The Slowest-Moving Train Wreck in History

Dear Reader,

This is Dylan Jovine with Behind the Markets.

Happy Monday.

Today is Monday, August 17th.

Today I want to talk about the Hoover Dam.

I read a piece in Popular Mechanics recently that stopped me cold.

And I think you need to know about it.

The Slowest-Moving Train Wreck in History

The Hoover Dam is facing an unprecedented crisis.

Lake Mead — the reservoir that powers the dam — is approaching a critical threshold of 1,035 feet above sea level.

Once the water drops below that level, 12 of the dam's 17 turbines are forced to shut down.

They were simply not designed to operate in such low water conditions.

The result: the Hoover Dam could lose up to 70% of its power-generating capacity.

Popular Mechanics called it the slowest-moving train wreck in history.

That's not hyperbole.

Think about what the Hoover Dam actually powers.

Los Angeles. Las Vegas. Phoenix.

The entire American Southwest has been built on nearly a century of cheap, clean hydroelectric power from that dam.

A 70% reduction in that capacity is not a minor inconvenience.

It's a crisis.

Playing Whack-a-Mole

The US Bureau of Reclamation has been trying to delay the inevitable.

Holding back water in Lake Powell to protect the Glen Canyon Dam upstream.

Shuffling water between reservoirs.

Managing the decline as carefully as they can.

When you read the Popular Mechanics article, there's only one way to describe it.

Whack-a-Mole.

They fix one problem and another pops up somewhere else.

The underlying issue — a drying Southwest and decades of overdrawn water rights — doesn't have a quick fix.

Why This Matters for AI

Here's where this connects to everything we've been talking about on this channel.

Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, has said publicly that if China has an energy advantage over us, they will beat us in AI.

Energy is the foundation layer of the entire AI stack.

No power, no compute.

No compute, no AI.

The Hoover Dam crisis is not just an environmental story.

It's a national security story.

It's an AI competitiveness story.

And it highlights exactly why the conversation around clean, reliable, affordable energy is so urgent right now.

The Solution That's Already Working

Here's the good news.

Geothermal energy is already stepping into the gap — and it's doing it right in the Southwest where it's needed most.

Geothermal already supplies nearly 10% of Nevada's power.

It's expanding into Southern California and Arizona.

Nevada is already a major US geothermal hub, sitting on some of the best geothermal resources in the country.

And here's the number that really got my attention.

Nevada's existing geothermal infrastructure already generates twice as much electricity as the Hoover Dam.

Twice as much.

Unlike solar and wind — which are intermittent, dependent on weather and daylight — geothermal is continuous.

It's reliable baseload power, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It mimics exactly the stabilizing role the Hoover Dam has played for the past hundred years.

And unlike nuclear — which takes decades to permit and costs $10 to $15 billion to build — a geothermal plant can be up and running for around $500 million.

That is a staggering financial advantage.

Why the Smart Money Is Already There

This is why Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Berkshire Hathaway's energy subsidiary MidAmerican are all rushing to cut deals with geothermal providers.

This is why Energy Secretary Chris Wright — a former geothermal industry CEO — has made it a priority.

This is why the Trump administration has backed it.

It's clean. It's reliable. It's dramatically cheaper than the alternatives.

And it's already scaling in exactly the places that need it most.

Water runs to the easiest level it can find.

In the energy world right now, geothermal is that level.

And we just released a special report on the top geothermal play on the market.

Read the exclusive report here.

Have a wonderful day.

I'll see you tomorrow.

“The Buck Stops Here,”