James Fontanella-Khan

Now it's all about industrials.

It's all about power, utilities.

is quite obvious to everybody.

Well, because in the past, it's never been that straightforward to get two large utility companies to combine.

To the point that we were making earlier about they generally run essentially regulated monopolies, and the way that you can increase usually prices on consumers has to be justified by that CapEx expenditure.

Yes.

The world is very different now.

And so AI, and we can go back to why AI is so important to deal-making today, but for the US, winning the AI race versus China is of absolute importance from a geopolitical perspective.

And you need to balance that interest, that geopolitical kind of battle with the question of affordability in an election year.

We've got in November, we'll have midterms.

And a lot of people, especially in parts of Virginia, are not very happy about data centers.

Well, there's two things going on.

On the one hand, the US has been and Trump has been very clear about

Wanting America to be dominant in the AI space.

This is a matter of national security.

It's also a matter of succeeding economically.

And the rival, very clearly, is China.

And so you see also the kind of people in the administration are kind of doing everything to support that.

And so in that sense, this deal is helpful for that.

On the other hand, politics is a retail business as well.