Howard Lutnick Claims Data Center Critics Are Voicing ‘Propaganda’ — Gets Nailed With Receipts Showing He Pushed the Very Same Talking Point

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick declared on Wednesday that AI data centers using massive amounts of water is “propaganda” — despite making the same claim himself just a year ago.

Lutnick appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday and when the topic of data centers and pushback to them came up, Lutnick was adamant that they don’t actually “use water” as he laughed off the supposed “propaganda.”

He said:

One of my favorite things is when people talk about data centers using water. The number one product in America that uses water is cattle. I mean data centers don’t use water. This is propaganda by our adversaries to try to slow us down. We’ve got the greatest chips in the world, we’ve got the greatest economy in the word.

Data centers are really world class productions. Build a data center, produce huge economics, right? And that economics will go to the community that surrounds it. So I think those who are inviting to data centers will win them and their economies and those communities will just be better off. It’s obvious black and white.

MeidasTouch senior digital editor Acyn Torabi quickly pointed out that Lutnick was discussing the water required by data centers with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last year — and posted the clip showing

The interview originally aired in May 2025 and part of Lutnick’s pitch for states building data centers is actually how much water they use. The commerce secretary argued AI data centers could create thousands of jobs, including people to monitor the huge amounts of water being “sucked” into the center to cool their systems. Data centers can go through hundreds of thousands or even millions of gallons of water a day, based on their size.

According to a May Gallup poll, seven in 10 Americans oppose data centers being built in their area.

Lutnick told Hannity about data centers in 2025:

If you think about it, there are factories in China with a million people working them because that’s what their power is. They’ve got that human capital. In America, we don’t have that human capital. We’ve got something different. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to build these automated factories, the high-tech factories of the future and our people are going to work at the high-tech factories.

Now a $20 billion factory may only employ 3,000 or 4,000, but that means starting salary [is] $75,000 and this is for a technician. So think about it, these AI things, they suck water and they need water and so they need a plumber, but not a “plumber” plumber, they need, like, an HVAC specialist that starts at $100,000. These are great jobs.

Watch above via CNBC.

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