The Rise of AI in Politics: Risks, Regulation, and Reward

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Austin-based energy startup Base Power announced it has raised $1 billion in new funding to expand its residential battery leasing business, positioning itself at the center of Texas’ fast-growing clean energy sector as demand surges nationwide. Meanwhile, Gov. Greg Abbott has authorized hundreds of Texas National Guard soldiers have been deployed to Illinois to assist federal immigration authorities in Chicago. And in education, Texas selected Odyssey, a national tech firm, to design and administer its new $1 billion school voucher program, the Texas Education Freedom Accounts.

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Walmart has announced plans to eliminate synthetic dyes and over 30 other ingredients from its U.S. private brand food products such as Great Value, Marketside, Freshness Guaranteed, and Bettergoods, with a target completion date of January 2027, as outlined in a recent corporate statement.

The Details:

• The initiative removes 11 synthetic dyes, such as Red No. 40 and Yellow No. 5, along with preservatives and artificial sweeteners, responding to customer demand for simpler ingredients while maintaining taste and value.
• The move affects all Walmart U.S. food private brands, supporting a more transparent food system and aligning with evolving health-conscious trends.
• Walmart President and CEO John Furner said, “Our customers want products with familiar ingredients, and we’re delivering on that promise.”
• The transition will leverage natural alternatives, with the company collaborating with suppliers to meet the 2027 deadline.

“Our customers have told us that they want products made with simpler, more familiar ingredients - and we’ve listened. By eliminating synthetic dyes and other ingredients, we’re reinforcing our promise to deliver affordable food that families can feel good about.”

- John Furner, President and CEO, Walmart U.S.

Why It Matters:
This shift could set a new standard for the U.S. food industry, boosting consumer trust and influencing market trends.

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Welcome back to Bills and Business. The show where we explore the intersection of policy and tech. I'm your host, Laura Davis, co-founder of the USLege. And today we're joined by Gavin Nicholson. He's the founder and CEO of the Tax Cap Policy Institute, a Nonpartisan think tank designing and advocating for private sector guided public interest policies. Their goal is to channel private capital into long term prosperity for all Texans through infrastructure, equitable tax structures, responsible governance all rooted in transparency, innovation and impact.

And our conversation today will explore his time inside the legislature, how bipartisanship can still work, and why private capital is such a critical part of building policy success.

I think it's great that you're, you're starting the same thing and that you have done it in such a you want to be bipartisan, right? And how how do you approach that?

How do you see that? Do you get any pushback having worked for, you know, Democrats in the state? What's that journey kind of been like?

No, I mean, it it's it's something that I have to it's like an ongoing battle, you know, battle, quote unquote. But I think the thing is, is that most people, when they talk to me at first they don't understand that I'm a Democrat.

They make assumptions based off of me. I think it's because the art of just having conversations lost. And most people try to insert politics in everything. But,

you know, when I was looking at what I wanted to do, I wanted to I sort of looked at the areas I knew was really important, but, like, not sexy.

Like no one ever does the policy on. And I wanted to get a board that sort of represented the best of those worlds in a bipartisan fashion. So we're like, we're split 5050, 50% Democrats, 50% Republicans. And we actually, in our bylaws, have a rule that says we have to have for every Republican, there has to be a Democrat like, you can't be can't be separated.

And so my board chairs, he's like, he's a moderate Republican. And have another board members are Republican. And I got two Democrats. But I think, like for me, it was really frustrating. And I'm sure you you've had this experience too. Working for Senator Paxton was like, there was really good policy that just got Partizan for no reason.

And what was supposed to be a slam dunk? Everyone agrees all of a sudden is now split 5050 record call, vote. You know, for no reason whatsoever. And so

it is sad when it does happen because I found the DC, I was so excited that state policy would be far more nonpartisan, right? Like both sides would talk about things because it's turf fights versus big headline issues like education funding is a nonpartisan issue, right?

You would think. Right, right. And so those types of things, I mean, we definitely, you know, from the outside, but when I, you know, looking in, people probably would say, oh, this was a really Republican policy or and it was like, actually this was 100% nonpartisan, and agreed upon in both chambers. Literally nobody opposed it. So that's kind of I think that that's like not looked at as well.

Yeah. Especially because of campaigns. Yeah. Right. You want to go to your audience and when you're campaigning they want to say, oh, I was the most Republican or the most Democratic. And really

it's a lot of you have to work together. And I don't know how healthy that, that even that system is in itself. Because then at that point you're not competing for the betterment of your constituents.

You're competing for who can get the most policy wins. And if that's all you're competing for,

there's no need to pass good policy because it's a it's a sort of like what happened when Nancy Pelosi passed the ACA. It's just passed now. We'll figure it out later. Which is awful way to do anything in politics. But, I mean, I'm with you, and it was so frustrating, I think sometimes because on the staff level, you know, you have your friends that are on both sides.

Yeah. And I'd have to have conversations with them where I'm like, hey, are you guys voting this way? This way. What are you recommending? And they'd be like, oh, you know, we're recommending against or we're recommending for because XYZ a reason. But it always boiled down to we always check if there's an R.D. next to the name.

That's the first thing. And like that's such a backwards way to do things. But I feel like that's becoming more and more prevalent as the legislature is getting more Partizan for sure. Actually got a real example of that. In the 88th legislative session, there was a bill that my boss had worked on. It was actually closing.

It was funny enough. It square like a full circle moment is closing a loophole that was accidentally created off a bill that I passed in the 87th legislature. And, simple bill, just, school resource officers got written out of the occupation or not occupation with the government code to get search warrants. Totally accidental. It was just the way a bill was written, kind of, you know, carve them out.

So the bill just fixed it. It just said, hey, you know, if you are a campus police officer, you can request a search warrant. My boss, a Democrat, filed the bill, and another member Republican filed the bill. Exact same bill, exact same language, line by line. When it went to the House floor, he went up there, gave like a ten, 15 second spiel about it, passed 100 and like 38 to 0.

No issue. My boss went up there the same day. By the way, why Boston up there, same bill, same everything. Not only did we have to delay the bill, we had to get multiple Republicans to speak in favor of the bill. I had to print out 151 pages, distribute them across the House floor, and even then it only passed like 78 to like 60.

And it was like at some point, like I get Partizanship has to, you know, come into play for certain core issues, but it's things like that. It's like, wow, that's crazy. So exact side by side, it will I be pointed out to a lot of the office, I'll just call them up. And I was like, hey, is your boss voting for or against this?

And the ones that were like, oh, we're voting against it. I'd like you realize you guys just voted for this exact same bill,

exact same language, not even ten minutes ago. And when I pointed that out to them, they're like, oh, we didn't realize. And I'm like, you're not doing your job.

Wow. I know that's the thing. That's just impossible to keep up with it.

So while that makes sense to many bills wait there's way too many bills. And then I do think that that's actually a negative with I like people are going to make way more bills. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's so much easier to adopt a bill. There's a couple states that actually limit the amount of bills you can do.

Oh I know that. There's great. We talked about that in our annual report. We did I think there's about 5 or 6 states. They limit the amount of bills you can do.

And if you're doing like, well, they'll do like a big tax bill, for instance. And that holds every single tax change in the state legislature.

So rather than, you know, how we do things where it's like 120 different, you know, tax bills and, you know, they get dragged out a long time. Other states, they just do one go. You tack on like 50 amendments and it's just tax day and that's it.

Do you know which states off top of your head

I think so I think Tennessee does something similar to this.

I don't think they limit it. Limited artificial like that. I think Colorado does it. California has a version of it. It's not that extreme. But they do have some limits. And then I know Nevada has limits as well. So it's definitely implemented across couple states. I hope the legislature considers it. That's really cool.

I know there's a lot of things you could potentially do, but who knows what will happen with all these.

Yeah. Specials. Right. I, I'm interested in talking to your grandmother about Nevada politics

because I just hear it's madness. It's crazy. It's you showing me some of the, during her primary, she sent me some of the, the science that people were, like, holding up, and they, like, had her, like, in a photoshopped, like, clown outfit that was like rhinos at the clown show or something like that.

And I'm like, this woman has voted for Republicans since, like, the 80s. Like, ever since she's been involved in politics. She's only ever worked for Republicans who voted for Republicans. And all of a sudden she's not a Republican. Makes no sense of infighting right on both sides. And it is, I don't think. I don't know how you fix that either.

I think online, like social media rhetoric, has a lot to do with it. People just pick up things and, you know, it's the Dunning-Kruger effect. They think they're experts in it. It just creates more problems. I think some people now sometimes,

and people not knowing how to have an open conversation about issues, is something I say all the time is nobody agrees 100% on anything or and so but nobody knows.

Now, I think probably the lockdown really didn't help because people weren't around each other. Yeah, the social media online rhetoric got really bad and people just started talking there more. And yeah, I definitely see that being just a huge problem. No one wants to talk politics anymore. So, well, I love what you are doing. Thank you. Well, yeah, making it more nonpartizan and talking about issues that that shouldn't have a Partizan line.

So tell me a little more about your personal journey. So, you were chief of staff in the house for three sessions? But how did you get into politics? How did it all set for you?

So I was the annoying kid in government class that was super involved and active that I think people got sick of. Honestly.

But I knew when to shut up, so I was like. I wasn't just, like, arguing to argue. But I was, sort of active in 2015 during those, you know, the presidential primaries and, 2016, I volunteered for my first campaign. And then not a lot of people know this, but, in 2017, I was super frustrated with just in with how the political landscape shaped out.

And I decided to run for city council. And I was like 19 years old, like just starting community college. And I'll never forget, I don't think I've shared this part with anyone, but it's so funny. I went to City Hall and I go, I want to run for city council. And the city secretary, like, looks down at me like glass is like drooping.

And she goes, okay, do you know what district you're in? And I was like, now I just know I want to run. Thankfully, the district, I decided to run and we had a retiring incumbent, so it wasn't like I was going to run against an incumbent. Well, that's. But it was a five person race, and I was the only candidate for like 29 out of the 30 days, like filing days.

And I was like, am I just going to get this? Like, it would have been crazy. But now the last day, all four other people filed. And, you know, I figured that's how it went. But that was sort of my start and then immediately started working on a lot of campaigns and,

did that for a couple years and was real quick.

Yeah, you win that race. So who who beat you? I knew a guy, a guy named Scott Elliott. Super nice guy. I mean, definitely deserved the seat. I definitely would have been a better option than me. But he actually won. And then he won again reelection. And now he's retired. But I got in a five person race.

I try to figure out what win I could take away from it. So the win that I got was I spent the least money per capita, per vote. I only got 4%. But, you know, hey, having the balls to do it is the most important thing. It was scary. It was. I had no idea what I was doing.

I all I did was show up to forums to that I didn't block, I didn't make phone calls into anything like that. I just put up road signs and went to forums. That was it.

And so I was like, you know, it's not that bad if I that's all I did, you know, that's super scary.

And I, I still think, though, that if I didn't do that, I would not have gotten as far as I did in politics, because that forces you to sort of justify your beliefs. It forces you to be confronted with a lot of uncomfortable conversations, of people going like, why are you leaving this? And, you know, it's you're like a young kid.

You're like, no, why do I believe in this? Yeah. And so I think that help those strengthen a lot of, you know, my personal beliefs. But then in 2020, I got the opportunity to work for rep Carl Sherman, who he represents, southern Dallas County, for Mayor De Soto. They gave me a remote internship, and I was sort of in this position of, you know, do I take it, you know, do I not?

So I had to take it. I was like, what's the worst that can happen? Worst that could happen was going to Storm Uri because that uplifted everything. And, all of a sudden, the session that was supposed to be focused on, you know, this the crisis of Covid then became Covid plus winter Storm Uri, you know, plus all the civil unrest in the country at the time.

And so that was, I think, a hell of a session to get introduced to,

and then when I left his office, I was sort of also on the side doing a lot of tech startup stuff and, elaborate on that. What were you doing? I so I was working on a company called Opolis and Opolis, you know, like the Greek word for city.

And the idea was, is that, because of the emerging tech space, a lot of people were contract developers, and, you know, they were just taking on projects and things like that. Well, they didn't really get good health care benefits, corporate benefits and things like that. So what we did is we basically served as an, an H.R.

Commons where they could be members of our Commons. They would get health insurance group rate benefits for the same rate that you would at a large corporation without sacrificing your autonomy. And it had a co-op model. They're still around. They're doing great. But they were actually the parent company of Ethereum, Denver, which is the largest Ethereum conference in North America.

And so we actually got the creator of Ethereum out of there, like their teams and stuff. Kimbal Musk was actually there. Jared Polis is all in Denver. We got Andrew Yang. I mean, it was all the all the tech guys, you know, so did that. And then I got an offer from, Ben Jones to join his team in June or July of 2023.

I want to say something like that. So, you know, from there was with, Rob Jones, and we decided to leave this legislative session. So very cool. Quite, quite the journey that was. No, I mean, that sets you up and having the real world experience and tech and politics is, I think, can be really helpful for you. I think the thing that I learned, and I've taken away from a lot of the tech stuff, is the ability to be flexible, that I think sometimes in politics is not the most prominent, you know, the ability to being able to say, I can get up and just do something until it's done.

I think sometimes in politics where there's not really that initiative, sometimes unless you really have to do something. But in AI, at least in my experience, the tech world is like, just get it done, you know? Because then I have more free time to do whatever the hell I want, you know? But it definitely I'll have a lot

in government.

‍

I think it does get a bad rap for having, you know, people doing 9 to 5ft politics. I would say, are you people do not sleep in that role. That's the difference. The politics in the government. I feel like the agency people you know, nothing bad about agencies, but that's okay, I love agencies. But yeah, I feel like they do have the 9 to 5 for the most part when they're not in the legislative season, but then the legislative season, that's when it's more of the you got to be on a call.

But, you know, at least for me, when I was the chief, it was like a 24 over seven. You're always on, you know, it was I remember actually, I was out drinking with friends one time in Dallas. It's like ten, 11:00 at night. We represented the district where Fair Park is. So the state fair is going on.

I'm. You know, I'm now drinking with friends, having a good time. All of a sudden, I get a news alert shooting at Fair Park,

and I'm. You were there. You were. I was I was running around the corner. But, you know, I'm like, immediately thinking I have to do a press release now because that's our district. So I'm trying to I tell my friends I'll be right back.

And they didn't they didn't get it. You know, they're like, dude, it's like Saturday, you know, why are you out working right now? I'm like, guys don't get it, don't have time to explain.

And so I'm literally in this park bathroom typing up a press release and sending it back and forth to my boss, making sure it makes sense because, you know, you can't not respond to it.

So you have to either. My mindset was, you either you can do it in the moment or you have to say you can't do it. But not doing something was never an option. Yep. You just couldn't not do it for sure. So

I think it's a really good experience to become an entrepreneur as well in in that space, because you're always going to have something to do.

And I get there's a lot of people who don't get it. Yeah. The work stuff and I mean my personal life has totally changed since starting my company. I can't do as much anymore.

It's the, the thing on Twitter that's trend right now. It's the 996 mindset which is you work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week.

Which it's not healthy, but it's the I guess there's a study or something done that showed that, like all the new tech startup guys and all the tech startup founders and, you know, the developers and stuff, that's how they're living right now. And Silicon Valley is not at 9 p.m., six days a week. It's seven days.

So, yeah, I know I, I do that. My girl gets mad at me sometimes. She's like, it's the weekend, stop working. Yes, I'm like, I gotta work though. I just have that bug. I got that itch. I don't think my ADHD helps though, that, that that definitely causes me to fixate on stuff sometimes. The

quote so we just we had our A team offsite.

So everyone a company came in is really, really fun. And Ben what our CTO and co-founder he did kind of presentation and in it he had some funny memes and some fun quotes and oh, this one was, Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban work as if there's someone working 24 seven. Take it all away from you. Yeah. And that's what we do.

And honestly, everyone we hire has to be like that, too. Yeah. And I think obviously no one's ever going to work as hard as the founder. I personally get that, like, we're not going to expect everyone to work seven days a week, but you have to have that hustle. Because, I mean, long term, like at some point, what I'm excited about with some people in our company now, like, coach wants to start his own thing.

Yeah. And he's going to do that, you know, after long after we get acquired, whatever happens. But wouldn't that be cool if we can then go and invest in his right? And then he's learned so much in the startup world.

And I think that's so important passing the torch. And I think that's like something of like unites generation is the ability to pass the torch.

Because I think, yeah, you know, not not to disrespect our elders. You know, I think there is the, the people that started taking power in the 80s, in the 90s that had to work so hard just to get like that little bit of where they're at that it's sometimes it's hard for them to let go and pass the torch and define mentorship in the same way that they were given mentorship.

You know, I see some of the stuff on LinkedIn sometimes where it's like some guy that's clearly never, you know, he has not been in an entry level or like started started from scratch in a long time. And the advice I'm given or I seem given is like, that's not where LinkedIn thought leadership. It's so fun. So one of the funniest one with the I don't know if you ever saw there's one guy that was like, I have this idea with my friends, we're all going to get together and we're going to start a podcast, except it'll be different.

There's no microphones, no cameras, and we'll talk about topics and like the topic on it was, dude, you just invented hanging out. Like that's like, but he was so serious about it too. And it's so funny. I see this all the time. I love it so much. Are you doing LinkedIn thought leadership? Yeah, I, I want to I hate it, but I did it I did it one.

I did this my last post because that's how the algorithm catches it. And yeah I'm going to go with it. Awesome.

You know who's really good at it is really, really good at it. And here at Austin's Adam Lowy Adam. So Adam Lowy is probably one of the, biggest personal injury attorneys in Austin. Oh yes, I do know.

So he'll he'll do those thought leadership posts about cases he worked on. And it's the like one sentence line break, one sentence line break. And every single time I see it, I'm like, I've already seen this case. And then I'll read this one sentence and I'm like, okay, this is a different case. I got to read the rest of the thing now, and every single time it's like hundreds of likes.

And I'm like, clearly the algorithm is catching these somehow, some way. So I, I got to do it, but I, I hate it,

Any who did that, how did you go from being, you know, as to, in politics entrenched as a chief to starting about creating a think tank. I mean, this must have been brewing for a while for you. What it, what it was mean it was and I think I knew and my boss and I both knew that, you know, this year was probably the year that I was not going to be with his office.

Next session, I

it's if you haven't worked in the building, it is a grueling experience. And I think sometimes even for like the lobby that have never worked inside the building, it is so exhausting to be staff all the time. And so I knew what I wanted. I kind of do what I want to do.

I kind of knew that I didn't want to do, and I, I was looking at the lobby and I was like, you know, I could do this. I know how to not be partizan and how to push issues, but you don't really get to decide. It's sort of like, you know, your client and things like that.

So that didn't look, as appealing. But I did approach a couple people about it. Looked at some agency stuff. But, you know, the, the like with most thing, most things in government, salaries usually aren't the most competitive. And so, you know, I sort of looking at that sort of ruled some of that out. And really how the think tank started, because I was already I already had a lot of crazy ideas that I wanted to push through his bills.

But my boss, we had a rule where it had to be relevant to the district to file something. So we didn't really, didn't get a lot of those ideas, but, I, I knew talking with staff and even some members that there were some issues, that there was clearly an interest, but, they couldn't devote a whole bunch of time to it because it wasn't the a pressing issue.

And, you know, I'll never forget actually had one rep, tell me that whenever any tech bill comes up, you know, they don't even ask their staff to do a recommendation, because I'll just ask them another member on the floor, how they're voting for it, and that a lot of those things kept replaying in my mind as I was looking and figuring out what I wanted to do next.

And when I, you know, I went out drinking with two of my board members before they were my board members, and we were talking and one of them just sort of frustratingly said, I think it was he was talking about Carolyn fairly spill, and he didn't understand why I was being held up. He was like, this is a good bill.

Cell phone ban in schools, which I love. I think it's a great bill. And I had to explain to him, you know, look, sometimes these bills get caught up in Partizan politics in a way that makes absolutely no sense to an outside observer. And he was like, well, we have access to the capital. Why can't we change that capital, meaning the money?

Why can't we just hire some people to go change that? And I was like, well, it's not that simple. You know, because that requires thought leadership, that requires the ability to create research, create, you know, do all these things that it's not really being done in a nonpartizan way for these more forward looking issues. They're already some think tanks that approach things from either, you know, the conservative side of things, the progressive left wing side of things, you know, and they, nonpartisan ones usually focus on education, health care, energy, things like that.

So, you know, tech isn't really tech taxes and infrastructure things we were talking about. Not really the focus a lot of time. And he goes, well, you worked in there. Why can't you do it? And I was like, oh, that's a good question. Why can't I do it? And I think from there we start playing with the idea a bit.

And I was looking around at tools and I was like, you know, I don't have the power of a lobby shop. You know, like some of these people have eight associates. And, you know, for partners that I've been work in and they get their spreadsheets on track and everything. And, I was looking actually, that's how I discovered y'all is I was like, okay, well, there's this AI tool that, like, I actually know how to use er responsibly, which is not just copy and paste everything it sends me there.

Oh, my God, I got stories about. Oh, yeah. But I looked at that and I was like, this is exactly what I need. And so, you know, immediately reached out, got a free trial just to see if I liked it. And I was like, this is 100% what I need because it's better than the search engine.

The, Texas Legislature Online has because, I mean, you know, you you search a keyword and it gives you like 800 bills that all match that keyword. And it's all in numerical order. Maybe it's relevant, maybe it's not. Or they have their, matching strength index, which it's like you could put in like taxes or something like that.

And I'll say, well, this bill says taxes nine times, so that means it's 100% relevant. It's like yes or no, which is like what I like with y'all. It's I can say this specific taxation, you know, policy, you know, pull up all the bills with a bunch of different,

you know, results and contextual search. Exactly. It's really big.

That's super big. So, knowing I had all of those, you know, I had the backing of at least two people,

and I had this tool at my fingertips. I was like, there's no reason I can't do this. I have the ability to do it. I have the knowledge to do it. I know enough people will do it.

And I've had a lot of people, and I guess this sort of the frustrating thing sometimes a lot of people have been like, Gavin, this is so needed. We're so glad that you're doing it. And I be great. You know, I want to get you to support, you know, we're we're set up to be, you know, 501 C3 status pending have to say that, nonprofit think tank.

You know, we'd love to get you to join us. And they go, oh, you know, I don't know if I want to do that. You know, I just I want you to be around. And I think that's sort of the taboo in the room, you know, is if you if no one supports the research to do it, it never gets done.

And you're going to be just as frustrated next session.

So sorry. I'm. Yeah. No, this is so interesting. And thank you. I'm so happy to hear that. That was really helpful. When you're starting if I that's amazing. If I didn't have you guys this tool, I probably would not have started the think tank. And I'd be so serious.

It made sense for I liked how easy it was. And the two things was the bill searching and also the, going through committees and being able to search for keywords, because that was so critical because I remember, you know, in my annual report, I have little quotes from senators and, and members and, I had one from what was bugging me is the quote from, Comptroller Hagar.

And it was in appropriations and the House appropriations. Me this is like in February or something. And I remember him saying something about the budget, but I cannot remember it for the life of me I could not remember at the day. And, you know, the old days, you would have to go through search. Every little thing took hours, hours, and even then it was like, you may have found the part where he's at people.

And I got to go through this whole thing, which, you know the question for an hour. I have two hours and I just slap. So yummy. It's so easy. That's so great. But you came.

So, when you were going through that, you had two board members. What? What field were they? And they were in tech or

so.

The first one is actually a venture capitalist. And he's my board chair. He does a lot of dual use tech, so, you know, defense stuff, but also civilian application. There's a lot of energy. Spent a lot of his career in Dubai. And so he was like, there's a lot of, you know, he's been all over the world, and he's one of those guys that's like kind of pay attention to politics, kind of don't.

He's trying to get more into it. I guess a lot of his friends are trying to get more into it as well. Because of just, it doesn't look, landscape doesn't really make a lot of sense right now. And I think if you just get the news clips, it's like, what the hell is going on? The other one is actually currently in politics, still a very active.

He's actually worked for Trey Pac. So, you know, there's both of them. The person that, the other two people on the flip side that do work in tech, as my good buddy Joshua Pierce, he's actually was at Lyft pre IPO. And he was he has a bunch of stories that stories I don't think I could tell.

So, we'll have to have a drink. But, you know, he tell me stories about that. And then he worked. He works now, and, Web3, blockchain tech. And he's got, a super immersed in that world. But he worked at consensus, which is like one of the big, big, like, Web3 companies. That's like, you think about any of the tech that's actually useful now that people use.

That's not just some, like, random shit coin or meme coin that gets pumped on Twitter. That's the company that usually funds those projects. And now he has an accelerator that he's part of, and, you know, the things like that. And then, my other board member, she is a, she's director of government relations for a big lobby firm and then also the executive director of the Association of Water Companies.

So with all of those people, I was like, we're now anything we say. Theoretically, there is some level of authority and subject matter expertise, but we're also, you know, I run everything by my board before we publish it. So there's there's never like, oh, this is just Gavin. Give him, you know, usually a week I try, you know, week, asterisk.

But to give them opportunity to review, provide feedback. Change things and things definitely change when I, when I send things out, but, you know, that was sort of what I wanted to do with this is I didn't want it to be how I hear a lot of people say things are done in taxes, which is pay to play.

It is the, you know, claim to be nonpartisan, but you're not actually nonpartisan. You got some agenda, whether left or right, to push, or whether it's, you know, you're reading a report, you know, like, well, this is a really good report, only to find out, like at the very bottom and small little tax that it was paid for by a company that also has a vendor bill being, you know, moves through the legislature right now.

So all that to say, that's what really pushed me and drove me

to start the think tank, I love it. So now what does Tax Cap Policy Institute do? What's your mission? What are your goals?

So our mission is to the long or short of our mission is we want to drive private capital for public good.

And the there's a longer version of that on our website that makes more sense.

But the idea is, is that I think there's an aversion to capital sometimes. Both, on the left and even some parts of the right. Money is just sort of looked at as this corrupting factor. And I think that when you actually go into it, it's really easy to do that when you're only in the public sector and you only see it influencing negatively.

Sure. But I think when you actually go into the private sector, you find out there's actually a lot of people that want to do a lot of good. They just don't know how there's not really the framework, tax cap, I believe. And I look at it as sort of that connector. So, you know, we're able to take some of those emerging technologies, emerging policy areas.

I think, like, I don't know if you're familiar with ISP, but they are, a future based, innovative think tank that does federal policy. So they only do, I think it's like energy, energy and tech policy. Those are the only two things they do, but sort of same thing, you know, they're very nonpartisan, very, you know, pro build, pro developed, pro everything out there.

And I look at tax cap and I take on a lot of the same, same mantra and mindset, really is Texas is one of the wealthiest states in the country and by extension, the world. On top of that, we produce the most energy in the country, by extension, the world. There's no reason we can't come together to build solutions that makes sense from the nonpartisan lens.

Because even energy policy is starting to get Partizan now. And that is. That's scary. I was actually, before I was coming here. I was looking at some stats, but, you know, in, in 2023, when you look at the United States and China, China beat us in almost every single fuel mix except natural gas, nuclear and oil and gas and oil.

That's it. They beat us and everything else. So they beat us. And so they beat us. And when they beat us in geothermal, they beat us in all these other areas. And I think that, you know, if you're on it, depending on where you found the foreign policy spectrum, I don't think it matters. The idea should be that we need to make sure that we are building at the same rate and have the same capacity, especially in a state like Texas where energies can't you know, I don't I think it is very unproductive for anyone to try and curtail any energy production, whether that's oil and gas, whether that's solar.

I think there actually could be an argument made for wind. Now that we know it's not as efficient now that there's more studies, but we're only able to do those studies after it's being built and we can sort of evaluate. I think sometimes that gets lost is, you know, we make assumptions and we double down on those assumptions.

Even after the data comes out. And one thing that I can say that I do this as best as I can, so when I'm wrong, I'll say I'm wrong. I'll mess up and I'll try to adapt accordingly. But I think that's sometimes a struggle and a lost art, especially in this space. People, they don't like saying that they're wrong.

Okay.

And for those people who don't really know, what does a think tank do?

So we, we produce the policy research and the data for, the four topics I mentioned tax tech, energy, natural resources and infrastructure.

So we do it from a very futuristic lens though. So we're not going to necessarily talk about, you know, the issue of the day that's happening in energy, you know, like whether or not nuclear is good or bad, we take it that nuclear is good, we should build nuclear.

How do we get there? And what is it going to look like in ten, 20 years, and what are the costs associated? Both literally cost, but maybe the policy costs as well of not getting us there. And so one thing that we're actually doing as an example of this is there's some some research out there. It's a little experimental, but there's a company that's already doing this, and they're starting the pilot programs to turn us, they have the ability turn zombie wells and old oil wells into closed loop geothermal systems.

And, it's super, super new. The main prohibitive right now is cost, the CapEx. It doesn't really make a lot of sense right now. But like with anything, cost is is only a temporary prohibitive. You know, you look at computers and like, they're, you know, when they were first coming out, I mean, it was like five, ten grand for a computer, and you got the best when you went, like, 300 bucks.

You know, as the technology improves, things usually get cheaper. And so we approach that, things like that from a, you know, it's going to come in eight, ten years. Who cares? Why not build the policy framework for it now? So when it does come, not only is it easy, but it can expand rapidly and so with that particular one, you know, we're we're still working on a white paper.

Right. But how do you turn the zombie wells and West Texas into these closed loop geothermal systems? They don't produce a ton of energy, but there's about eight. No, there's 9000 now. 9000 zombie wells in West Texas. Even if you can only get 2000 of those to produce a little bit of energy, you're adding a pretty significant amount of baseload energy to the grid.

You're not going to make a ton of money off of it. But again, the idea shouldn't. I think sometimes when we say driving private capital for public good, that means taking a step back and saying it's okay if something doesn't make ten 1520 x the profit. Even if it means, hey, do we support this just a little bit?

So that way we can get off the ground running? I think that sometimes gets lost and that we always look at things from a dollars and cents and, you know, what's the return now? And good things take time, I think is the long and short of it.

A lot of our listeners are, startup founders and business owners, as well as on the policy side.

So I'm sure they'd be curious to know just kind of the process it took you from the idea, you know, talking to your board members at the bar, really to, you know, reality. So what did those months look like?

I think the, the main idea was it's it's always, you know, what's your what's our mission? You know, not like the mission vision statement, but like, what are we trying to do?

And you do your Swot analysis, you know, like who actually exists right now. How what are they doing. Good. What are they what can be improved. Where do the opportunities.

And I think we landed on three things. You know we wanted to produce white papers and research. We wanted to do training for both the private sector and the public sector.

One of the things I did, actually, the chief is I had a lot of newer chiefs would always come to me and ask me for advice. And I think the there's a not to sound, you know, woe is me. But, you know, there's not really a training manual for how to be a chief. There's not a training manual, even necessarily how to be, to work for a member.

And so, you know, you have to build those, those mentorship rails. And I was, really thankful that I both participated in a mentorship program by another chief where I got to help other chiefs. And then I also just had friends that come from up to come. For me. I cannot tell you how many times I had met chiefs from other members, both Democrats and Republicans, coming to my office break down in tears.

They were like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. My boss is frustrated. I'm frustrated. I feel so lost. You know, trying to balance the, you know, making sure I'm getting my boss what he needs and, oh, my gosh, there's a person crying in my office, and, you know, I think that I, seeing that I see an opportunity to go, I don't ever want another person to have to go through what they went through, or even when I went through, that's the second thing.

And then I think the third thing is also hosting events that are worthwhile. I think there's too many events in politics across too many, whether it's a think tank, whether it's a, you know, a caucus, whether it's a, whatever it is, everyone gets together. Yeah, one keynote speaker up there, maybe panel, you get serve some rubber chicken that's maybe too hot or too cold.

Green beans, if you're lucky. And you walk away not knowing what the hell to do. There's no call to action. There's no nothing. It's. Everything's hunky dory. Everything's fine. Just business as usual. And it's not to say things are bad, but I think complacency is the worst thing that can happen to society. Because when you become complacent, you ignore real problems.

And then I think sometimes you ignore those problems. You. It's harder to swallow your pride. And so, those are really the three things that we looked at, we sat at and we said, these are what we want to do. These are the opportunities that we're seeing. And then it became a okay, now that's what we want to do.

How do we move on then? And from there, we developed the areas, issue areas that we wanted to do. We figured out who we wanted to be involved, and I did, I did some searching to figure out who I wanted on my board, and I picked who I thought I trusted enough to be nonpartizan trusted enough to be subject matter experts interested enough to actually believe in the mission, what we're doing.

And, I'm very thankful to have a board that's that's just as active as I am. So it's nice. It's it's a blessing, to say the least. That's awesome.

You've mentioned, you know, ways people can have private capital for public good. Do you have any, like, real world examples or kind of you said no call to action.

Is there a call to action you would give to people who say, hey, I want to help. This is something that really interests me, like, how can I put my dollars into helping this mission?

Sure. So I think the, the, I'll give you two answers to that. So an example of how private capital can build public good.

You, when you look at the internet, right. The internet started as mostly a government funded project, and now it is mostly owned by the private sector. Right. But that's an example of, I think, a public private partnership that works. And I'll actually give, another example here.

It's going to sound weird for, for my friends, they're Democrats.

But I think one thing that President Trump is getting criticized for a lot of, I think it's actually a pretty good thing, is his stake in Intel that he's taking, you know, the 10%. I think that's that's great. If the public dollars fund a private service, I don't think it's it's and it's a significant amount. I'm not talking like little teeny, you know, like the $100,000 grants and stuff like that that people get.

Yeah. For the United States, billions of dollars in research. I don't think it's that bad. If we say, hey, you know, we'd like to see some of that back as revenue to help fund certain programs. You know, that's not a bad thing. But it's so funny because that's an example of something where, I've noticed there's like a condemnation almost from, you know, the typical, I would say the there's always going to be the Democrats that anything you know, Trump does is just bad, just wrong.

It doesn't matter. You know, I don't listen to them. There's also the Republicans that, any time the government, you know, either proposes a new tax, either does anything that's not 100% free market, no government. Bad. And at some point, I think people have to take a step back and realize that we're not, funding things in nearly the way that we shared, both at the federal state, at the state level.

And that's driving up a lot of the costs at the local level, and why we're seeing some of those costs to skyrocket. I mean, you when you look at the city of Austin, you know, we have what I think is like a 25% tax increase or something like that. It's pretty significant. But I guarantee you a lot of the same people that are criticizing that 25% increase aren't listening to the concerns raised by the city council.

They're saying we're losing money from the federal level or losing money from the state level, and we're trying to increase our funding to accommodate the growing population, because the idea that you can just freeze your budget and have more people move in and still have the same infrastructure doesn't make sense. But, you know, a building that there's billions of dollars in private capital and a lot of them want that direction.

On how to help people. I think that people are inherently good. I don't I don't buy into the idea that people are inherently evil. And, you know, I think even when you look at the lobby, it's it's a perfect example of this. There is I think, just the session, it was like $800 million spent on lobbying and taxes.

Of that, only 100,000 that was taxpayer funded. The rest of it was all private. Right. You know, and that's an example of private capital trying to go into the public good. You know, we have you can think of, of the, whether what side you're on, if you think the session was the worst of the worst or if you think was the best of the best, the issues, they're normally talking about aren't about companies.

It's all social, cultural issues. And, you know, you think about how much of that 700 million of 800 million went to those cultural issues. It's really not that much. Most of it went to the things that we don't see the infrastructure funding, the tech funding, the water funding. And that's a big one. Those issues, they're not sexy.

No one wants to hear about desalinated water, you know, for two hours. Nobody wants to hear about the struggles of how do you upskill your oil and gas rig workers to fit in with the next generation of tech that's coming up? They'll criticize it and they'll say, why aren't we doing things better? But there has to be a vehicle and a mechanism to communicate those things.

So I love your outlook on lobbyists and lobbying. Right. Like, I definitely think most of our customers are lobbyists. And so they everyone gets a bad rep, right? Like when I was in DC, I had someone once introduce himself. They went, oh, I'm an evil lobbyist. And I like, laughed because I was like, what? What is this reputation?

But yeah, most of it is going, yeah, for the corporate kind of overall good. And I think the, the difference that I see is building for the these public private partnerships, I think there's a difference between a vendor bill, which I'm not a fan of, and building frameworks for a good competitive private market,

you know, and I think sometimes those two thing, it's easy to get them conflated.

But, you know, I mean, I've seen vendor bills in action. Those things are awful, you know, and we shouldn't support them. But any time and I and I think this is it's starting to rise now both on the, the further right and among, Democrats a little bit more now. But when you look at things like, I'll use Jedi agreements, that was like the big thing last session.

HB five Tidehunter. You know, I think that is chapter three and three and through 312 agreements were expiring. And, you know, we had to get this new framework. And that debate was, I mean, hours long and we I don't think they had the votes for it at first. And so it took a lot of, a lot of horse trading and deal making.

But, you know,

the I remember the criticism at the time was do you share what the bill was, HB five. What what it did. Oh I'm sorry. Sorry. Yeah. It's okay. So HP five essentially, it creates these I forget the what they stand for, but it's basically energy, energy and tech agreement to say, hey, if you're going to come into our community, that's fine.

You have to invest this amount of money, you have to create this amount of jobs. And in return, we'll give you, you know, these incentives, right?

The thing that I heard all the time and it's just not true, no matter what you look at, is. Well, you know, we're going to give all this money out, and we're not actually going to see the return back.

There is no data that I've seen that actually says that. And that's one of those things that's that's a feeling. Right? And sometimes it's hard to put our feelings back and look at the data. Here we are, two years later. You look at it, 160,000 jobs have been created, through all of our economic development, agreements.

I think it's something like $200 billion in infrastructure has been invested by these companies. And there's actually been a net positive of of whether it's tax revenue, or revenue that the companies have given the state through these agreements of like over $2 billion. But, you know, that is an example when you build these incentive programs that work, they can actually help people.

And I think the issue is we're always so worried about, well, what about the few that are out of compliance? You know, what if they take the money and we never get it back, we'll claw the money back then. You know, just because two people out of compliance doesn't mean you make the other 98, you know, lose their benefits.

That doesn't make any sense. And I think there's just this fear of of big capital, now capital in the corporate space. And, just because things are getting more expensive and people are looking for that, the enemy, I guess, you know,

it is sad that it is it is demonized and money is talked about in such a in a negative light.

I would say by many, not by everybody, by any means. It was I think it was at the center for Effective Altruism that did the research, that to actually be the most altruistic in the most, of like kind of give the most back is actually to make the most amount of money you could humanly possibly make and then use that for good.

Yeah. Like that would be actually be the better thing than you want individual going and donating your time to help, you know, kids that are at a charity now, that's not a terrible thing to do. The great thing to do. Love that. But use of time. What if you went and spent that making huge amount of money that you could then put back in the community and do something amazing?

What? That's a really cool way to look at it. Yeah, that's kind of how I look at, you know, making and growing wealth and doing that is like what I can do with it is going to be so great.

And that's so crucial because I think the thing is, is and I think sometimes people lose the forest for the trees, you know?

But it doesn't really matter what you talk about. I think most issues can boil down to lack of funding. You know, you think about the homelessness issue here in Austin. I mean, a lot of it has to do with lack of mental health funding. A lot of it has to do with lack of funding for the support services.

You know, I think that we all know that there's needs to be an analogy where it was like, you could go into a room and ask people who wants to volunteer their time to help, something everyone's hand would, you know, maybe have them, you know, raise it. And then it's, you know, you those same people. All right. Now, the people who have their hands raised, who wants to get five bucks while the hands go down, you know, and it's it's at some point whether that's through taxes, whether that's through the private, you know, private capital investing, you will have to understand when he has to leave that pockets it, because if you just hold

on to it, you just I mean, I'll just say, if you just hoard the wealth, you know, what's the point of having all that money if the infrastructure around you is crumbling? What's the point of having all of that if nothing is being done? You know, and I think that's gets lost. A lot of these conversations, you know, especially now at the capital where I don't think people understand how big the numbers get sometimes.

And so it's really hard to grasp, you know, you think about $1 billion, and people go, oh, you know that I've heard some staff say this where they're like, oh, you know, it's just 20 million. It's just 50 million.

And I'm like, that's a lot of money, you know, or someone call it budget does. I mean, that's insane to me, which is wild.

And I'm like, I what? I've always approached it, and I think sometimes a lot of Democrats will like, look at me and they'll be like, okay, Gavin, like, you're being a little like you're being funny when you say this, but I look at every dollar that the state government takes. I think, you know, we have to make sure that when we spend even a dollar, that's a better use of their money than that individual person would spend.

And if it's not, then why the hell do we take a dollar? And I think that drives a lot of the sentiment, too. We see with taxation. I don't think people don't mind paying taxes. I think the reason they hate paying taxes is because they don't see the value and the benefits that happens when they do pay their taxes.

So, you know, like, now that I'm here, I have my own business and a, my own thinktank, as I'm doing my, payroll, I'm like, I'm looking at the tax and I'm like, what the hell is this? You know, like, this is awful, you know, is your perspective, and money stuff and, you know, and but the reason I'm saying that is I'm thinking, okay, well, I'm spending this much in taxes that doesn't even include health insurance.

It doesn't even include the foreign. Okay, that doesn't even include these things. So what how is my taxes going to. Because I'm sure as hell not seeing the benefits right now. At least tangibly explained. You know, thankfully, like, I still have student loans, so thankfully, like, I'm seeing that with a low interest rate on my student loans, I can see that.

But I think it's harder sometimes for us to grasp the benefit which creates that sort of anti-tax sentiment. Which a good example in suburban cities you look at like a McKinney or, you know, any, any the DFW suburbs or Houston suburbs, you don't really hear a ton of anti-tax sentiment because the taxes are either low enough that it's affordable.

It's usually from the schools. Right. The schools are the ones in the suburbs that are raising taxes to account for the growth in population. But the cities, I mean, they try to keep them as low as possible. And you see the direct benefit, the return on that, you know, you have a nice infrastructure, you know, greenery everywhere.

Maybe you have a nice police system, a nice fire station just got built. You're seeing the benefits of your tax dollars built, which is why, you know, we see these crazy bonds pass that are like $1 billion bonds in a town of like 100,000 people or something like that. I think it's harder, though, you know, when you talk about taxes not seeing the value.

So I forgot how we got on that. But no, that makes so much sense. Because my grandma lives in Plano and that obviously everywhere in north of that, that used to be farmland is now, like, beautiful, manicured, you know, very affordable, beautiful homes and amenities. And, that can make sense. And then if you're in maybe, part of the city that the roads are terrible and you're like, where are my taxes going?

You're not getting the value. So I totally see or, you know, but I mean, but there's another thing that does not get talked about. We actually highlighted this in our annual report. People love talking about schools are the biggest driver of our taxes. You know, they're the ones they're making the largest increases. And that may be true and the dollar amount, but it's not true on the percent amount.

The percent amount the special districts have actually raised the most. And that's going to be like your MUDs, your MDS, your turf zones, things like that, where again, most people don't understand there's maybe 10,000 people, in the state of Texas that understand what the hell a ters district is. You know, but those districts are the ones raising money.

And, you know, not not to get political, but, I think that there does need to have a conversation about what we're doing with these MUDs, with these MDS, with these ters, because they are extracting value from business owners, mostly from homeowners sometimes. And there is a lot of conversations where it's not the local community like they're promised, but a company comes in and actually manages those.

And then it's taking all that money. And if it's if it's a for profit company coming in and taking in those tax dollars, they're going to approach it, running that ters district, that MD, like any other business, how do I increase revenue? How do I increase profit while keeping my expenses low? And I don't think that's the purpose of those districts.

The purpose is, is building infrastructure and getting infrastructure in correctly. But again boring tax conversation, not the point.

Well, jumping into another subject that's big on, you know, what you do is I, in tech policy. So I know you just released the AI white paper. Yeah. Tell us more about that. Yeah.

So, going back to kind of what we're just talking about.

Well, praise people really? Well, I think that one thing the Governor Abbott is doing really, really well is his friendliness towards tech AI policy in general. And I think even the legislature, again, one of the last areas, in our state government that's not politicized yet. So we we just passed a sort of omnibus. I, Bill, chairman, we own passed it and, it essentially creates guardrails for what both the state government and companies can and can't do.

And our white paper covers a lot of, you know, if you're a founder and you're like, you live in Texas, or maybe you're planning on deploying something in Texas and you're like, I don't have time to read every single AI policy, but I just sort of want the high level, what's going on? It's perfect for you.

Tells you what, generally what you can and can't do. Like an example. You know, the the government can't train on biometric data. Period. The law is a little more loosey goosey when it comes to what private companies can and can't do.

I'm personally on the end of I don't think companies should be able to do that unless they get your, like, explicit consent.

Consent? That's it, that's it. But, you know, right now, as far as I'm aware, a company can come in and they can train on biometric data. Easy, no questions asked. And there's nothing against the law about that.

Et with AV policies, autonomous vehicles there. We have a great framework and it just need to be improved a little bit.

I think there is a sort of a loophole that it just happens sometimes. But you could, essentially deploy an autonomous vehicle without having to let any authority know. And so that's what Tesla did as an example. They didn't they don't like the Austin City Council. Now they just deployed robot taxis, start testing them, which obviously created an uproar.

And so now as of Monday, if you watch any autonomous vehicle, you have to weigh, tech stock. Now and then tech start has certain standards that they can use to revoke or grant you a license, but they actually have a map.

This is a really cool thing. They have a map on their website where you can see the autonomous vehicles moving on the road.

No way. And you can see it live. You can see the autonomous trucks moving. That's so cool on tech. Start watching it. Yeah,

it's super, super, super cool. And I think I think they just pull samples though because like they're there I saw like five Waymo's on the map. I'm like there's like 500.

There's a million of them.

Yeah, yeah.

There's no way there's 500. Are just five. So I think it's just pull samples, but you can see that moving, on the map and it tells you what companies they are, what their route is. And that's the other interesting thing is they have to define an area of operation. So you can't have like a trucking company being like, yeah, we're just going to operate all over the state.

You got to go point A to point B, like there's not a, there's not a we're going to go from Dallas to El Paso to Austin, Houston, back to Dallas. I don't know the the intricate of how that process works, but I just know that they do have to register. That's another example. There's a lot of stuff.

And I think Texas is leading with this, and we caught this ahead of time actually, last year, too, with deepfakes is, sexually explicit content. There's criminal penalties associated with that. We made sure that you can't have an AI model create anything with children, which is fantastic. So, guys, some states are not I don't know if it's an intentional or unintentional.

I'm hoping it's unintentional, but they're leaving out the children aspect of it

and it's scary. It's going to cause a lot of problems in schools with bullying. Oh, you have that. Like we didn't have this tech when we were in high school and then gone like this here. I thought I had it bad because Snapchat was big and I thought like, oh my God, there's no way you get worse.

But it is like some of this stuff. I mean, I was showing my girlfriend that I just for, you know, shits and giggles. I was like, oh, let me show you how advanced this stuff is. Pulled a video of Speaker Burrows on the dias, and, and it would never post it, but it's him basically going.

I endorsed Democrats, and I'm switching parties from Republican to be Democrat. And like all of it, take is just a little bit of video editing and it would look legit, you know, but you think about both the criminal aspect of that with like, you know, children and stuff. I mean, it is abhorrent. Thankfully, Texas is ahead of the curve.

I made it very clear you cannot do anything, with children, in your I model Texas. And I think though, you know, I try not to wade into culture issues too much, but I think one thing that that does bug me a little bit is people are absolving a lot of their responsibilities as parents to the government and a lot of stuff.

And I think as an example, you know, like, I know you worked on the, like, the age verification like that, you know, and I had a lot of people. Right. Gavin, this bill is awful. I hate it. And I was like, I don't think it's that bad, actually, you know, makes sense for what we're trying to do.

But it can't stop there. And I think more strip clubs. Okay. Right. Exactly.

One can go into a strip club without showing an ID. Exactly. Right. And this was actually the bill that I was thinking of, about being nonpartisan. It was unanimously nonpartisan. Lee. Absolutely approved. Right. So, but there's been some pushback on, like, freedom of speech angle.

Like when you're under 18, you don't have it. And this is kind of where you have to consent. Right? This is kind of where I think there's so many parents who are super involved and doing their job as parents. But then the pushback I would give you is just there's only parents who don't know. Yeah, right.

And like, you want to safeguard those kids so that it's not disproportionately affecting those who just have parents who really care and are really involved. I every parent

and I think that's the thing is there has to and I think about when I was growing up in, in and you might have the same experience, I felt like there was a lot of education in general about kids being online or things like that.

And I think something that doesn't get talked about enough and I it's because it's maybe a little bit harder to talk about organically. But when I was growing up, there was online spaces for kids like. And then there is the stuff for kids that were under, like ten and there's the stuff for tweens. And then there was like the adult stuff, you know?

But now it's there's nothing in between. It's either stuff for like toddlers and then you're immediately thrown into the adult stuff, you know, like Roblox is the game that all the kids, kids love. But Roblox has been around since I was in, like, middle school. It's not a new game at all, but when I was playing Roblox as like, you know, little middle school Gavin, it was just kids.

They made it was a is meant for kids. It was meant like the graphics, the everything was meant for kids. No predators on there. Now you have predators now. Now there's a very clear appeal to people with money, to people. How do we get these adults in there and play these games as well? Because they have money to spend.

And I think that sometimes when you have those, you have those lack of spaces, there's a it's kind of like what you said. There's the okay, well, now the only alternative is we kind of have to hate this because

we don't want kids on these websites where, you know, especially Twitter like it is. It's it's it's bad.

I yeah, it's, you can get a lot of crazy stuff on Twitter. It's not really doesn't seem censored. And I going to what you said I agree. Like in when I was in high school we had, you know, a desktop computer and if I was messaging someone from school or someone, my mom was there watching me mess, like she was there for the hour that I was allowed to communicate or message someone like, every time she was in the room.

So. And now let's just not have it. Yeah, it and it's I think it's really unfortunate too. And I don't know, I think it's, it's symptomatic of a larger cultural thing that the United States has to figure out, because I don't think this is unique to Texas, but even think about the media that people are consuming. There is I was looking at a study, I forget what the name of it, but essentially it looked at what is the media that kids are consuming now.

And a decade ago, it was there was again, this sort of gradual tiers. There was, you know, you'd watch the, you know, Paw patrol at this age, then you'd maybe graduate, you know, like SpongeBob and then, you know, their baby boomer, the sort of young adult cartoons. And then you'd get into the adult stuff middle school kids now are going from, like, yeah, using the patrol thing like Paw Patrol to Love Island at 12.

Yeah. And it's and it's and you're right. And you know, and I think that the, the also the thing that is sort of become the easy thing to do is use children as a defense on both sides. And it is the, you know, think of the children, think of the think of the women, think of this. And it's like it is such a cop out to do, to just throw people up like that, as if they're monoliths and thinking about things in a really critical way of what are we doing and how does this actually impact people?

Is going back to, again, to what we're trying to do, have those really difficult, nuanced conversations in a respectful way, where I think we all agree most part on what the issue is. We just may disagree on what the solution is. But I think sometimes about these debates and arguments on the the floor and stuff like that, and it's the immediate accusations left and right and it's exhausting and not productive.

But anyway, so, you know, that's an example of, you know, going back to the I, I policies, you know, we also dispel a lot of myths and things like that. And, one of the big ones is about data centers. Everyone loves being an expert in data centers. Now. Everyone loves knowing everything.

There's like,

thanks for

for teaching everyone.

Oh, you know, and I think, I know a lot of the data center guys that actually operate these data centers. And, for context, there's about five different types of data centers. So it's not just one, one data center, period. And our white paper, we use the hyperscale data center, which is like it's the behemoth.

It's the stuff that like a Facebook would build. It's like usually million square feet. They consume a ton of energy. But, you know, that's the ones that are giant and use the most resources. Well, I was like, do they actually use a lot of energy? Do they actually use a lot of water? I hear, and I'm reading all these articles all the time saying they are, but are they actually and so just like I would expect any other, you know, person to do start out with my thesis, which was I don't think they use as much water, but I do think they use a good amount of energy.

Let me dive back into, dive in. And so the first thing I did was I, try to find out how much energy and water do these data centers use. And surprise, surprise, there's not a lot of not a lot of data. Not a lot of data on the data centers. And so I had to I found through, like, hours of searching this group that only does water, water infrastructure for data center companies.

And they have this aggregated report that I don't think it's supposed to be public, but it's hosted on WordPress. And, you know, sometimes those WordPress attachments get caught up in, in search filters. So I found this PDF that's it's talking about all this research they did and essentially found, a good starting point for what their average data center, hyperscale data center produces in terms of energy.

How power efficient are they and the water usage. And so I basically said, all right, well, I'm going to take those because that's all I can do is so the only publicly available data I have and apply that to the standards that we have in Texas. The thing that I think is really interesting about that, though, is also the methodology of of how data centers operate, because it's also clear people don't understand how they work.

I think they assume that water comes in and it just disappears like it never and never goes anywhere. The reality is, most of these data centers use a closed loop system. And, you know, I'm a big gamer. I have a PC, and so I have a close, closed loop water cooling system in my PC, too. It's the same concept, a little different on a larger scale, but it's the same concept.

So when the water comes in, they recycle it. It's not like it's it's just getting pumped in and out.

But that's a misconception for sure, because I have heard a lot of people argue that, like, oh, this is such a waste of water and what it needs to just, you know, type one character. But yes, it does need the water, but it's looped, it's looped and recycled.

And it's also I think the, the other sort of myth that I'll push back on is that it's always using fresh water. When you talk to a lot of the companies, it's not like they just stick a pump in the ground and they just start pumping out water. Yeah, they have to buy the water.

And they usually buy it from these big, municipal districts, and it's cheaper normally Dubai dirty gray water than it is to buy fresh water.

And if you are using fresh water, normally, it's actually for humidity control, not cooling. A lot of people don't know this, but you can't have your servers, too dry to dry. It actually creates static electricity. So you actually need a little bit of humidity in there to help dissipate some of that electricity. But going back to the numbers, you know, the average day, and, and I can't remember the exact water usage, but, the electricity usage is insane.

Like, and, I mean, it is scary. Yeah. There's tech. This is only has about 400 data centers. And there's only 700 hyperscale data centers in the world. I don't know how many in Texas are hyperscale, but one hyperscale data center in Texas uses 0.2% of our grid's energy. That's an issue that that is bad.

That there needs to be some incentive and alignment there where, in something I've thought about proposing is, you know, we as a state will we as a state will give you X amount of dollars to build your own generation for your data center. So that way you're not using the strain on the grid. The agreement that we'll do though is you have to sell the whatever excess energy you have back to the state, you know, to pay off the loan or whatever it might be.

So that way, you know, again, it's incentive alignment. You know, now, as a data center, I have an incentive to build my own power station. I may be getting this low cost, low interest loan from the state where I can build that. The agreement is I just have to pay them back. Why would I not take that and X amount of time it's going to pay itself back.

But I think, you know SB six by Senator Phil King. It's a fantastic bill. I think he does a lot of really good stuff. It ensures that at the long short of it is it ensures that, I think 75, 75, 75 megawatt hour gigawatt I I'm freaking out somewhere. I think it's gigawatt. Those facilities in cases of emergency can be disconnected from the grid.

Which going back to 2021, you know, seeing off the grid strain coming up in one time. I mean, I remember it was like, hold off for a minute so we can get, you know, just because power is on that does not mean start doing your laundry, turn on your dishwasher. You know, all those, energy intensive things.

Just hold on a second. I think it's the same kind of concept. Secondly, know on the water. Again, going back to the enumerate conversation, people don't understand how big numbers are. Texas is expected by 2030 to use 9 trillion gallons of water a year. Of that 9 trillion, or, I'm sorry, 6 trillion, 6 trillion gallons of water a year of that, 51% goes to agriculture.

And it's not the agriculture I think people think it is either. It's usually like alfalfa in the desert. It's, you know, like, why are we going, hey, in areas that have drought like conditions, it's not the the it's not the data centers coming in and draining water. On top of that, when you talk to any big water, even the water down the board or, you know, the association, water companies, whoever might be any person that knows water will tell you the biggest loss of water in the state is actually pipes.

We lose millions of gallons to pipes every year. It's whether they're leaky. Maybe they're old, but it is a real problem that, you know, when you talk about water policy, those two things alone, I mean, would save us millions, if not potentially billions in a decade. When you look at data centers in these hyperscale data centers, they use 0.002% of water.

Not even close to that aren't there. It's every single data center in Texas, which there not was a hyperscale data center. All of them combined would only use 0.79% of Texas is water that's in use. That's not available water that's the expected water usage. We have way more water available than that. I mean, way more. But the thing I have to say to be careful about is just because we have all that water doesn't mean you go and build your data center wherever the hell you want, because some parts of the state have more water in others.

So, you know, North Texas and northeast Texas, a ton of water, a lot of water. Makes more sense to build data centers there. I don't think it's responsible to build a data center in places like, you know, San Antonio, where they're under pretty big drought conditions. Right now. It's, you know, residents are under, you know, water usage warnings.

And I think it can't be responsible to build those data centers in areas like that. But again, they're not going to be the big contributors. So those two things combined, you know, we use those data centers, use a hell of a lot more energy than I think people understand, but so much less water than people use. And, the little fun thing that I did was I found research that figured out how much water energy use a ChatGPT query uses.

So yeah. And so I scaled it. I heard I scale it down, scaled it up to give an idea of how much, you know, like one, one query uses, how much you would need to be the equivalent of, like, a shower, the equivalent, you know, all these things and long short of it is your one queries is not going to do nothing.

Even if there's like 100,000 a day in Texas, it's still probably I can do much. It's for the older, less efficient models with 7.7.5 nine milliliters for every, query you send, you need, like, something like 500 to get to, like, a gallon of water. Which is like. And again, that's not why that just disappears.

That's the, the cooling usage of it. Yeah. So this water's already circulating. It's already flowing. It's not like you're pulling it out of anywhere.

There's just not I don't think that there's really a better way to measure it right now. So that's why we have to to use it like that. That makes me feel better. Yeah. What makes you feel so much?

Yeah, I don't I don't feel I feel bad I usage, so that's really good. Don't feel bad about it at all. Well we covered a ton today. Yeah. And thank you so much. You I've definitely learned a ton as well. So I'm excited to read more of your white papers as they come out. And do you have some I know you have some events coming up if you want to do some plug, share how people actually find out about them and what you're doing.

Sure.

So we actually we're doing our launch event on October 3rd. It's super exciting. As far as I'm aware, it's the only event of its kind where we're taking both a public sector and a part of the private sector that I don't think has been tapped yet. There's going to be a lot of tech, sort of tech founders there.

There's going to be a lot of venture capital folks there. Private equity. But we're also, we currently have the PC chairman, Thomas Gleason, is going to be there. It's talking about

some of, again, energy water usage stuff. We've confirmed, vice chair Senator Garcia Hernandez. She's going to talk a little bit about federal state relations. You know, how that money actually comes from the federal government down to the state government?

We have a moderator as well, Richard Saleen, who, his whole thing is energy, water infrastructure. And how do we create a more resilient future? He's going to be moderating one of the panels, and we have some guests that we're working with, their schedules, trying to figure out where they can come. But, you know, we we're expecting to have a few federal lawmakers and a couple of state lawmakers there as well.

That's on October 3rd here in Austin. That will be from 11:00 Am to about 1:30 p.m.. It's also day one of ACL,

so it's a good excuse to get out of work to go to a. Yeah, you got to go to a work event and then you can just leave our event, go to ACL. No.

But you know tickets they're starting at pretty cheap 25 bucks, for general admission, 125 for VIP. And, I mean, it's it's just a good time. It's not going to be like, you know, we were talking about earlier, there's events where you walk away with nothing. We're sending out an after action report talking about things that the private sector can do better to help public policy with the public.

Policymakers need to do better to help the private sector. So that'll be exciting. Very exciting. Yeah, I'm excited to come. And, how can people find you, your website, follow you.

So if you get a text cap.org, which, by the way, I'm surprised that was available. I thought tax cap like Texas Capital would have been, you know, taken.

It wasn't, but you get a text cap that org that is our website. That's where we host all of our, our research, our white papers, blog post,

interview, whatever it might be. You sign up for our email list, I'm very careful and consider about

how many emails we send out. So I'm not blowing people up.

Yeah. We usually only notify people whenever we have new research, whether it's events, things like that. Or, you know, you follow us on Twitter. It's tax cap policy, all platforms, not just Twitter I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate it. Thank you.

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