Why data centres became a target in the Iran war

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1:16Hello and welcome to the Times Tech podcast, where each week we unpack how technology is reshaping business, culture and everyday life. I'm Katie Prescott, covering all things tech here in the city of London. Now, Danny isn't here this week. He's AWOL somewhere. But stepping in is another brilliant member of the tech team, my colleague Mark Selman, who's tech correspondent for The Times. Hi, Mark. Hello, and good to be back. Very good to have you. Now, listen, when you took your job as tech correspondent at The Times, did you think you'd also be covering real estate and energy? No, but then again, I don't think I really knew what I was letting myself in for.

1:57I don't think you did. It was pre-Chat GBT, wasn't it? Well, today we're going to be talking all things real estate and energy. And by that, I mean data centres, the large warehouses that contain the physical infrastructure needed to power AI. Yes, but they're a bit more than just that. They're very boring looking, but very, very important. In fact, some people are even calling them the new frontier of warfare. And that's because over the last few weeks, Iran has been bombing US owned data centers in the Persian Gulf, damaging physical infrastructure and disrupting cloud services across the region.

2:40They really have become a new front line, but they're so important. And this is an extraordinary statistic, a big moment here in the UK this week, when the combined value of new data centres approved last year overtook office buildings. Yeah. And if you think about that, that means that we're no longer building spaces for people to work in, but instead building homes for the silicon that could be replacing them. As you said, Mark, they are, you know, incredibly boring to look at, but they are the heartbeat powering the AI revolution. But there is this massive question about how on earth we're going to find all the energy needed to power them.

3:24And our guest today thinks he might have the answer. He's the boss of Chinese conglomerate Envision, Lei Zhang. It's a green energy business which operates all around the world, including here in the UK. And he'll be telling us about robots breeding, silicon civilizations, and what we can do if those AI robots decide that they want all the world's energy for themselves. So as the demand for AI and data centres surges, this week we're looking at how data centres are reshaping energy, infrastructure, and of course, conflict. So let's start with what's been going on in Iran. So these huge warehouses, which have become as vital to security and everyday life as electricity grids and ports and oil pipelines are, because of their very nature, being these large, boring sheds, very vulnerable to attack.

4:17And as we record this, a ceasefire has been declared in Iran for how long? I don't know. We're recording this on Wednesday afternoon, so we'll see what happens. But at the height of the war, certainly a new front line was the data center. And we've seen Iran bombing US-owned data centers in the Persian Gulf. Iranian missiles have struck Amazon Web Services data centers in Bahrain and an Oracle data center as well in Dubai. And Iran's also threatened tech companies, NVIDIA and Apple. So obviously, as the Americans were threatening to hit civilian infrastructure, Iran's military had at their disposal targets across the Middle East, and they threatened to retaliate with strikes on the US Stargate data center in the UAE.

5:07Now, Stargate is essentially a vehicle from OpenAI to secure massive data center capacity for it as it goes into the future. And it sort of predicts that they're going to need so much more of it to fuel the demands of AI. So they've done this deal with, well, it's a complicated story that's gone through lots of twists and turns. But SoftBank and Oracle are their partners in it. And essentially, that they're trying to secure this capacity for the future. And this data center in the UAE part of the Stargate program was their first international outpost. That's right. And so, I mean, it's not a massive surprise, is it, that Iran has targeted data centers.

5:50It just shows, though, how critical they have become. Yeah. And I think that, you know, when you look at the interweaving nature of large tech companies and the government, we've obviously seen Palantir, Anthropic and the way it's intertwined or not with the Pentagon. These huge companies have now, you know, they've opened themselves up to government contracts and they become targets. Yeah, huge symbols of American power. And Iran has said that civilian hardware and software providers are legitimate targets. And particularly, they pin the blame on them for providing the tech that's enabled some of these attacks on Iran.

6:31I think another important point though here is just how much money is tied up in the Gulf. So I wrote my column last week actually on this just because we have, Britain and the US actually, become increasingly dependent on the Gulf for funding of tech businesses. And that's particularly as the relationship with China has crumbled over the last decade. And it's been really striking that since the war started with Iran, actually, those funds have pressed pause on all of their plans of giving money into particularly the British tech world. And so it's not just, you know, the impact that it has on the data centers, but it's also across that pipeline of funding.

7:15Yeah, it was obviously seen as a safe source of funds, given the huge capacity of the sovereign wealth funds, but also the desire of those states to diversify away from their fossil fuels. I did a back of a fag packet calculation that the top five funds have got about$5 trillion of assets under management. Yeah, it wasn't a surprise to see Sam Alton fly out there very soon after he wanted to build up his data centre capacity. And he's not the only one to have gone there. And it sort of makes sense, doesn't it? You know, you've got huge areas of land that don't have a lot of planning permission.

7:56There's not a lot of greenbelt there and supposedly limitless supplies of energy. But that's obviously been put on a different perspective the last few weeks. And the impact of bombing a data centre. I mean, we should probably talk about that. It's pretty immediate, isn't it? So Iran hit an Amazon Web Services data centre in the UAE and that's all banking sites, payments, consumer services all hit. And we've had similar things. Well, even in the UK, I'm not talking about bombings, but when data centres go down, it's quite a sudden shock. Yeah, and I think that you file it under that column that says, oh, it should just work and I don't have to think about it.

8:35But when it does go wrong, there's lots of finger pointing. And when you pull away the layers, it shows that we're basically reliant on Amazon. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, absolutely. To about like 90%, I think, is Amazon and Microsoft. Yeah. And when that goes wrong, we hear the whales of protest here saying we're too dependent on American tech firms and we don't have our own sovereignty. And again, this all feeds back to the competition element where people are concerned that they have the stranglehold over us. But I've not seen the answer. Which they do. Basically, the fact that. Yeah. But it's also why in the UK they designated data centres as critical national infrastructure.

9:14Well, I think the plan was launched a couple of years ago, and it's to try and make sure that this doesn't happen. If you ever speak to data center experts, they're obsessed with uptime. That is the absolutely most crucial thing in a data center. If you want to buy some data center space from me, it needs to be, as you say, operational all the time. You can't have the energy switching off. And that's partly why they've been designated CNI. cni so if in the event of a blackout for example they have got access to the uk's backup systems in a way that hospitals do so it's quite interesting we've now realized that they should be on a par you've been having the conversation so i don't have to thank you uptime that's it's really important i think that cni designation by the way was also part of the government being able to say you guys really need to have cyber security at the top of your list because if they're not being bombed, they are being attacked by hackers, either state-sponsored or otherwise.

10:13So that was really part of the thinking there, to up our cyber defences. Refer to our previous conversation, when these things go down, real world impact, real economic impact, real pain, and everyone wants to know what's happened and who's to blame. I'm glad you mentioned that because I wanted to ask you about a story you did this week on the subject of cyber attacks, which is about vulnerabilities in UK households. So, I mean, talk about showing how important tech has become geopolitically. This is, was it Russians? Well, GCHQ, the wing of GCHQ that deals with cyber, which is the National Cyber Security Centre.

10:50And they said they'd uncovered a Russian campaign. This is a Russian state-sponsored campaign, part of the military intelligence units that have been since 2014 spotting that there are routers. Now, this is these sort of rectangular black boxes that sit in all our houses and route our traffic to the internet. The kind of thing you get from BT. Yeah. There are lots of these that are sitting in homes and offices across the world and in the UK. They're old. And the Russian military know this. And they go into it remotely. And they can reroute the traffic to websites that they run that look like genuine websites, but actually are collecting your personal data and passwords so that they can have a look at your email.

11:32Wow. OK, so you would go in and say, believe you're logging into something at a time. Microsoft Office. Microsoft Outlook in particular. Right. They had fake Outlook addresses and they were collecting people's emails. Just members of the public? We don't really know exactly, but the NCSC was saying that they cast the net far and wide so that they then were getting people of interest within that bulk data collection. So thousands and thousands of businesses and individuals involved across the world. But I think the warning to the UK was to anyone that has essentially a TP-Link, an old TP-Link router, go and have a look at it.

12:14Maybe replace it if you haven't updated the software on it. Wow. Fascinating stuff. Let's go back to data centres and the physical sheds here in the UK because there was that extraordinary stat. Yeah, so this is really for the first time in British history, the value of new data centres being approved for planning permission, not actually being built, but approved, has overtaken office buildings. So that last year, the value of all data centres granted detailed planning permission hit nearly£9 billion, which is up 58 % year on year. The value of offices granted permission fell 40 % to£6.5 billion.

12:53pounds. I guess that's not surprising given the sort of huge political demand for to build data centers, but also they're quite good business in that sense. Yeah. And it feels like a gold rush at the moment. I mean, the number of startups that are crossing my desk, I mean, you probably have exactly the same people who have raised money to build data centers here in the UK, because the demand for them feels infinite. I interviewed the boss of Oracle a couple of weeks ago and there were questions with oracle about the amount of debt they're taking on to build data centers and i put that to him and he looked at me like i was completely crazy and said yeah but the demand for them is such that this is not a stupid bet by us yeah he would say that wouldn't he but it does feel like the big issue we're facing here in the uk is is is not the demand far from it it's actually we don't have the space and connecting them to the grid it is a problem So it's all very well people being granted permission.

13:51The reality could be quite different. Well, I think the reality is different when you look at the figures. The actual value of build going on is radically different. I think the value of the data centre starts is about 882 million, but the actual value of office development starts is 8.5 billion. So this is a glimpse into the future as the government wants it to happen, which is we need to build more data centres. We need AI data centres closer to our population, i.e. here, rather than in the Middle East or in America, both for operational and sovereignty reasons. But I think the reality is it's a lot harder to build them.

14:35And the National Grid has been pushing back on this a lot. I've heard the boss say in the past, with the rise of demand for data centres plus the electrification of cars, it's just a kind of perfect storm. on a creaking infrastructure. I find there's a bit of a disconnect. So you have this drive from government, political leaders, business leaders saying, AI is coming. It's important for our economy. People want it. There's massive demand for it. And then you look at public opinion about AI, very suspicious, very cautious, potentially oppositional. and you have those on the political left and far right saying, sorry, we're not convinced about this.

15:22And you have the Green Party activating against it, campaigning against them. And I think that from what I see is that when local communities have an imposition from the outside, whether it's a data centre or any other building or an incinerator or whatever it is, and it's imposed from the outside and what's happening obviously central government is taking the decision making for these data centers away from local councils so that's being centralized yeah so you're having this data center that's being plonked there firstly they're ugly yeah they're big they don't provide jobs really well they provide some jobs but i think that you know the economic argument that's obviously being pushed is that it's a sort of productivity tool but in terms of the actual jobs as you say yeah you know construct it there's a few hundred jobs but ongoing like the Nissan car factory in Sunderland where you create a supply chain and economy around a factory with a data center you know you have the decision taken away from local people you have an imposition of something that they don't necessarily benefit from locally but obviously could see negative impacts from whether that's environmental or I mean I think there's a A lot more so in the US where people actually see their impact on their water usage or electricity bills.

16:47But here, I think you start to see the rumblings of a backlash. Activists are getting involved. There's a big one in Buckinghamshire that the decision was legally challenged successfully. So they have to go again on it. So you can see it coming. And I think when you look at the states, you've got US states saying no moratorium. You've got activists like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, saying we want a bill, a national bill, to put a moratorium on these data centers. I think the other side of things quite interesting is you look at a guy called Senator Mark Warner for Virginia. Virginia is the data center capital of the world, has more than anywhere else.

17:28And he wants to tax them more heavily. He says, I want my pound of flesh out of them. So that's definitely what's coming. A little bit harder here. Maybe local councils will say, we want to see a bit more, thank you very much, into the local coffers. But I can see that's going to be an area where it's going to be tension. Well, let's hear from someone who is thinking about how to power these data centres. Our guest today is Lei Zhang, who's the founder and chief executive of Envision, which is a global green tech company based in Shanghai. high. They started by building wind turbines. And here in the UK, they've built battery storage systems across the board, really in Blackburn, Greater Manchester, and in Sunderland.

18:12But one of the things they focus on is how on earth you power AI data centres using renewable energy. Leizang wants to create this integrated self-sufficient energy network that he's calling a green utopia. It was really interesting talking to him because he grew up in China during the industrial boom, when China really started being the manufacturer of the world, the factory of the world. And he saw firsthand the impact that that had on the environment. And it was that which inspired him to create a renewable energy company. It recently sent the world's first global shipment of clean fuel. Believe it or not, they took wind from the Mongolian plains, turned it into a liquid fuel called green ammonia that you can ship across the ocean.

18:58Over the next year, he intends to create the world's first AI data centre in the Gobi Desert, powered entirely by renewable energy. And last year, he was named as one of Time's 100 most influential climate leaders. Take a listen. Leigh, welcome to the podcast. Tell us about your background. How did you get interested in this sector? Where did you grow up? What did you study? And what led you to start Envision when you did? I was born in the entrepreneurial family in the place close to Shanghai. It's a place called Jiangyin. And from early days, I really wanted to do something more meaningful for the society.

19:41And once I studied and worked in London, I went to LSE to study operational research, kind of quantitative statistic analysis for the economic models. And I've challenged working in the energy business, also in the financial segment as well in London. Around 2000 to 2005, that period, I think there's already been a hot topic regarding the climate change. So people have this kind of concern for the environment sustainability. And there's early booms for solar at that age. So I have a background with economic modeling, with the purpose of life, with the energy on standings. So I'm thinking about, okay, what can I do to really to make the world a bad place?

20:53So I realize unless you can solve the toughest challenge for our society, that really means means you are creating value for our society. So I started thinking, what is the biggest challenge? Sustainability challenge, climate change, and energy security. So then what's the solution? Why not harmonizing energy and environment? Yes, we have a solution, renewable energy. But how can we make renewable energy become the mainstream? And then my background on engineering helped me understand, okay, we have huge potential to bring down the cost of wind and solar. So we are able to unlock these unlimited renewable sources around the world.

21:47Then we are able to supply our society with 10 times more, 100 times more energy with much lower cost. And back two years ago, I think in 2024, we launched AI wind turbines. We changed the wind turbine, which normally is algorithm control technology, now become an adaptive AI modeling control, which is able to make wind turbine more efficient, more intelligent, like a self-driving car. So tell me about the scope of your operations then. I mean, you've got battery storage in the UK and you spoke about wind turbines and you've obviously got the software as well. Where do you operate and how many people do you employ?

22:37Yeah, globally. We have this AI and IoT platform which operate in Singapore to make the largest airport, seaport, energy efficiency or demand and supply synergy by the new grid. And we're providing a manufacturing wind turbine in India to support the renewable development there. and we build EV battery factory in the UK for the company like Jaguar and Rover and Nissan. We are the only operating gig factory in the UK for EVs. We are also developing long-duration edge storage together with our partners in the UK to really help UK is able to absorb more offshore wind and to have less curtailment in the peak time and bring down the cost of electricity.

23:43And so in Mongolia, we're creating green hydrogen, which is the largest green hydrogen project. And the green ammonia is total up to the 1.5 million ton green ammonia. But more than that, we developed this 100 % renewable off-grid energy system, which is making us create green molecules at the lowest cost in the world. So now we are also creating this AI data centers to create synergy between energy and computing to make them a very competitive token factory. We are keen to create the next generation, the future energy system, in particular with AI technology. Well, I'm really glad you mentioned that because I have to say, as a tech journalist, I never thought I'd have to learn as much about energy as I am doing.

24:45And clearly, it is such a hot topic at the moment with the demands of AI. It's a huge issue here in the UK. And certainly people are fighting to create data centers, but also, frankly, struggling to get the energy to power them. And it's always stayed with me. We had the boss of Equinix on the podcast a few months ago. And she said, look, people are just grabbing energy wherever they can get it. And I just wonder, how much of a problem do you think AI will be for the world in terms of energy demands? And do you think we can satisfy them? I think this is only infant days of AI in terms of energy consumption.

25:29Oh dear. So it's only going to get worse. Just think about before steam engine got invented, nobody is able to predict after industrial revolution, we are going to consume 100 times more energy. So we are able to using AI to do lots of things, not about language modeling, but also the physical AI. How can we use AI modeling our planet, our climate systems? How can we use AI modeling our body, our cell, at even very small details? How can we use AI modeling the universe? So this is going to like 100 times more energy usage than today modeling just purely language. So we think AI is going to be the largest consumer of energy, which means electricity.

26:35So once more AI is being developed, much more robots are being built up. So this AI and the robots, they are going to search a huge amount of electricity. Like our human, we're always searching for food. So they don't eat protein. They need electricity. And they become more and more influential. So this AI civilization or silicon civilization is going to be even beyond our control. So they are going to get self-fulfillment. Do you mean out of the control of humans, that they'll be making their own decisions? It's very likely. They're going to be much smarter than humans. It's not about the normal intelligence.

27:32It's going to be super intelligence. So you think this will be sort of beyond our control and that they will be looking for their own sources of energy? For sure, for sure. If you think about a robot with much super intelligence and they have independent will and consciousness, They are going to create more robots, create much powerful AI. So they are going to organize like a human, a society, a city, maybe not in London, maybe in the desert of Mars or other places. So this silicon civilization for sure is going to be developed more and more. And this new civilization is deemed to need a lot of energy.

28:26So that's why I believe AI is going to be the largest energy consumer. So do you think that the civilizations, the cities created by robots, are a threat to humanity? Not necessarily a threat. So maybe they will be kind, hopefully. So that's why I think, according to Jeffrey Hinton, he always said, okay, this kind of a mother nature, we have to teach AI. We have to build within AI. Even AI is so powerful. Robot is so powerful. They will take care of human like a mother taking care of baby. So they are going to not like squeeze us, but challenge us. They are going to lift us, empower us, hopefully.

29:20But for sure, they will have their pursuings. They will have their own goals. So for those silicon creatures, for sure, they need a lot of energy. And where do you see that coming from? Where? You mean when or where? Where. And when, maybe and when too. Like when do you see this happening? It's a good point. It's happening. So they have a much big influence through the investors, through the developers, to be able to secure more energy than ordinary hospitals or schools. So because they are able to pay much higher bills because the investment return is much higher for AI today. Yeah, so AI is going to compete in the energy resources with ordinary people.

30:16But of course, we see the clear benefit from AI, the productivity improve. So that's why we should supply the energy with great abundance. That's why our civilization development cannot rely on fossil fuel energy, which could last for 50 years, 100 years, but what's after? We have to really have this long-term planning. We have to really build the infinite energy systems. And the only way is using renewable energy because it's almost zero marginal cost. If we need 10 times more energy, but with limited supply, the energy price is going to double, triple 10 times more. Then ordinary people cannot afford.

31:31data and AI, so work flows more smoothly across an organization. The platform integrates with different clouds, models and data sources, bringing them together in one place to help your team. To learn more about how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. I'm looking at the agenda for our Life Sciences Summit on May the 21st. There's so much turmoil right now over drug pricing. It's a massive conflict between industry innovation and the reality of the NHS budgets. Yeah, it's a fascinating topic and the NHS has done its job of getting extremely cheap drugs and then President Trump has done his job of saying, but hang on, you're free riding on all of our research money and marrying that tension has been really hard.

32:12This is something that I think we'll be looking into on the day. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to hear from our speakers like Patrick Vallance and Melanie Iverson. I should warn everyone listening, it's already a heavily subscribed event. We've got over 200 of the best in the sector signed up to join us. I'm definitely looking forward to tackling those tough conversations though and having a real look at what's happening across the sector. Yeah, look, I mean, obviously go to thetimes.com forward slash events to find out more.

32:43I've heard you speak before about the importance of collaboration, of global collaboration, you know, when it comes to this move to a renewable energy utopia. What are your reflections on that in this current period that we're living through, which frankly is characterized by trade war and division. One of the hottest topics in Europe in tech at the moment is sovereignty. Everyone's talking about trying to do things by themselves. Is that completely at odds with what you think needs to happen? And what's your view? It makes sense. People talking about sovereignty, talking about the supply chain security.

33:21But today, if you see what's happening in Middle East, we all realize the biggest security is energy security. Energy security is a foundation for whatever food security, supply chain security, or other securities. Because energy creates everything. and if we rely on our energy on the fossil fuel, it's not about dependence. It's about the fossil fuel is so concentrated. In the Gulf, it's counting for 20 % global oil and gas export. Energy security is at risk. So unless we are able to harvest the North Sea wing, which is a home energy, so nobody can block your North Sea wing. So this is the real security.

34:17So if there's global collaboration able to use, so whoever making the most competitive wind turbines, solar panels, energy storage, you buy once, and there's no worry for 20 years. Because once you install a wind farm, last for 20 years, happy. But if you buy fossil fuel, buy all the gas, You have to buy every day. And the security concerns you almost every day, every geographic tension. So that's why I think renewable energy is the most important foundation for energy security. Energy security is the foundation for supply chain security. But I guess the reality at the moment is we are in this period of trade wars and division.

35:12Have you at Envision felt the victim of that or found that a problem at all? The purpose of Envision is solving the toughest challenge for our sustainable future. We are preparing for this potential challenge since we were born. That's why we developed green electricity, green molecules, green tokens, green solutions, equipments. Just one day before the Middle East war, on 27 February, Envision is exporting in history the first vessel, 5 ,000 ton green ammonia, from Inner Mongolia to Korea for a chemical plant, a company for their usage. Even we see old oil, conventional oil is at risk, but we are starting producing green oil from everywhere, from the desert, from Gobi.

36:17It could be in North Africa, could be in South Australia, could be Midwest of the US, and the Gobi Desert of China. Yeah. So that is exactly what Invisian is pursuing. So renewable energy is able to solve the energy security issue. Let's talk about that before we go, because this is an extraordinary story. As people are struggling to get oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz, you have been, as you just said, shipping clean fuel from Mongolia, but you made it from wind. Is that right? You could just explain. The renewable energy system. We create the new energy system made by wind turbines, solar panels, energy storage, and the hydrogen electrolyzer and ammonia synthesis.

37:09Envision developed and designed the entire new energy system with off-grid solution. It is not linked to any public grid. So we don't have the grid security issue. So just leverage the abundance of wind and solar blowing by the desert. Of course, we're using some wasted city water nearby. So that's all the elements we need. Then we're producing green oil for the industrial usage. And is that something you see will scale? Oh yeah, for sure. So this project is eventually within five to eight years, we're going to build up 3 million ton green ammonia, which is a big quantity. Astonishing. Before I let you go, I've got to ask you something else, which is how do you personally use AI and do you have an AI agent?

38:11Yes. So we are giving our employee not only about compute, not only about agent, but also token. We now have a competition within the company. Who else consumes most of the token? They are going to ranking with a high ranking. So tell me about that. They call it token maxing, I think. Go on. So why is that a big deal? Why do you want to encourage people to use tokens? Yeah, so token is the lowest cost of intelligence compared with our intelligence from brain have to digest a very expensive protein and also emotional value, all kinds of things. So now we see that tokens are being commoditized. So InVision is not only building the new energy solution for AI data center.

39:04We also design and develop our own AI data center. Even we are designing the HVDC. So the next stage of high-foldage solution for AI data center with solid transformer, with lithium battery solution for the AI data center. So we also producing token by ourselves. So we're not only supplying the AI data center for the hyperscalers, we also have this abundance. We see how cheap the token can be. And with this agent, with open source foundation models, so the intelligence is fully commoditized. So that's why InVision have this vision. We want to create more prosperity by providing this abundant, low-cost token for the world.

40:10But I tell people, there's no limit for token supply. Once wind blows, you get a free token. Then we stimulate the people's motivation. And what's the prize if someone gets to the top of the leaderboard for token use? Yes, so we will promote them immediately. We give them much better performance so that everyone is a software product manager. And so everyone can lead 100 agents even without any subordinate. So everyone can access as much as token they need. so we see the bottom up kind of development the innovations so the organisation is getting changing fast Lei Zhang, Chief Executive of Envision thank you so much for coming on the podcast it's been brilliant to talk to you thank you very much robots breeding I know should we talk about that first?

41:17I'm laughing it's more as a laughing horror I like the Silicon Civilization. I mean, with interviews like that, you sort of go from, oh, my God, that sounds mad to thinking that sounds sensible. But then you have to check yourself in this job because someone is at the forefront of these things. They're probably able to predict a little better than you. I think especially if you come from China, where the adoption there is just so fast. We've seen that with OpenClaw, haven't we? Yes. They just don't have access to other chatbots that we do. But the OpenClaw stuff has just taken off massively. And the LLMs are good enough and open enough and much cheaper to be able to drive them.

42:01Essentially, what he was saying was robots are going to have minds of their own and they will need the resources, the energy resources to keep going. and like a mother with a child i think that's what he was saying that they'll do anything to get that mother with a child it has two sides to it yeah very very nurturing nurturing but yeah you ever come across a bear with a cub they will do anything to keep them alive so um that was fascinating it was also great to hear from a chinese tech boss as you just said you know China is such an important player in this AI race. And it's actually quite rare to hear from people at the top of their tree over there.

42:43So it was really great to have them on the podcast. That is it for this week's episode of the Times Tech Podcast. And we'd love to know your thoughts on today's discussion. What do you think about data centers? Do you welcome having one near you? Do you think they're as important as electricity grids and ports? email us at techpod at thetimes.co.uk. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye. This episode of the Times Tech Podcast is sponsored by ServiceNow. There's a lot of excitement around AI right now, but the problem is what happens after the demo. When you have to plug that technology into a real company.

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