Why the Data Center Explosion is Driving Silver Prices Toward $100
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Okay, let's talk about gold and silver.
So in a recent podcast, I predicted that silver would hit $100 an ounce in 2026.
And in explaining the reasons why I think that's the case, I talked about the industrial demand for silver.
But I want to elaborate on that a little bit here and talk about what I think is the primary driver. for silver consumption in industry, which I believe is the primary reason why silver continues to skyrocket.
And as the price goes higher, it's actually increasing demand.
So it has sort of a reverse price elasticity compared to a lot of commodities, because as the price goes higher, it causes a lot of industrial suppliers to panic and say, well, we better stockpile some of this and buy it at any price because we need silver to manufacture solar panels or EVs or special advanced battery technology or electronic components, etc.
So there's actually sort of panic buying of physical, well, I don't know if you call it panic buying, but aggressive buying of physical silver in order to stockpile it for these purposes.
Now, I believe that data centers are, that is the exploding demand to build data centers is the core cause behind this demand for silver.
And allow me to explain why.
I believe it's because data centers in the United States, and there are more data centers in the USA than any other country in the world, including China, and especially any European country.
But the data centers in the U.S. suffer from a severe problem, which is power scarcity.
And we've talked about this before.
I started warning about this in the summer.
I said, look, our power grid just doesn't have the spare supply, you know, the terawatt hours annually to dump into data centers.
And very quickly, when you start to study the power grid, you realize there are only a few ways to add terawatt hours to the grid.
And one way is to build nuclear power plants.
And that takes about 15 plus years by the time you do permitting and construction and then bringing it online, etc.
That's 15 years, okay?
That's not going to help us today.
And then, and 15 years is actually sort of the best case scenario.
It could be 19 or 20 years.
We're talking really 2045 before we get a lot of nuclear power online.
So that's not viable in the short run here in the next few years when the race for super intelligence is on and everybody's trying to scale up data centers like crazy.
So the other option typically would be gas turbines.
And gas turbines use natural gas and the gas, of course, rotates the turbine.
And then that rotation is used to generate electricity.
And gas turbines are great, very efficient.
Natural gas is a relatively clean energy source, etc.
And it's abundant in the USA.
The problem is that the gas turbines are multiple years out in terms of wait time.
If you try to order gas turbines right now, depending on the capacity of the gas turbines, the wait time is extensive.
Now, my understanding is that the gas turbine wait times can vary between three and five years, but I tell you what, I just entered a query into an AI agent here that's pretty good at research.
And so we're just going to find out what it says.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll keep talking while it's doing the research and then we'll bring you some of those answers.
And okay, the answer came in very quickly.
So here's the answer.
Let's see the, oh, and this is from the website Utility Dive, which we are trying to spider at censored.news, by the way.
It says that over the last few years, the wait time for large gas turbines has increased from around two and a half or three years to now as long as seven years.
And data center construction is driving a lot of gas turbine demand.
And by the way, let me just put an asterisk right there and explain that, you know, I'm a bit fickle about the way words are pronounced.
And it drives me nuts when people call these turbines because a turbine is, that's a, it's a head.
It's something that people wear on their heads in certain countries and certain cultures.
That's a turbine, okay?
A turbine is what we are talking about here.
A gas turbine.
It's just like, you know, wind turbines generate power from wind.
They are not windmills because they're not milling corn.
Okay.
I know.
I know.
I'm sorry to be so annoying about these things, but accuracy matters in our words.
And it drives me bonkers of people.
Windmills, there's windmills.
Like, are you milling wheat?
Where's the mill?
They're not windmills, are they?
Nobody's milling nothing under the wind turbines.
They are turbines that are generating electricity.
So these are gas turbines, not turbines.
If they were gas turbines, there'd be a bunch of people walking around with headwear.
Okay, okay, I got to cut the turbine, you know, like walking around.
That would be turbines.
And that doesn't generate kilowatt hours, it turns out.
Okay, just to be clear.
Let's see.
Everybody around the world is trying to order new gas turbines, and the lead times are somewhere on the order of five years plus, says Bobby Noble, a senior program manager for gas turbine R ⁇ D at a company called EPRI.
He would probably know since he's the program manager for the gas turbines, right?
Let's see.
Orders placed right now.
This is from another group, GE, says that some orders placed right now are getting delivery in 2028, and then some customers are going to get orders fulfilled in 2030.
So that's, you know, four plus years.
But it depends on the size.
So the larger turbines have five to seven year wait times.
And they have non-refundable reservation fees.
Good luck.
Yeah, okay.
You give us your money today.
We give you a gas turbine in 2032.
Okay.
Trust us.
Yeah.
Okay.
Great.
Let's see.
There are aero derivative turbines from one company that was going to be building some supersonic jet engines.
And it turns out that they found a way to turn these into, I mean, because a jet engine is, you know, it's a fuel turbine that produces thrust.
Well, if you just re-engineer it a little bit, you can just have it produce electricity because, you know, rotational thrust can be used to drive a generator, obviously.
So it's the same concept.
Anyway, they've taken these jet engines.
There's a company called Light Industrials, I think.
They've taken these jet engines and now they can ship gas turbines.
And those can be, I don't know, it's not clear here, but maybe two to five years.
And then there are small turbines, which are up to 15 megawatts.
And those lead times are also increasing according to Siemens Energy.
And then if you want reciprocating gas engines, 2.5 megawatts each, those are lead times of a year or more, according to Power Magazine.
So here's the deal.
In 2024, there were 80 gigawatts of orders placed for turbines.
And the problem is that out of the 80 gigawatts of turbine orders, the annual production among the three largest manufacturers of gas turbines is only 30 gigawatts.
So almost only a third or close to that.
And starting in 2027, it's estimated that the annual orders will exceed 100 gigawatts.
So do the math on that one.
Let's see.
Customers are buying 100 gigawatts of gas turbines or they're placing orders every year, but the manufacturers can only produce 30 gigawatts.
So wait times are going to get insane.
It's going to be eight years, nine years, 10 years.
You see what I'm saying, right?
And there are three companies in the West that do this.
And let's see, that's General Electric, Vernova, Siemens Energy, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
But you know who else makes gas turbines that does a great job with them that you're not allowed to purchase from?
Yeah, Russia.
Russia, which is, of course, sanctioned by the West.
So they can't ship gas turbines.
So the West like shot itself in the face.
Like, oh, we need gas turbines.
Well, the only place they're available is Russia.
Oh, we can't buy from Russia.
Why?
Russia.
Russia is evil.
Oh.
Well, enjoy your power blackouts because the Russians have the lights on.
Yeah, the Russians have energy, but you don't.
And your data centers suck.
You know, you can't even provide power to all your microchips, right?
So that brings us, I mean, I'm still talking about silver, but that brings us to this important point.
What is the one power source that you can deploy in less than a year to power a data center?
What is it?
Solar.
Solar.
You can throw a giant solar field down where there used to be a farm.
This is not my favorite thing.
I would rather have farms producing food, but I'm just talking about the reality of the situation.
So you can roll out a bunch of solar panels, and then you need battery storage because of this crazy thing called nighttime that happens apparently every night on this planet.
It's a very odd thing.
So there's day and then there's night.
And during, and I know it seems obvious, right?
But a lot of people that are talking about solar energy, they seem to forget that there's night and there's also seasonal variation of the angle of the sun.
There's also rain and clouds, cloudy days, storms, solar freaking eclipses and everything else.
So the point is you got to have batteries.
You don't have batteries.
You can't.
I mean, you have to have big batteries to use solar power for a data center.
So guess what element?
Yes, the answer is silver.
Guess what element goes into making solar panels and batteries, that is the good batteries or the batteries that are coming online that can cycle a lot without losing their capacity.
Yes, that would be silver.
The old AG, silver.
So think about it.
The data centers are being built because of this race for AI superintelligence.
And the only way to provide power to them is to really build a lot of solar panels.
And so primarily two countries are building them at scale.
That's India and China, China being the largest one.
There's some solar production in Japan and some in Europe and some in America, et cetera.
But predominantly it's China and India.
And it's China and India who are buying a lot of the silver right now directly from the silver mines because they're producing solar panels.
So as long as there is demand for power fast, like I need power in 2026 for my data center, okay?
Let's say, you know, Elon Musk is screaming such a thing or something.
Or, you know, somebody at OpenAI is screaming or Microsoft screaming.
I need gigawatts of power in 2026.
I can't wait till 2030.
What do you do?
You buy solar panels.
You buy masses of solar panels and then you buy massive battery banks and you use grid shifting technology.
So basically you buy about three times your need, three times your demand in solar, not just twice because solar panels also don't work in the mornings and the evenings and etc.
So you typically buy about three times what you need so that when the sun is shining, you know, you're generating enough electricity to cover the evening and the night and everything else.
So then you need a massive amount of batteries in order to power the data center.
So this is going to drive demand for things like lithium and cobalt and then silver because silver is going into the sodium ion batteries that have more cycling capability, like I said.
So, and silver is going into the data centers as well as the solar panels.
So this, to me, this is the number one reason driving industrial demand for silver right now, plus the EVs.
And China is shipping EVs and even EV trucks all over the world now.
You don't see them in the U.S. because we've tariffed them with 100% tariffs.
But if they weren't tariffed, you would see Chinese-made EVs all over the roads because they're the best cars in the world at this point.
By far, you know, beating Tesla, beating Ford, beating everything.
They're just the best cars in the world.
And I know a lot of Americans don't know that, but whatever, you know, so silver has to be used for all this production.
And in my mind, that's why silver is $66 right now as I'm recording this.
It's over $66.
It's like, wow, wow.
Because remember, it was $30 earlier this year.
We were talking about that on this podcast.
And I was like, remember, it dipped below 30 and I bought a bunch.
I'm like, this is awesome.
That's more than doubled in value, obviously.
Here we go.
Silver is over 100% higher this year alone.
That's amazing.
But I think it's going to 100 in 2026.
And the only thing that could stop it, in my view, now don't take this as financial advice, obviously.
But in my view, the only thing that could stop it would be some kind of crash in the AI data center demand.
And that could happen.
That's a possibility.
So yes, there's a risk that, you know, people talk about the AI bubble.
The AI bubble is going to pop.
Well, I think there's an AI stock bubble, but I don't think there's an artificial bubble in AI demand.
Demand is through the roof and it's going to continue to be through the roof.
But if there's a giant collapse of funding and interest in data centers, then of course, guess what that's going to cause?
That is going to cause a collapse in silver demand, or collapse in solar demand, which will collapse silver demand.
So as far as I can tell, the data center demand is going to continue for years to come, and that's going to keep pushing silver higher and higher for the reasons I already mentioned.
And there's no way that nuclear power catches up here for 15, 20 years, or 25 years.
There's no way that gas turbines catch up.
Why?
Because you can't just 3D print gas turbines.
You can't just wave a magic wand.
Let there be turbines.
No, it doesn't work that way.
Like, you know, the Fed can print dollars.
Let there be dollars.
Shazam is a trillion, but you can't print tanks.
You can't print turbines.
You can't even print turbines even.
You can't print headwear even.
So you're screwed.
There's no source of energy.
What are you going to do?
Every day you got to go outside the data center and pull the cord fire up all the gasoline generators.
And then there's a guy that runs around refilling them with gas.
Is that what you're going to do?
Yeah, that's not going to work.
And it's a fire hazard, too.
On top of that, can you imagine?
So silver demand is going to stay high for the foreseeable future, as far as I can tell.
And if you want to get some physical gold and silver, and again, I can't tell you for sure that it's going to go higher.
Maybe it crashes for some reason that we have not foreseen.
Maybe the aliens show up, right?
And then the markets crash because maybe the aliens bring silver or something.
We have gifts of silver from planet silver, planet Sylvon, or whatever.
They start unloading silver and then the market price collapses.
Yeah, that could happen.
There's like one in a trillion chance of that, but it's not impossible.
But barring something crazy like that, I think silver is going to continue to go much higher.
And silver has already functioned as a life raft or, you know, like a lifeboat as the Titanic of the currency is going down.
People are on lifeboats and you buy your ticket by buying gold and silver.
And it's working.
You know, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
So if you want to get some silver, then our affiliate sponsor is, of course, Battalion Metals with Chris Olson, who I just interviewed.
And the company is co-founded by Tucker Carlson.
And you can find them through our link at metalswithmike.com.
That's metalswithmike.com.
And I forgot to tell you last time, if you use discount code Ranger, then they will waive the shipping insurance fee and you get free shipping insurance.
Not free shipping, but free insurance on the shipping.
You still have to pay the shipping.
But this saves you something, some substantial amount.
I mean, every bit counts.
It lets you get more silver effectively or gold or whatever you're getting.
So anyway, do your own homework on that and don't take this as financial advice.
And what I really recommend is you go to brightlearn.ai and there use the search function at the top of the site.
Well, actually go to books.brightlearn.ai.
And there's a search box there.
Type in silver and click search and it'll bring up all the books about silver.
And then you can check out those books and you can learn.
You can learn about risk aversion.
You can learn about the history of silver.
You can learn about global supply and global demand and industrial uses and risk and the different mints and everything.
Everything you want to know about silver.
And if you don't find the book that you want, you can use the engine there at brightlearn.ai to create the book you want.
It's like, I'm not finding just the right book on silver.
I wanted a book on silver and cats.
Like silver coins and, you know, ferocious felines.
How about that?
You could put that in.
And it would write a book.
It would attempt to write a book, silver and cats.
I'm not sure how that would go.
But check it out there at brightlearn.ai or you can find all the books at books.brightlearn.ai.
So there you go.
Thanks for listening.
Mike Adams here at brighttown.ai and brighttown.com.
Take care.
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