Azeem Azhar

But let's also recognize there are some other consequences of it.

So everywhere where the data centers are being built right now, we're seeing electricity prices rise.

So that cost is falling on people who are not benefiting, frankly, from the large venture capital rounds in Silicon Valley.

And we are starting to see communities push back.

So just this week, a town in Wisconsin called Caledonia rejected a Microsoft

data center.

And they said, look, we don't like turning farmland into this data center.

And I think that that is quite an interesting tension that's starting to emerge around where will the pressure point of this economic strain fall?

Will it really be purely that it's just too much of the economy?

Or will there also be a political dynamic to it that forces these companies to behave differently?

Well, I mean, crowding out risk is real.

And the reason it will be happening is because the rates of return you can get to build a data center are just much higher than the rates of return you could get from building an apartment block.

But these things can and often do level out.

I mean, what you really want to see is a demand stimulus.

I mean, if we take a look at America's energy infrastructure for 25, 30 years, Americans have under-invested in their electricity grid, in their sources of power generation, and that's broken a very long-term relationship in our economies that more energy is more welfare, it's more prosperity, it's more income, it's more innovation.

And that there are rich companies putting in a kick to say, we need more power, is probably going to be net-net a good thing over the medium term.

But of course, to get there, there is this difficult squeeze right now.

And the beauty of building is that there's a lot of learning...

processes, practices that get developed that are transferable across into other types of building as and when the time comes.

So I agree that there is this problem right now, this problem of focus.