Lloyd Blankfein, Ukraine’s War-Fueled Tech Revolution, Big Tobacco’s Smoke-Free Bet, AI Data Center Gold Rush

17:17unknown host:This is a story about necessity being the mother of invention. The war in Ukraine has passed the a four-year mark, with Russia doing enormous damage to the country and its people. Our special contributor, Krystia Freeland, serves as an unpaid economic advisor to President Zelensky. And when she traveled to Kyiv, we expected to hear about all the losses. But we didn't expect to learn that there are also some ways the country may have benefited. So, Krystia, you're working with President Zelensky to rebuild the Ukrainian economy after this war is over. As we look at Ukraine right now, it looks like just pure devastation.

17:56unknown host:But as you work on that project, do you see some bright spots, particularly in the tech sector?

18:00Lloyd Blankfein:I do, David. And I want to start by being careful not to overstate my role. So I'm an unpaid volunteer advisor. I don't have any executive authority, and I want to be clear about that. Having said that, I really believe in Ukraine. I think that Ukraine's fight is actually the fight of the whole democratic world. And having been there a lot in recent months, I think there are tremendous economic opportunities. These are going to be important for Ukraine because after the war, Ukraine doesn't have to just rebuild. Ukraine has to transform itself. And I think there are going to be some great investment opportunities.

18:42unknown host:So obviously, Europe has been supportive of Ukraine. and Europe needs its own defense buildup besides Ukraine's defense buildup. To what extent is there integration happening between Ukraine and the rest of Europe in tech?

18:56Lloyd Blankfein:There is a lot. And what I have seen, and I think this is something that has just happened over the past six to 12 months, is a real transformation in how Europe is looking at Ukraine. I would say at the beginning of the war, Europeans saw Ukraine as, you know, kind of the righteous victim, as virtuous, as wronged, kind of a charity case, and important to support for those moral reasons. I would say that today, Europe is increasingly seeing Ukraine as an important ally and a powerful ally.

19:38unknown host:What does Ukraine need, the tech sector specifically, to become all it can be as you rebuild the economy, as you advise President Zelensky? What do they need? Is it capital mainly?

19:49Lloyd Blankfein:Money is the most important thing. I think that we're going to see a lot of smart investors going in. That has already started. And, you know, it started slowly. 2025, the Ukrainian government estimates, you know, was only just over$100 million of investment in the defense tech sector. But there are now some Ukrainian defense companies emerging with multiple billion dollar valuations.

20:19unknown host:We've seen the use of technology for defensive purposes, military purposes. We also hear about dual use, going beyond the defense, the military. What are the possible applications, as you look at it, for Ukraine tech in actually civilian use?

20:34Lloyd Blankfein:You know, in a way, David, that's almost where this all started. Even before the war, the Ukrainian government had this idea that one of the ways that they had to kickstart the economy, One of the ways that they had to complete this as yet unfinished transformation from effectively a Soviet economy to a modern Western market economy was through digitalization. And the government has been working on that really, really intensively. We think about Estonia as a super digital government. We think about India as having done really, really well there. I think the Ukrainians are starting to nip at the heels of those two countries.

21:20Lloyd Blankfein:They have this application called GIA, which regular Ukrainians can use to do pretty much everything they need to do with the government. And the Ukrainians are now working on powering GIA using AI agents.

21:37unknown host:Krisha, you very recently visited Kiev again. And I know you met with a woman who actually is on the forefront of that digitalization for the government. Tell us about her and what you learned.

21:48Lloyd Blankfein:Yeah, I had a wonderful conversation with an extremely young woman called Nelly Blinova. And she is one of the young Ukrainians who I just find so inspiring. She works in the Department of Digital Transformation. And she is one of the people whose job it is to provide as many government services as possible to Ukrainians online. And increasingly, she says they've moved from digitalization to agentization, which is to say bringing AI into the provision of services. When did Ukraine start to really embrace digitization and why?

22:34unknown host:Yeah, I think that it all started back in 2019 when the Ministry of Digital Transformation was created. And over this time, we built plenty of projects. We created the whole ecosystem with DIA not just being a digital platform, but DIA City for businesses, DIA Osvita for people to learn digital skills. The Brave One platform, which is now related to raising funds for the defense sector, is also everything that is under the ministry. So we just realized that we need to change that. But actually now our mission has evolved. And now we are moving from the digital state to an agentic state. And for us, it's not a distant vision.

23:16unknown host:It's already a reality. It's already happening. And we have some proofs that can highlight that that's what's happening right now.

23:23Lloyd Blankfein:Okay, explain what you've just said. What does it mean to move from a digital state to an agentic state?

23:29unknown host:An agentic state is the state where a government delivers services proactively, like anticipating citizens' needs. Basically, instead of going and asking for plenty of documents, even via DIA, like I need that and that, the agent can react to your needs before you even have to ask.

23:53Lloyd Blankfein:What effect has the full-scale Russian invasion had on Ukraine's digital transformation?

24:00unknown host:I think that it had a tremendous effect on how things sped up. On the one hand, Ukraine was already moving quite fast. So we launched Dia, and it was before the full-scale invasion. We had this opportunity and we had a political will to move fast. But when the full-scale invasion started, we understood that for us, it's not just a question of leadership, of technological leadership, it's a question of national survival in a way. So in my opinion, this full-scale invasion just made things clear that we need to move even faster. And this phrase that I like to say, and that we understood that we should take risks, we should start taking more risks.

24:44unknown host:And of course, risks mean taking responsibility, so we started taking more responsibility for the new things that we are creating. And for us, technologists and innovations in general, we believe that this is the thing that can help us win the peace and secure our economic growth and breakthrough. Tell me a little bit about Dia. Dia. Okay. Dia is our flagrant project. It's our super app. Basically, it's a digital platform, both on the portal and on the app where we have our services. So currently DIA has more than 200 plus services available via portal. So citizens can just log in. They should proceed via their identification process and they can find some information about their needs, something that is related to what usually governments provide to citizens.

25:38unknown host:So basically everything that you can think of which is related through public services. But I wanted to add that if in the DA portal, we have like six plus million of users, so plus million of Ukrainians are using the database every day. On the app, we have more than 23 million of users because people like using their phones, they can just access. We have more than 33 digital documents there. I have my passport there, my international passport, my tax number. If I were to have a car, I would have my car there. If I were to have children again, I would have my children registered there. I even have the certificate of higher education there as well.

26:23unknown host:And DEA actually was the first portal that created the opportunity to get married online. So Ukraine launched their online marriage. And it makes things way easier for people now that are separated because of the war. While somebody is on the front line or somebody from the family had to move abroad, so now it is possible for people to be together just via a few clicks in GIA without any requirements to be present and to be on site.

26:53Lloyd Blankfein:And if I were to be Ukrainian and if I had my documents on GIA, are they as good as a hard copy?

27:01unknown host:Oh, yes, they are definitely as good as hard copies. So in Ukraine, we almost never carry physical documents on us.

27:10Lloyd Blankfein:In many countries right now, when it comes to technology, particularly when it comes to AI, people are getting worried. They're getting worried that AI will take all the jobs. They're getting worried that maybe AI will control us all. Do you have those worries? Do Ukrainians have those worries? I think they do.

27:29unknown host:I think everybody has this worries. And if you look at the market now, there are more and more AI specialists who are replacing or stepping in. More jobs can be replaced in without even human intervention. This is another revolution and we just have to get used to that. And by getting used to that, I do not mean to be passive or indifferent. I mean to start actively getting more knowledge about how to work with this thing. Of course, we cannot be confident 100 % that everybody will accept that and everybody will be comfortable with that. But it's been there all the time. When the internet appeared, people also were not sure how to use that and what to do about it.

28:11unknown host:But of course, when it comes to risks, we should be very careful here, extremely careful. And more than that, we developed a unique framework which does not allow users, like citizens' data, to be transferred to the cloud models. So personal data of our citizens always remains within the DIA perimeter, within our perimeter, so it is secure. This hybrid approach allows us to keep the most sensitive data in Ukraine by some parts of the data outside of Ukraine. Because again, it's a two-way question. It's not secure to have everything in Ukraine. But at the same time, we cannot allow just big tech companies to have all of our data.

28:56unknown host:Coming up, tobacco has had a notorious history and been through more than nine lives. Now it's making the case for satisfying your tobacco habit, but this time without smoke.

29:15Lloyd Blankfein:Support for the show comes from Public. Public is an investing platform that offers access to stocks, options, bonds, and crypto. And they've also integrated AI with tools that can assist investors in building customized portfolios. One of these tools is called Generated Assets. It allows you to turn your ideas into investable indexes. So let's say you're interested in something specific like biotech companies with high R &D spend, small cap stocks with improving operating margins, or the S &P 500 minus high debt companies. Chances are there isn't an ETF that fits your exact criteria. But on public, you just type in a prompt and their AI screens thousands of stocks and build a one-of-a-kind index.

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31:28unknown host:We buy insurance for peace of mind, but every year millions of claims are denied. Not because people did anything wrong, but because their policies quietly excluded what happened. Insurers know every detail. Policyholders rarely do. That's why My Policy Advocate exists. For just 27 cents a day, their platform reads your policies and explains where you are vulnerable. They don't sell insurance. They deliver transparency. Before you trust your policy to protect you, let My Policy Advocate tell you what it really says. Go to MyPolicyAdvocate.com.

32:03unknown host:This is a story about the many faces of a single vice. For more than a century, tobacco has been one of the most regulated industries in the global economy. And with every new regulation, it's come back in a different form. Now tobacco firms are adapting again, sidelining cigarettes in favor of smoke-free products. They call it harm reduction and are finding some business success. But critics say the long-term health effects are still unknown. Our colleague, Michael McKee, takes us to Switzerland. At a state-of-the-art facility in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, the world's biggest tobacco company is building a new future.

32:43unknown host:I think cigarettes should end up in a museum. Cigarettes are out and smoke-free products are in, now consumed by more than 100 million people around the world. By 2030, we should have two-thirds of the revenues coming from this product. The products have also enjoyed a bit of a cultural moment.

33:01Lloyd Blankfein:Where there's smoke, there's just me vaping. You guys zins?

33:05unknown host:What? Zin? No. Everyone zins. Zin is not a sin. That's the advertising campaign. Really? But the tobacco industry has been here before when cigarettes were cool. Until they weren't. It's camel time, camel time. It's flavor time for you. So the early days of cigarettes, it was hard to watch a movie without seeing someone holding a cigarette and smoking it.

33:28Lloyd Blankfein:Bond.

33:30unknown host:James Bond. It was just very commonplace. Shall we just have a cigarette on it? Yes, sir. The level of awareness was just not there. It was culturally acceptable. Ken Shea is a Bloomberg analyst who's been covering the tobacco industry for more than 25 years. Back in the 1960s, roughly half of all U.S. adults smoked. Today, it's down about 11 percent. There is a definite significant health hazard associated with cigarette smoking. The evidence was emerging that smoking was harmful to people's health. Lauren Saplicke is a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University who studies corporate influence on health and policymaking.

34:16unknown host:In the late 1900s and early 21st century, what we saw was really an emergence of public awareness of how much the tobacco industry had lied to the public. Even in front of Congress testifying that nicotine is not an addictive substance. That has really generated a lot of mistrust. Philip Morris International, or PMI, is the largest publicly traded tobacco company in the world, making some of the most well-known cigarettes on the market. I think we're at the stage that we're building a product and functional benefits. Jasik Olczyk began his career with PMI in 1993, working his way up to become CEO in 2021.

35:00unknown host:Olczyk's vision is delivering a smoke-free future for the company. The tobacco companies for years fought the idea that cigarette smoke was bad for you. When did you figure out that this was going to be a losing proposition business-wise? And how did you make that transition into the non-combustible space? When I joined Philippe Boris, I think the positions were very clear. Okay, the cigarettes are not a great idea for your health, cigarettes are addictive. The big question is, what are you going to do about it? We almost eliminated entire investments behind the combustible cigarettes, and we redirected all of these resources behind the product.

35:40unknown host:We now understand why cigarettes have such a negative impact on a human health, on a smoker's health. The whole thing is about the smoke, which is a result of combustion and then you release all the hundreds and hundreds of quite deadly or very deadly toxicants. But if you remove the combustion, if you eliminate the smoke, then essentially you have a product which can allow smokers to continue using the product, but with a much, much, much lower exposure to all the harmful toxicants, et cetera. In recent years, the tobacco industry has focused on creating more nicotine products, so things that aren't necessarily combustible cigarettes, but can be things like vapes, or now we're seeing nicotine pouches.

36:30unknown host:These products still contain nicotine, which is one of the most addictive substances that can be commercially purchased in the United States and around the world. Some even say that it's as addictive as heroin or cocaine. The health effects of nicotine addiction can lead to mood dysregulation, increased levels of anxiety, maybe even influenza-like feelings. If you are addicted to nicotine and you stop using it, you're trying to quit, you're going to experience that terrible withdrawal symptoms. Despite warnings from public health experts, smoke-free products have skyrocketed, driven by more and more users looking for an alternative to cigarettes.

37:09unknown host:That's changing the bottom line for tobacco producers like Philip Morris, a company which has a market cap of nearly$300 billion, larger than Goldman Sachs, McDonald's, and Disney. So about 40 % of Philip Morris International's revenues are what they call smoke-free. That includes the all-nicotine products like Zinn and also Icos, the heated tobacco product. Icos and Zinn are two of Philip Morris' most successful smoke-free products that are very different from one another. Zinn is a tobacco-free nicotine pouch that you insert between your lip and gum. It comes in a variety of flavors and nicotine strengths.

37:47unknown host:Icos is a heat-not-burn device that takes out the combustion part of traditional smoking. The way we design Icos is essentially the replica of cigarettes. It didn't have to look like a cigarette, but it actually helped smokers together. And the big surprise, positive surprise at that time, was the adoption rate. Because very early we learned that from 100 people trying Icos, buying Icos device, 70%, 7-0, will stay with Icos and will completely stop smoking. Icos was kind of a pioneer in that it was a product that was sleek. It wasn't embarrassing to bring out as a facsimile for a cigarette. It checked the full of boxes in terms of the ritual of smoking.

38:30unknown host:But I think the early days, it was hard to convince a smoker that why would they want to fumble around with a device? But Philomoros was smart in going to some of the markets where new electronic gadgets were more acceptable, like Japan, South Korea, Italy. For whatever reason, these markets adopted these products early on. More than 42 % of the revenue are coming from this product. Icos today by revenue is larger than Marlboro. Which is the best performing product at this point? Which one has been taken up most quickly?

39:06Lloyd Blankfein:I mean, Icos is still the best performing in terms of a conversion.

39:10unknown host:Obviously, there was a lot of excitement about the nicotine pouches because the growth rate month on month, quarter on quarter, year on year is much higher than Icos, but we're comparing to incomparable by size. Pouches are very promising. I think they offer very good harm reduction potential. Zinn is a product that was originally made by Swedish Match and had done really well in the local markets in Sweden. And Philomoros International thought it was a great idea to acquire them in 2022 and take it to the U.S. It has attained pre-market tobacco approval and is by far the biggest winner in the roughly$20 billion oral tobacco market.

39:51unknown host:Consumers have really embraced Zinn as a product that is less harmful than cigarettes, but also it's more discreet. It comes in different flavors. They had coffee flavor. They had mint flavor. It's a product that it's not messy. You don't have to go out and smoke it. Unlike a tobacco smokeless product, you don't have to spit. It was small, I could use it, and no one would know I had it in. It's a product that a white-collar consumer can use discreetly at his desk. It was a far superior product than any other nicotine pouch, and it made me feel great. And all that for a price that was pretty inexpensive.

40:31unknown host:Global's in-shipments are predicted to more than double, from just$421 million in 2023 to an estimated$1 billion in 2026, while nicotine pouch sales grew by more than 35 % in both the U.S. and Europe last year. We're here at PMI's Aurora facility. We broke ground in December of 2024. This increase in demand led PMI to build a new production facility in Aurora, Colorado. As you can see, we have a state-of-the-art facility where we're producing zinc nicotine pouches for distribution in the United States. And this is what the pouch looks like. It's really quite simple. It's a plant-based pouch. And inside there, we have pharmaceutical grade nicotine that is derived, it's extracted from tobacco leaf.

41:16unknown host:We have fillers, we have stabilizers, and we have food grade ingredients. So everything in here is basically either a food grade ingredient or pharmaceutical grade nicotine. It's placed between the upper lip and gum, kept there for about 30 minutes, and it's gonna deliver nicotine over that time. The critics would argue that these products hook either existing users or even new users to nicotine. The marketing for nicotine pouches often uses potentially misleading claims. Things like these are tobacco-free, which might make people believe that they're free of harm. But that actually downplays all of the risks that are associated with nicotine addiction.

41:55unknown host:The nicotine had me. That's how addictions work. That's how nicotine works. And I was addicted. I was probably in my height of using Zinn going through a tin a day. Remember on our first date that you told me you had a Zinn a day? I did. I forgot about that. Will Lamas was a frequent user of Zinn pouches, a habit he claims caused a number of health issues. So a few years into using Zinn, I started having some health problems. I remember it started with a pain in my stomach and then for about six months my stomach was constantly irritated. And one day I was on Reddit and I found a subreddit called quitting Zin.

42:37unknown host:And I was reading some of the posts and they were by Zin users trying to quit or on their journey to quit. And they're talking about how their stomach used to hurt, their blood pressure used to be high, their heart rate was always racing, and a few weeks after they quit, almost all those side effects were going away. From then on, I told myself, I'm going to quit. Zin for me was the healthier version of nicotine, and it's true. If you are addicted to nicotine, addicted to cigarettes or dip, zin is a healthier version, but at the same time, it's the lesser of two evils. That doesn't mean it is healthy.

43:18unknown host:In response to health concerns, PMI says that no nicotine product is risk-free. And for those worried about their health, the best choice is to stop consuming nicotine altogether. The research on the long-term health outcomes related to nicotine pouches isn't there yet. These products are relatively new on the marketplace. And so that research is necessary and needs to be supported to really understand the long-term health outcomes. But nicotine itself is an addictive substance, so we know that there's inherent harm with using any nicotine product. It can cause a lifelong struggle with addiction that can lead to potentially devastating mental and physical health outcomes through the withdrawal symptoms.

44:02unknown host:And that addiction cycle can be really devastating. I needed Zinn to feel normal. And at that point, I realized this has really got a grip on me and I do have a problem. Despite the potential risks, smoke-free products continue to gain traction across domestic and international markets. The nicotine profit pool continues to grow because it's just an innate craving that consumers have to satisfy. Consumers now have more choices to choose cigarette as a harmful product to things that are less harmful. And that's the bet. The nicotine craving will remain even if cigarettes fall into the ash heap of history.

44:40unknown host:Can you imagine a day when Philip Boris does not sell cigarettes? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Up next, the new world of AI meets the old world of carpenters and plumbers. How data centers are making America great for construction workers.

45:02Lloyd Blankfein:Support for the show comes from Public. Lately, it feels like there are two types of investing platforms. Some are traditional brokerages that haven't changed much in decades, and others feel less like investing and more like a game. Public is positioned differently. It's an investing platform for people who are serious about building their wealth. On Public, you can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto without all the bugs or the confetti. Retirement accounts? Yep. High-yield cash? Yes, again. They even have direct indexing. Public has modern design, powerful tools, and customer support that actually helps.

45:37Lloyd Blankfein:Go to public.com slash market and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash market.

45:46unknown host:Add paid for by Public Holdings. Brokered services by Public Investing, member FINRA SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, SEC Registered Advisor. Crypto services by ZeroHash. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures.

46:01Lloyd Blankfein:Being a small business owner isn't just a career. It's a calling. Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. That's why they make business growth their priority. The Chase team takes the time to understand your mission, where you are now, and where you want to go. Their broad range of solutions is designed with you in mind so you can bring your ideas to life. From banking to payment acceptance to credit cards, you can conveniently manage all your business finances all in one place with their digital tools. Looking for tips and advice? Their online resources are always available to give you the solutions you need to help your business thrive.

46:39Lloyd Blankfein:See how your business can get stronger and go farther with Chase for Business. Learn more at chase.com slash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026. JPMorgan Chase and Company.

47:00unknown host:Here's a paradox. We buy insurance for peace of mind, yet the very policies we trust can deliver the biggest financial shocks. Across America, millions of claims are denied every year, not because people did anything wrong, but because policies quietly excluded the things that happened. The psychology of trust tells us we assume the contract is fair, But in insurance, the information gap is massive. The insurer knows every detail of what's covered. The policyholder rarely does. That's where My Policy Advocate comes in. For just 27 cents a day, their platform reads your policies and shows you in plain language where you're vulnerable.

47:36unknown host:They're not selling insurance. They don't do that. It's about transparency, giving ordinary people the same understanding insurance companies have had for decades. Because when you know what's really in your policy, you can plan, protect, and avoid surprises. Before you trust your policy to protect you, let My Policy Advocate tell you what it really says. Visit MyPolicyAdvocate.com today. Peace of mind starts with knowing the truth. MyPolicyAdvocate.com

48:06unknown host:This is a story about new tricks needing some old dogs. Since the time of the Industrial Revolution, Americans have relied on construction workers to build the foundations of the economy. For over a hundred years, it was the factories we needed for old-fashioned manufacturing. But today, it's high-tech data centers that are driving the need for skilled workers to build our future.

48:32unknown host:I may be a little biased here, but if you're an individual that wants to build great things, there's no better time to be in the construction industry. Everybody wants a construction worker who needs a construction worker right now. The income that they're offering has almost doubled. Just the demand itself for skilled tradesmen and electricians in particular, it's definitely risen. The explosion of AI investment has led to a boom in the need for data centers. And that means the country needs more construction workers, and it needs them now. The scale of the projects and the demand coming with projects at that mega scale continues to increase.

49:06unknown host:Mark Whitson began his career as a carpenter 25 years ago. Today, he is president at DPR Construction, one of the largest data center builders in the United States. If you read in certain places, they'll tell you 100 gigawatts is what the collective demand between now and 2030 will be. I think that's woefully understated from what we're seeing from our partners and owners is that that could be what they're looking for in 2026 and 2027. I think it'll be a multiple of that. The construction duration also varies from 11 to 12 to 24, 36 months, depending on the size. But as you can imagine, with the demand that's out there right now for these AI factories, everybody wants them faster and they want them less costly.

49:55unknown host:And so it's a challenge and an opportunity for the industry right now. The opportunity for a company like DPR is growing to meet that ever-increasing demand. The challenge is making sure you have the people you need to keep up. Neela Richardson is a Bloomberg contributor and analyzes employment data at ADP. Neela, is there a surge in construction-related employment? Well, there has been. Over the last five years, we've seen at ADP those numbers go up by 20%. That's two and a half times more than the all employees, all industries. But it's slowed recently, and that is due to demographics. It's not just employer demand driving construction, hiring.

50:37unknown host:It's the natural pacing of father time on that industry. A lot of construction workers are retiring. Labor shortages are nothing new to the construction industry. But Whitson says the expertise needed to build data centers means that this time might be different. One of the things that makes the data centers more unique is really around the pace and scale, especially today, where some of the components within the data center may not be as unique, but when you amplify that by the scale of these projects and the reduced pace of these projects, it becomes different and becomes the need for additional skill set that's more specialized than some of the other types of commercial construction.

51:20unknown host:Data center construction requires more specialized, skilled workers, the kind that typically come with experience over years, which means there's a problem when retirement time comes around. Well, let's take HVAC because that's where we're seeing a huge demographic hit. And it's not because young people are coming into the industry and becoming HVAC engineers. I wish that was the case. Older workers are leaving and so is their expertise and their sophistication. So when you go back to a data center where one or two degrees makes a big difference and how much you're emitting into the atmosphere, into the environment, that level of sophistication and expertise is retiring at this moment.

52:03unknown host:As in any other market, when the supply for skilled workers falls behind demand, the result shows up in prices. It does. And wage growth has been higher. Not only wage growth, but bonuses. We clocked bonuses for construction workers at ADP, and there are twice the amount of regular employees outside of the industry. Now, bonuses were a big deal during the Great Resignation, trying to get people in. But they've kind of gone by the wayside for most industries, but not construction. They're still a valuable tool in getting people to, in drawing workers in and drawing them away from their employer.

52:43unknown host:All this creates an attractive potential opportunity for young people eager to meet the moment. Did you get it? Mm-hmm. Sweet. Inside an electrician class at Germana Community College in Virginia, The banker's right here. Students from all walks of life are studying to be job ready. So I work up north, and there's a number of job vacancies that they're seeking, not just installers, not just HVAC, but electricians in particular, because it impacts safety, impacts energy, you name it. So there's just a ton of jobs around that field. So I think just long term, I'm trying to hedge my bets. I see job postings all the time.

53:22unknown host:I'm a member of a union and we get all kinds of postings. Just in my area in Manassas, there's, I think, three different data centers that have sprung up just in the past couple years that I've been there. So they're constantly hiring. And then make sure everybody else knows. Tina Lance is the Dean of Workforce Development at Germana.

53:39Lloyd Blankfein:Our role in the community is several, several reasons. One of the things that we do is work with our employers to make sure that we are meeting their workforce pipeline needs. It's been really easy for students to be hired with skilled trades in the region, absolutely. The demand far exceeds the number of laborers that we have available in our market.

54:00unknown host:There are currently seven data centers actively being built near Germana, with many more in the works. The credentials that are most in demand for data centers are electrical, HVAC, plumbing, as well as data center operators.

54:15Lloyd Blankfein:So those are the ones that right now we're spending quite a bit of time making sure we're doing our very best to increase the pipeline. Enrollment has absolutely been increasing over the last few years for skilled trades. You have many students that are now looking at skilled trades or credentials as a way to get a skill, get a job right out of high school. There are different things that draw people to further their education in a particular area. Many times it's passion, what they're interested in. Sometimes what you'll see is people do it because of the money. Welding right now is in high demand, and so many of those students will graduate with their certification, immediately get hired, and we've had several of our students that within the first year or two, they're in a six-figure annual salary.

55:09Lloyd Blankfein:So that's pretty significant when you think about somebody 20, 21 years old with really no debt from a student educational standpoint with a six-figure salary.

55:23unknown host:Beyond bringing more workers to the construction site by offering higher pay and more training, companies are also bringing work to the workers. Is this all good now? Yeah. Michael Davis is a superintendent at DPR's prefabrication assembly facility. That looks pretty good. otherwise known as the Prefab Lab in Raleigh, North Carolina. Labor shortages are something we're seeing in the industry. One way we're working to fix that issue is we're prefabricating a lot of products off-site. And then on-site, we're using anyone who's a new hire to skilled labor to be able to assemble the products we're shipping out and are able to keep up and, if not, beat schedules.

56:06unknown host:So we're doing very complex walls, soffits, radiuses, or complex geometry, and turning those into various kits or even panels and shipping them to jobs where we can use apprentices straight out of our apprenticeship or people off the street just starting construction for the first time all the way to skilled labor to be able to assemble them within a day or two of training. And we're doing finished product with that. Technology is the rage across all of American business right now, including with data centers. To what extent can you rely upon technology to replace some of the workers that you lack?

56:40unknown host:Well, it's a great question, David. And I don't know that I'd frame it in the way of replacing workers that we have. It's actually allowing the workforce to do more and to maybe do things that are more productive, more effective, more impactful. And so the technology is allowing us to help mitigate a reduction or a lack of availability in workforce. I think you started as a carpenter originally. I did. How has the image and role of construction worker changed over your career? I would say that it's starting to transform. I think that the reputation in the construction industry has not always been the greatest.

57:16unknown host:And I think that it's an unfair stigma that is put on the industry. And I think that we've got to continue to help change the narrative, really to reality, which is much better than it was 25 years ago when I started. but we've also got to do more to improve the construction industry so that it's more attractive to more people. I remember my industrial arts class was my favorite class for a very long time and if someone had said to me, hey Neela, you don't have to be an economist, you can be a carpenter, we might be having a very different conversation right now. But no one said that to me. I didn't understand that to be a field, especially for women.

57:57unknown host:But I think that is changing. The skills demands for the economy makes it so. But it's really about getting young people excited about these blue-collar jobs as well as other places in the economy. It's a really exciting field to produce again and to make things, make things that feed the next technological boom in the United States. AI promises us a wealth of new tricks, but to get there, we need the old dog of traditional construction and the skilled labor it requires. Putting the question to people like the younger Neelas and Marks of this world, whether to become an economist or a carpenter.

58:38unknown host:That does it for us here at Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. See you next week for more stories of capitalism.

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