The Next AI Trade

For all its trite thoughts and profound-yet-trivial musings, the latest annual letter from Warren Buffett contained a rather insightful segment, one which may prove to be apocryphal to US hopes of leading the AI revolution. Discussing the recent "earnings disappointment" at Berkshire's energy subsidiary, BHE (Berkshire Hathaway Energy) which generates over 30 gigawatts of power and is one of the largest US energy distributors, and lamenting the regulatory chaos across various blue states (most notably California), Buffett said that "when the dust settles, America’s power needs and the consequent capital expenditure will be staggering. I did not anticipate or even consider the adverse developments in regulatory returns and, along with Berkshire’s two partners at BHE, I made a costly mistake in not doing so."

The Omaha Billionaire is not the only one to raise the red flag about the coming electricity crisis.

In an op-ed titled just that, the WSJ editorial board writes that while Biden and the press "keep raising alarms about a climate crisis that his policies can’t do much about, in the meantime they’re ignoring how government climate policies are contributing to a looming electric-grid crisis that is more urgent and could be avoided." The oped then expands on Buffett's fatalistic ruminations: