“A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe,’” the great French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand is supposed to have said. “A diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no,’ and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.” Whether Talleyrand actually said it hardly matters. The spirit is right: Diplomacy, like politics, is the art of the possible.

Put another way, diplomacy is the art of getting what you want without needlessly making it impossible for the other side to give it to you.

For the first time in decades, an American secretary of state has a plausible path to the pantheon.

By that standard, the United States has produced few truly great diplomatic tenures in the past half-century. There have been capable secretaries of state and important agreements, but remarkably few achievements with the durability of the great settlements of earlier eras.

Madeleine Albright’s tenure remains inseparable from NATO expansion and the deterioration of relations with post-Soviet Russia. Colin Powell’s is shadowed by his 2003 presentation at the United Nations and the Iraq War. Condoleezza Rice brought competence, but no settlement that transformed America’s strategic position.

Hillary Clinton’s much-advertised “reset” with Russia aged badly. John Kerry helped produce the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Iran nuclear deal, both of which were abandoned by the first Trump administration. Rex Tillerson never found his footing. Mike Pompeo was more effective, but his major diplomatic projects did not fundamentally reorder America’s position abroad.

Antony Blinken helped oversee AUKUS with Britain and Australia, an important strategic arrangement, though more an extension and deepening of existing alignments than a new diplomatic architecture.

America’s earlier history offers a much higher bar. Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, William Seward, Hamilton Fish, John Hay, George Marshall, George Kennan, and Henry Kissinger helped shape American diplomacy in ways that outlasted the administrations they served.

Their work changed not merely the headlines of the day but America’s long-term position in the world.

A few years ago, almost no one would have guessed that Marco Rubio might be the next American diplomat with a plausible claim to join that company.

When Trump nominated Rubio for secretary of state, commentators wondered whether he would moderate the president’s more unpredictable foreign-policy instincts. Old Republican voices, sidelined after Trump’s rise, and left-leaning academics alike expected friction between Trump and a man long identified with the GOP’s interventionist wing.

That prediction has not held up.

RELATED: Trump is continuing JFK’s war on communist subversion

The senator Trump mocked became his best diplomat Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images

On his second day in office, Rubio told State Department personnel that their mission was to ensure American foreign policy remained centered on the national interest: whatever makes the country “stronger, safer, and more prosperous.”

He added that conflict would sometimes be unavoidable, but never at the expense of national security, the national interest, or America’s core values.

The language signaled a break from the old habit of treating international approval as an end in itself.

That shift can be dismissed as political adaptation. It is also evidence that Rubio has absorbed something larger: The pre-Trump Republican foreign policy consensus is gone, and a new one is being built in its place.

At the Munich Security Conference this year, Rubio delivered a broadside against unfettered free trade, deindustrialization, mass migration, and an international order detached from the interests and identities of the nations expected to sustain it.

He also spoke explicitly about the shared language, religion, culture, and ancestry connecting Europe and America — language difficult to imagine from a secretary of state only a few years ago.

The record is becoming more substantial.

In 2025, Rubio played an important role as NATO members agreed to a new 5% defense spending commitment by 2035. He has kept open the possibility of negotiations with Iran, even amid anger from some Israelis over the administration’s approach.

He has repeatedly pursued efforts to bring Ukraine and Russia toward negotiations after years in which diplomacy between the two sides largely stagnated.

And on Venezuela, Rubio has been credited as a central figure in the administration’s campaign against Nicolás Maduro, a dramatic reversal in U.S.-Venezuela relations.

On Cuba, Rubio has paired pressure with calls for political change and dialogue, while also speaking directly to the Cuban people.

Rubio has therefore become something unusual: a secretary of state who is not merely influential inside the administration but increasingly visible to the public.

In 2026, he has at times seemed to eclipse nearly every other Cabinet official in political stature. His popularity among Republican voters is especially striking for a secretary of state, an office that usually produces prestige without a mass constituency.

Barely 18 months into his tenure, that does not yet make Rubio a great secretary of state. It does make the possibility serious.

RELATED: Gen Z is reopening America’s cold cases

Bettmann/CORBIS/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

The unanswered questions are enormous: Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Ukraine, North Korea, and the Ortega regime’s recent actions in Nicaragua could all complicate or diminish his record.

Durability is the test. A diplomatic achievement that vanishes with the next administration is not much of an achievement at all.

But Rubio has already helped push NATO toward higher defense commitments, pursued talks over Ukraine, increased pressure on Cuba and Venezuela, and strengthened Washington’s effort to counter Chinese influence around the Panama Canal.

If those gains endure — and if he can turn today’s openings into settlements that survive Trump — Rubio’s legacy will look very different from that of the secretaries of state who preceded him.

The pantheon is not his yet. But for the first time in decades, an American secretary of state has a plausible path to it.

And why stop there?

​Donald trump, Marco rubio, National interest, Opinion & analysis, State department, Foreign policy, America first, Diplomacy, Statesman 

For years, influencer Nara Smith has been celebrated online as the glamorous face of the “tradwife” movement, attracting millions of followers with videos showcasing homemade meals, family life, and domestic routines.

However, during a recent appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” Smith pushed back, insisting she never saw herself as a traditional homemaker.

And BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey isn’t buying it.

Stuckey points out that Smith went “on a podcast that is so opposed to the values” that she displays and trashed “the category” that she makes her living embodying.

“For her to be like, ‘No, I’m a boss babe,’ and ‘how dare you categorize me as this.’ This is the trend and the category that has made you what you are, Nara Smith,” Stuckey says. “And for you to go on this degrading sex podcast and trash that, I don’t like it.”

In a clip from her appearance on the podcast, Smith tells host Alex Cooper that she was used “as the poster child for the tradwife movement,” which she found “very bizarre.”

“I don’t prioritize being a homemaker. I’m a working mom,” she said.

“Do I love cooking because it’s my passion and because I kind of have to do it given my autoimmune? Absolutely. But that’s a passion of mine. It’s a hobby,” she continued. “It’s not something that I need to be doing.”

“Primary caregiver for my kids? No. My husband and I split it 50/50.”

“I don’t think a tradwife would be cooking in like Schiaparelli, you know, or a Moschino look straight off the runway. Like, I don’t think that’s what a tradewife would do,” she added.

“I just think that this is gaslighting,” Stuckey comments.

“I think that she knew very well exactly the trend that she was capitalizing on, and now that we have books like ‘Yesteryear’ saying that this is problematic, she’s like, ‘No, no, no, what? That was never me,’” she continues.

“Maybe you didn’t mean for it to be, or maybe you now don’t want it to be, but that is what you were doing, and that is what you were playing upon,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Call her daddy, Influencer, Allie beth stuckey, Nara smith, Tradwife, Yesteryear, Alex cooper, Blazetv show 

A 50-foot bronze statue of the pagan god Prometheus is rising out of the Texas dirt near SpaceX’s Starbase, holding a torch over the launch site that is supposed to carry mankind toward the stars. The symbolism is not exactly subtle.

Prometheus, the Greek Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, has long represented man’s acquisition of knowledge and technological power. The French classical foundry Atelier Missor, which is behind the project, says the completed statue will stand at Starbase “holding high the torch of the West.” The statue is apparently not a SpaceX commission or some monument Elon Musk ordered for himself. Atelier Missor reportedly financed the project itself and is assembling it on private land near Starbase as a tribute to technological progress.

It is tempting to love the whole thing. After decades of public art that seems deliberately designed to be ugly, alienating, or incomprehensible, here are artists building an enormous, muscular figure from classical mythology. Atelier Missor is openly hostile to the abandonment of monumental Western art, and its founders have sculpted Hercules, Joan of Arc, and Napoleon while talking without embarrassment about beauty, heroism, civilization, and great men. Its website declares that “gigantic titanium statues” will “guide us to a beautiful future,” while the atelier describes itself as a classical foundry “on its way to building a new Rome.”

You are not the beginning of the world. You are an heir.

Good. I would rather live in a civilization that builds rockets and enormous bronze statues than one that tears its statues down and lectures its children about the shamefulness of their inheritance. Atelier Missor’s revolt against deliberately ugly public art is refreshing, and SpaceX is doing things that would have sounded like science fiction not very long ago.

But if Prometheus is going to hold the “torch of the West,” we ought to ask whether he is carrying the right torch. He represents an important strand of Western civilization, perhaps one of the dominant strands of the modern West, but he does not represent the whole thing.

There is also something unmistakably Randian about the spectacle, and not merely in the philosophical sense. The enormous idealized body, the heroic pose, the industrial backdrop, and the celebration of human power all recall the visual world associated with Ayn Rand’s novels, especially the iconic cover art created by illustrator Nick Gaetano for editions of “Atlas Shrugged,” “The Fountainhead,” and “Anthem.” Those images helped give Rand’s books a visual identity built around monumental human figures, architecture, industry, and individual striving. Put Prometheus beside a launch complex, and the resemblance is hard to miss.

Ayn Rand would have recognized the type

The resemblance gets stranger once you actually open the books.

The protagonist of Rand’s “Anthem,” Equality 7-2521, lives in a suffocating collectivist society where individual achievement has been suppressed. He secretly studies science, rediscovers electric light, defies the ruling authorities, escapes into the wilderness, discovers the word “I,” and chooses a new name for himself: Prometheus.

Prometheus is central to Rand’s treatment of the heroic individual. The Ayn Rand Institute’s discussion of “Anthem” describes the character’s discovery of the individual self as the foundation for his rejection of collectivism and embrace of egoism. He comes to regard his own reason, judgment, will, and happiness as authoritative rather than looking outside himself for sanction.

Now the visual resemblance takes on a philosophical dimension too. A colossal, idealized male figure stands beside rockets, holding mankind’s stolen fire aloft while a technological enterprise reaches beyond the Earth. It is not hard to see why this imagery feels so natural to a culture rediscovering the appeal of heroic individualism, industrial power, and men who refuse to be told that something cannot be done.

RELATED: The rockets are still blowing up. So why is Elon laughing on his SpaceX earnings call?

Joshua Lott/Washington Post/Getty Images

That does not make the comparison an insult. Rand understood something real about civilization that our managerial class has spent decades trying to suppress. Societies need exceptional people. Progress often depends on stubborn men and women who ignore the consensus, refuse to accept that something cannot be done, and build the thing anyway. Bureaucracies rarely invent the future, and committees are not known for producing cathedrals, transcontinental railroads, moon landings, or reusable rockets.

The problem comes when one virtue becomes an entire philosophy of civilization. The West is not reducible to heroic individual will, however badly we may need more of it.

The old stories were more suspicious of fire

There is something especially strange about turning Prometheus into an uncomplicated symbol of technological optimism, because the Greeks themselves did not tell his story that way.

Yes, Prometheus gives humanity fire. In “Prometheus Bound,” he also claims credit for teaching mankind numbers, writing, medicine, navigation, mining, and other useful arts. In the surviving text, fire becomes more than warmth. It becomes the foundation of civilization itself.

But then Prometheus gets chained to a rock, which is a fairly important part of the story and one that tends not to make the inspirational posters.

In Hesiod’s telling, Zeus’ response to the theft of fire includes Pandora and the suffering that follows her arrival among mankind. The Prometheus myth was never simply an ancient Greek version of “move fast and break things.” It wrestled with power, rebellion, knowledge, suffering, and the possibility that acquiring a new capability does not automatically give mankind the wisdom to use it.

The Greeks were hardly alone in associating technological power with rebellion and danger. Genesis contains a curious detail that is easy to pass over. Cain, after murdering Abel and going into exile, becomes a builder of cities. A few generations later, his descendants are credited with some of the basic technologies of civilization. Genesis 4 associates Jabal with livestock and tents, Jubal with musical instruments, and Tubal-cain with the forging of bronze and iron.

The biblical text does not say that metallurgy or music are evil. Scripture is much too interesting for such a simple lesson. But it does place the rapid development of civilization inside the line of Cain, alongside violence, pride, and Lamech’s boast that he has killed a man for wounding him.

The ancient Book of Enoch makes the connection darker still. There, rebellious heavenly beings descend to mankind and teach forbidden knowledge, including the working of metals and the manufacture of weapons. The resemblance to Prometheus is hard to miss. In both stories, beings who rebel against the heavenly order hand mankind powers he did not previously possess, and those powers do not arrive without consequences.

These traditions are not telling identical stories, but they are asking a remarkably similar question: What happens when man’s technical ability races ahead of his moral ability?

Later Western writers understood the problem perfectly well. Mary Shelley did not subtitle her novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” because Victor Frankenstein was an uncomplicated civilizational hero. He is brilliant enough to acquire a power humanity previously lacked, but not wise enough to understand what he is unleashing.

That seems like a fairly relevant warning for a civilization simultaneously developing artificial intelligence, editing genes, building autonomous weapons, attempting to settle other planets, and giving increasingly powerful machines control over more of ordinary life.

The question is not whether man should have fire. Obviously he should. The question is whether possession of the fire makes him wise enough to decide what ought to be burned.

The West is something we inherited

I have a particular bias here. Part of my work with Chapter House is devoted to putting old books back into the hands of families and students, which means I spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about phrases like “the Western canon” and “Western civilization.”

The more time I spend with those books, the less satisfying it becomes to define the West by any single principle. It is not merely individualism. It is not merely Christianity. It is not merely Greek reason, Roman law, technological progress, free markets, republican government, or the heroic individual. It is the long and often uncomfortable argument among all of them.

RELATED: Will America need a Caesar?

chudakov2/iStock/Getty Images

That is why recovering Western civilization cannot mean taking the modern cult of progress, stripping away the diversity consultants, and giving it bigger muscles. That is still modernity, only with much better aesthetics.

The reaction that produced this new fascination with classical statues, technological power, masculinity, conquest, great men, and civilizational vitality is understandable. Western societies spent decades teaching ambitious young men to be less ambitious, powerful nations to apologize for exercising power, artists to sneer at beauty, and institutions to regard excellence with suspicion. Naturally, a counterculture emerged that likes Roman statues, rockets, weightlifting, the conquest of Mars, and men who actually accomplish things.

There are much worse rebellions.

At its worst, however, the Promethean vision says that human will, liberated from artificial constraints and armed with sufficient technology, can conquer whatever stands in its way. The Randian variation substitutes the heroic individual for the managerial bureaucracy, which is often an enormous improvement, but it still leaves unanswered the most important question a civilization can ask: Toward what?

The civilization that produced SpaceX also produced Socrates. It produced Roman law, monasteries, universities, cathedrals, families, guilds, constitutional government, and a Christian moral order that insisted there were things even kings were not permitted to do. Western civilization honors the man who acts, but it also asks what he owes. It honors reason while recognizing limits, admires strength while asking strength to serve something beyond itself, and celebrates individual genius while reminding the genius that he inherited a world he did not create.

A civilization composed entirely of Howard Roarks would probably erect some spectacular buildings. I am less certain anyone would want to live there.

There is an irony here because Atelier Missor founder Missor Movahed’s own conversion to classical art contains exactly the humility missing from a purely Promethean worldview. As he has told the story, he was a nihilistic young man until an encounter with the monuments of Paris forced him to confront the achievements of generations before him. Standing beneath the Vendome Column, he felt as though Napoleon were asking him who he was to judge centuries and millennia of civilization.

That is a profoundly anti-Randian insight. You are not the beginning of the world. You are an heir.

Yet the monument now chosen to carry the “torch of the West” is the great mythological rebel who steals divine power and hands it to mankind. That tension is more interesting than either condemning the statue or worshipping it.

Keep the statue. Remember the warning.

Prometheus should stay at Starbase. In fact, it is hard to imagine a more appropriate place for him.

Rockets are controlled fire, and spaceflight is mankind refusing to accept one of the oldest boundaries nature imposed upon us. SpaceX’s entire reason for existence is bound up with looking at supposedly immovable technological constraints and asking why they cannot be moved. A gigantic Prometheus standing beside Starbase makes almost too much sense.

But perhaps he belongs there as something richer than a mascot.

Build the rockets. Cast the bronzes. Raise monuments again. Recover the confidence that allowed Western civilization to build ships, cities, cathedrals, laboratories, railroads, skyscrapers, and spacecraft. Reject the dreary managerial philosophy that mistakes timidity for wisdom and decline for virtue.

Just do not confuse the power to build with the wisdom to know what ought to be built. Human beings need ambition, courage, invention, and the occasional madman who refuses to take no for an answer, but they also need inheritance, duty, restraint, and a moral order capable of telling that madman when the answer really should be no.

Prometheus gave man fire. The West spent the next several thousand years arguing about what man should do with it.

The fire alone is not our civilization. That argument is.

​Western civilization, Tech 

For months now, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales has been on the ground in Texas exposing alleged H-1B visa fraud — knocking on doors of ghost offices, confronting company owners, and uncovering shell companies used to import foreign workers. Her reporting has helped spark state investigations, lawsuits from Attorney General Ken Paxton against dozens of suspect firms, and growing federal attention.

Investigative reporting like Sara’s takes time, resources, and a team willing to keep digging when the answers aren’t easy to find. By subscribing to BlazeTV+ with code SARA, you’re directly supporting independent journalism and helping give Sara and her team the resources to keep asking the questions that need to be asked.

And now, buttressed by your support, Sara’s back again with another explosive H-1B exposé. The Texas native sets her sights on Dallas resident Mohammed Abbas, who has allegedly been scamming people with the promise of sponsoring green cards and H-1B visas.

“My team received tips from multiple people, unrelated, who say that they were scammed by one person who promised to sell them sponsorship for either green cards or H-1B visas. These people were charged thousands of dollars for this. One of the victims even said he paid $60,000, but the sponsorship never came through,” says Sara.

“Oh, and here’s the thing,” she adds. “It’s illegal to take payment from people to sponsor them for visas.”

Once she identified Mohammed Abbas as the alleged scammer at the center of the tips, Sara set out to confront him.

“He owns a number of companies. … All of them sponsor a bunch of H-1B visas,” she explains, “and guess what: They’re all conveniently located in the very same suite at an office building in Dallas, which also you’re not allowed to do.”

When Sara failed to locate Abbas in his office suite, she attempted to track him down at home — but to no avail.

She was successful, however, at calling him on the phone, but he didn’t give up his cards easily. When Sara confronted him about allegedly selling green cards and H-1B visas, he assured her that any fraud allegations against him were “not true.” But when Sara inquired about where she could speak to him in person, he refused to give a straight answer and eventually hung up.

Sara wasn’t surprised by his denial. Abbas’ “marketing agency,” Molabs Media, she says, has several red flags. Not only does his company sponsor several H-1B visas for seemingly unrelated tech jobs, but it also “took out hundreds of thousands of dollars in PPP loans,” which she says were later forgiven.

While Sara never heard back from Abbas, she did get a call from his lawyer, who was unhappy that she was digging into his affairs. Their contentious conversation ended in the lawyer hanging up as well.

She then turned her sights on Abbas’ alleged partner, a woman she identifies as Rachel Samuel, who apparently served as a “recruiter.”

“She spent years posting want ads all over LinkedIn, and when they got a bite, she would reach out to these people to arrange payment. And in WhatsApp messages we received, she is often seen sending the wire information for where they needed to send the money, either to Mohammed’s bank account in Pakistan or to the bank account in the United States,” Sara explains, noting that “some of these victims never got their money back even when the cases were clearly rejected.”

Samuel, she says, also had her own company (located in the same office suite as Abbas’ companies) that sponsored H-1B visas. “Its right to do business was terminated in Texas, but despite that, she continued sponsoring visas,” she says, adding that she tried to locate Samuel at her personal residence but was unsuccessful.

Sara then went back to Abbas’ Dallas office suite, and this time, she could see people in the office, but despite her knocking, they refused to look at her or open the door.

While the day ended with Sara’s team being escorted out of the office by police, the quest to bust Abbas was far from over.

Sara later returned with Department of Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito. To see how it ended, watch the episode above.

Sara’s investigation doesn’t end here, and neither does the work it takes to uncover stories like this. If you want to help make the next investigation possible, subscribe to BlazeTV+ with code SARA and directly support the independent journalism that keeps Sara and her team in the field, asking questions and demanding answers.

​Sara gonzales, H-1b visas, H-1b fraud, Anthony d’esposito, Texas, Blazetv show 

Flock cameras — the automated license plate readers that photograph passing vehicles to capture their license plates, make, model, color, and other details, turning them into searchable records — are popping up all over the country. Proponents argue that they help solve crime and keep Americans safe, but is that actually true?

According to Glenn Jacobs, mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, the answer is no. He argues that Flock cameras actually endanger Americans by putting them under constant surveillance, giving the government a complete record of every citizen’s movements.

On this episode of “Kibbe on Liberty,” Matt Kibbe sits down with Jacobs to discuss why he believes Flock cameras are a dire threat to privacy and the Fourth Amendment.

“The more I’ve researched [Flock cameras], the more I dislike them and consider them a very dire threat to our privacy and to the protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment,” says Jacobs.

Kibbe, calling Flock cameras “Orwellian,” is concerned that such surveillance will turn America into China 2.0.

“How is this any different than kind of a Chinese surveillance system?” he asks.

Jacobs indicates that it’s not all that different. Flock cameras, he explains, are marketed as license plate readers, but “they do a lot more than that.”

“With the Flock system, it is literally harvesting data. Every car that goes by, it pulls their license plate, but it also uses AI to develop a vehicle footprint,” he says.

“So it’s your license plate, but also make, model, color, distinguishing features, roof racks, bumper stickers, all these different things that then go into a database and remain there for 30 days or more, depending on the policy of that particular agency. Then it can be searched through without a warrant for whatever,” he continues.

The lack of established parameters around Flock cameras also gives Jacobs serious pause.

“In Tennessee there’s no state rules about how this can be used, and there’s no federal guidelines either, so what’s happened is this technology has gone out there and it’s — until now, it’s kind of flown under the radar,” he says.

Then there’s public opinion to consider. As Americans find out more and more about Flock cameras, the opposition has only grown.

“These things are not popular at all, and the more people learn about them, the more they literally hate them,” says Jacobs.

For example, it’s coming out that Flock cameras can gather enough data to form “a pattern of your movements.”

Jacobs illustrates the danger of such power with a hypothetical.

“They could say, you know, Glenn goes to the gun range at least once a week, twice on Sundays. If this happened during COVID, you know, he goes to anti-COVID meetings and rallies. All of a sudden they have a profile on me,” he says.

“No, we do not have an expectation of privacy when we’re in public places and on public roads, but the Supreme Court has ruled that without a warrant, your movements can’t be tracked like that. They ruled that in Carpenter v. United States in 2018,” he continues, predicting that it’s a matter of time before the Supreme Court will “squash” Flock cameras.

“But in the meantime, it’s just important that people are aware that these are not your grandma’s license plate readers. These are something much much different,” he warns.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Matt Kibbe?

To enjoy more of Matt’s liberty-defending stance as he gets in the face of the fake news establishment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Ai technology, China, Flock cameras, Matt kibbe, Surveillance state, Surveillance technology, Blazetv show 

Artificial intelligence has become a national political issue and increasingly a local one. Communities across the country are fighting over the massive data centers needed to power the AI boom. Environmental groups warn about water consumption. Ratepayers worry about electricity bills. Workers fear the technology will undermine their livelihoods.

The backlash crosses ideological lines, and many of the concerns deserve to be taken seriously. But too often, the debate begins and ends with a terrifying number stripped of the context needed to understand it.

As AI advances, America will face difficult choices. The only way to make them intelligently is to start with the facts rather than with numbers selected for maximum panic.

There are genuine questions surrounding AI — privacy, surveillance, censorship, individual autonomy, and concentrated power among them. But three of the most common criticisms of AI and data centers are often overstated.

Claim 1: Data centers are consuming all our water

Stories about data-center water use often begin with numbers designed to shock. One project may use millions of gallons a day. Another state may be projected to consume billions of gallons annually. In a water-stressed community, those figures can absolutely matter.

But scale matters too. A 2026 analysis published by the Florida Water and Pollution Control Operators Association estimated that all U.S. data centers combined accounted for roughly 0.3% to 0.4% of total daily U.S. water withdrawals, based on 2021 figures.

Cooling methods also vary dramatically. Some facilities rely heavily on evaporative cooling. Closed-loop and air-cooled systems can use far less water. Location, water source, cooling design, and the condition of the surrounding system matter enormously.

Industrial comparisons help restore perspective. Data centers are hardly unique in consuming large volumes of water. U.S. golf courses use roughly 30 times as much water annually, while California almond production alone has been estimated at well over 100 times as much.

That does not mean a poorly located data center cannot strain a local supply. It means “millions of gallons” is not an argument by itself. The relevant question is whether a particular facility imposes a meaningful burden on a particular water system.

Claim 2: Data centers are consuming all our power

The electricity numbers are enormous too. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that U.S. data centers consumed about 200 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, roughly 4.7% of total national electricity consumption.

From there, critics often assume that more data-center demand must translate directly into higher household bills. The evidence is less straightforward. Some research suggests that recent data-center growth has had only a limited effect on retail rates, while broader inflation and energy-policy choices may explain more of the increase consumers have seen.

That does not mean new data centers are costless to the grid. Poor rate design can shift infrastructure costs onto ordinary customers, and badly planned projects can strain local capacity. But the obvious answer to rising demand is not simply to suppress demand. It is to build more abundant, reliable power.

RELATED: AI is coming for your job, your voice … and your worldview

LPETTET/iStock/Getty Images

The AI boom may be creating exactly that incentive. Amazon recently acquired an 8,000-acre site in Texas for a data-center project that could include up to 7.65 gigawatts of on-site natural-gas generation. Microsoft, meanwhile, signed a deal tied to the restart of Three Mile Island to supply roughly 835 megawatts of nuclear power.

America spent decades making it harder to build reliable energy. If AI demand helps reverse that habit, that is not obviously a national disaster. It may be the pressure needed to start building again.

Claim 3: AI is going to displace all our jobs

Of the three claims, job displacement deserves the most caution. I have written before about the real possibility that AI could eliminate certain jobs, especially entry-level positions. Long-term forecasts are difficult because nobody knows how capable these systems will become. Still, history gives us reason to distrust the most apocalyptic predictions.

In 2016, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton argued that people should stop training to become radiologists because machines would soon outperform humans at reading medical images. A decade later, radiology is hardly disappearing. Research shows the number of active U.S. radiologists rose over the past decade, salaries increased, and workloads expanded along with the use of medical imaging.

That may be an example of “Jevons paradox”: When technology makes a resource or service cheaper and more efficient, total demand can rise. A recent medical paper applied the idea directly to AI and physicians.

The same possibility applies beyond medicine. If AI makes a programmer five times more productive, it is tempting to assume the economy will need one-fifth as many programmers. But economies are not static. If software becomes dramatically cheaper to produce, businesses that could never afford custom software may suddenly buy it. New applications become economical. Entirely new product categories can emerge.

None of that guarantees that every displaced worker will land comfortably in a new job, or that every profession will grow. Technological change creates winners and losers. The point is narrower: Productivity gains do not translate mechanically into equivalent job losses.

RELATED: The next fight over freedom will run through AI models

wildpixel/iStock/Getty Images

The concerns we should consider

None of this means AI is safe or harmless. The strongest concerns may simply be different from the ones dominating the headlines.

As AI becomes embedded throughout society, these systems could shape what information people see, how institutions make decisions, and how individuals interact with government and business. Massive data collection could strengthen surveillance. Ideological biases could be embedded in algorithms. Dependence on AI could weaken personal autonomy and concentrate decision-making power in governments and corporations.

Those questions deserve more attention than sensationalized claims about water, watts, and workers.

As AI advances, America will face difficult choices. The only way to make them intelligently is to start with the facts rather than with numbers selected for maximum panic.

The goal should be to preserve individual liberty, privacy, transparency, personal autonomy, and constitutional principles while allowing innovation to flourish. Exaggerating the easy concerns only makes the difficult ones harder to confront.

​Artificial intelligence, Data centers, Opinion & analysis, Technology, Innovation, Water, Electricity, Employment, Energy