safe.
But the other side of it is I think nuclear gets an advantage over data centers because we understand the benefit it's bringing us.
We've all in the U.S. gotten accustomed to, I walk into a room, I hit a light switch and my power comes on.
That that expectation of our power grid is well established now and it actually freaks us out when it doesn't work right and now we're seeing more people put residential solar with residential batteries so that they can ride out storms my my brother's house was offline i'm getting
exactly um whereas data centers aren't haven't haven't been ingrained in our life long enough for us to just expect them and understand what happens when they go offline, but they're behind everything in modern life right now.
Your work, if you're not in a physical labor job or a service job, your work directly relies on data centers.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.