Rory Stewart

speaker

22,825 appearances 85 recordings 4 series first heard Nov 2025 last heard 9 Sep

Rory Stewart’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 85 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 16.

Appearances

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The Rest Is Politics · 558. The 'Cockroach' Uprising and Should We Stop Data Centres? · 29 Jul 2026 podcast

If you were a planner, you'd have to say, does the technological revolution of AI, is it something that you're prepared to see as being broadly similar in importance to the global economy as steel production or not? voice-verified

Water is a bit different. voice-verified

Water depends a lot on the kind of data center you're building and where you're building it. voice-verified

So some of the data centers in Britain use less water, about 10,000 liters a year, which is less than your average leisure center. voice-verified

The big hyperscalers data centers can be using 1.5 million, right, which is much, much more. voice-verified

I mean, a huge amount. voice-verified

But building a old-fashioned data center in Arizona, which is already water-stressed in extreme heat, is completely different to building one in a much cooler place, for example, in northern Scandinavia, right? voice-verified

or building a data center in Scotland where there is ample waterfall. voice-verified

I mean, part of the problem is that we're pushing these data centers close to population centers, which is where people want them, in water-stressed areas, the southeast. voice-verified

If you were building them up in northern Scotland, there would be enough water. voice-verified

But people don't want data centers up in the north because they want very low latency times, and they want reliability, they want to access some near population centers. voice-verified

I would conclude that by saying, voice-verified

It's a big problem, but don't stop data centers. voice-verified

If we go down this line, Britain is on the path to poverty, economic irrelevance, total security collapse, and no part in the future of the voice-verified

The problem that Britain has building infrastructure in general, it's a much bigger version of the fact we can't build houses. voice-verified

As you say, we've been talking about the third runway since 97. voice-verified

And it's the arguments against the real, that's why I'm not calling them NIMBY arguments, but we have to build data centers. voice-verified

The biggest problem that Britain will face is not building data centers, not building them. voice-verified

They think that people like Joe, who's asking the question, are just kind of modern world Luddites. voice-verified

is that Elon Musk line, you know, we're just along for the ride and you've just got to accept it and I couldn't do anything about it if I wanted. voice-verified

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