AI’s Power Hunger, Sovereign AI & Sand Scarcity - Lessons from South Africa (with Tom Eaton)

Graeme Codrington and Dean Van Leeuwen explore this month’s “grey elephants”: the collision of AI and energy demand, the strategic rise of sovereign AI, and an overlooked resource, sand. Then Graeme sits down with Cape Town–based writer and columnist Tom Eaton to unpack what the world can learn from South Africa’s last 30 years: state capture, institutional decay and repair, and why change can arrive suddenly, good or bad.

Key Topics Discussed

AI x Energy

Data centres scaling to small-nation power loads; AI is both energy hog and grid optimizer.

Two futures: grids buckle vs. AI catalyses smarter, cleaner, more resilient systems.

Boardroom takeaway: align digital and energy strategies; efficiency is competitive advantage.

“Cloud” in Space

Big idea doing the rounds: gigawatt-scale AI training clusters off-planet.

Regardless of space hype, leaders must solve earthbound energy constraints first.

Sovereign AI

Nations racing to control compute + energy + data to reduce dependency on rivals.

Corporate echo: prove AI value, then move toward sovereign AI footprints (own models, data, infra).