“It’s really a question of will… Do we want the exciting future or the scary future?” — Scot Bryson

Scot Bryson — Founder of Orbital Farm, General Partner at Impactful Capital, circular-systems thinker and long-standing NASA collaborator — joins Samraj to explore how AI is heating the planet, how waste heat could become one of the most powerful sustainability tools we have, and why the future of data centres will shape the future of civilisation.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

0:00 ➤ Intro / Guest Welcome

0:56 ➤ Ethics from a 50,000-ft ecosystem view

2:16 ➤ What ethics means in circular systems

3:15 ➤ The meaning behind “Orbital Farm”

4:33 ➤ Space habitats & circular industrial thinking

5:37 ➤ Abundance vs scarcity: the global contradiction

7:00 ➤ How we define “abundance” properly

8:04 ➤ Scot’s NASA work: astronaut health & extreme systems

9:18 ➤ Converting asteroids into soil & lunar glass habitats

10:51 ➤ The ISS: 25 years of a perfect closed ecosystem

13:02 ➤ Positive futures vs doom narratives

14:03 ➤ Why practical optimism matters

15:19 ➤ Waste heat: the most overlooked resource in AI

16:47 ➤ Data centres as heaters, not energy problems

18:06 ➤ Industrial heat reuse: cement, steel, greenhouses

19:22 ➤ Eliminating waste streams to improve productivity

20:30 ➤ AI, superintelligence & symbiotic infrastructure

22:00 ➤ Mutual survival: lessons from nuclear deterrence

23:30 ➤ Heat reuse in hot climates & desalination

24:42 ➤ Low-temperature desalination & vacuum systems

26:01 ➤ Why hyperscalers must redesign data centres

27:01 ➤ Investors, coalitions & financing green infrastructure

28:17 ➤ What we can implement today

29:25 ➤ “If you led the world…” — Scot’s blueprint

31:10 ➤ Germany’s heat-sharing mandates

32:38 ➤ Carrot vs stick: cheaper capital for green data centres

34:08 ➤ Sustainable-linked debt & data centre certification

35:12 ➤ What Google, Amazon & Microsoft must do now

36:30 ➤ Zero-carbon commitments & the scaling tension

37:33 ➤ Heat-based communities & hyper-local food systems

38:45 ➤ Power purchase agreements for sustainability

40:49 ➤ Why procurement is the real lever of climate action

41:54 ➤ Google’s 1.3 quadrillion tokens & global energy impact

44:12 ➤ EU emissions reporting & advertising’s carbon footprint

45:14 ➤ Scot’s question for the audience

47:44 ➤ Individual action vs organisational impact

49:50 ➤ Institutional influence: universities & endowments

52:40 ➤ Closing reflections

54:20 ➤ Thank You & End

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