The Infrastructure of Intelligence: Data Centers, AI, and the Future of Democratic Power

Every AI interaction, satellite image, and cloud-based decision depends on physical infrastructure that most of us don’t often think about.

Data centers are the hidden backbone of the digital economy, and their proliferation is accelerating in ways that have serious implications for business, geopolitics, and democratic governance.

Sharron McPherson brings a rare vantage point to this conversation. A former Wall Street investment banker and attorney turned disruptive technology strategist, she advises governments and enterprises globally on how emerging technologies reshape the investment landscape, the distribution of power, and the futures of emerging markets. She has taught project finance at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business and serves as a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center. Her work has included advising the U.S. federal government on sustainable job creation under the Inflation Reduction Act.

In this conversation, Sharron will take us inside data centers: what they actually are, how they operate, and why the next generation looks very different than what exists today. From offshore platforms to orbital infrastructure, the physical home of our data is moving.

She'll then trace the thread from data center proliferation to AI advancement to Earth observation technology, and raise a question every leader should be thinking about: as the capacity to gather, store, analyze, and transmit data scales exponentially, who controls it, who benefits from it, and what does that mean for democratic institutions and global equity?

This is a conversation about infrastructure. It is also a conversation about power.

The conversation will be followed by audience Q&A.