Last Tuesday the rule sent me to Deep Eddy Cabaret, which is where I learned that I had walked into a party. Austin Monthly was releasing its July/August issue, an ode to the city’s dive bars, and Deep Eddy was hosting. The bar turns 75 in November. Raymond and Mickey Hickman opened it in 1951, and they borrowed the name from the swimming hole up the road, which back in 1915 became the first swimming pool in the state of Texas.

So there I am, not getting on MoPac, drinking a Miller High Life (a shout out to my late father), reading a magazine article about the room I’m standing in. It was also a cool moment that I got to meet Executive Editor Bryan C Parker and share that my first company RideScout made it into an Austin Monthly article back in 2013. (But I digress).

I’ve had three things rattling around my head for weeks. The midterms. A soccer team. A book. Standing in that bar, they finally clicked into the same idea.

The magazine got the important part right.

The feature runs 25 bars, written by Anthony Head and Bryan C. Parker, and it doesn’t waste much time trying to define a dive bar, which I appreciated. It settles on this: “good conversation, affordable drinks, and an absence of pretentiousness.”

Read that again and think about how few places are left that clear all three.

A dive bar has no membership. No dues, no committee, no pledge drive, no sign-up genius. It has opening hours and that’s the whole barrier to entry. You don’t have to believe anything to walk in. Some people find that kind of belonging at a church or a synagogue or a Rotary club, and they are important too. But a lot of people don’t join anything at all anymore, and the jukebox doesn’t ask.

The magazine put it in terms of college kids and hippie holdovers sharing the same room. I’d put it in terms that are less charming and more urgent. Dive bars are one of the last affordable places in America where you end up next to somebody who is nothing like you and stay there long enough to find out you’re wrong about them.

Ninety-Nine days.

I heard that this week about the mid-term election. Ninety-nine days until November 3.

Everyone I talk to assumes this midterm will be another brawl. I’m not sure. What I’m picking up feels less like division and more like exhaustion. People aren’t fired up. They’re tired.

And here’s the thing about exhaustion in an election year. It doesn’t show up as anger. It shows up as an empty primary.

Look at what our own low-turnout primary produced in Texas. Ken Paxton beat John Cornyn in the May runoff and became the Republican nominee for Senate. Since then, reporters have found something remarkable in the campaign finance data. Of the nearly 100 donors who gave at least $50,000 to Cornyn’s campaign or its major supporting PACs this cycle, none appeared to have written a check directly to Paxton’s campaign or affiliated PACs after the runoff. Not a slow start. Reporting at Houston Public Media, KERA and Texas Standard all landed on the same finding, and Axios Austin got there a week earlier. Meanwhile the Democratic nominee, state Rep. James Talarico, has been outraising him roughly three to one.

I’m not making a prediction but I am hoping that decency will prevail over politics. I’ve voted for candidates in both parties and I’ll do it again as needed. My point is about the machinery, and it should bother you no matter which jersey you own.

A small number of people voted in March and May. That small number picked the nominee. Now a much larger number of people, including some of that party’s most committed funders, are looking at the result and quietly declining to participate. What I hope that means is that a larger number of Republicans I know and trust cannot stomach the idea of Ken Paxton as a US Senator. And this time, they might be willing to vote for a Democrat.

Which brings me to soccer, believe it or not.

We hosted a World Cup. Our men won Group D, beat Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0, and then got taken apart 4-1 by Belgium in the Round of 16 on July 6 in Seattle. Home soil. Round of 16.

The griping started immediately, and most of it missed. The question isn’t why 26 guys underperformed. The question is why a country of 340 million with more athletes and more money than anyone can’t reliably produce a deeper pool.

The answer showed up in a wave of reporting this summer, and it isn’t complicated. Youth sports in America has become a paid product. Select teams, club fees, travel tournaments, private coaching, hotel rooms in another state most weekends. If your family has the money and one parent with a flexible calendar, your kid gets the experience and visibility needed. If not, your kid gets cut at eleven and never finds out what they had.

Now look at our women, who are the best in the world at almost everything they play. A big reason is that America decided decades ago to give girls a field, a coach, and a season, at a time when much of the world wouldn’t let their daughters play at all or wouldn’t pay for it if they did. We built an advantage on access. That’s the whole trick.

So the same country that proved access wins is currently pricing access out of reach of most kids in America today. (Don’t even get me started on the number of MAGA folks praising the talents of our first generation American players that would not be in the country if they had their way. I love sitting next to them in real life asking them to explain their way out of that logic. I enjoy every conversation like that!)

Robert Putnam warned us about this, and I’ve written about it before.

In Our Kids, Putnam laid out what happens when a community stops funding the things that mix children together. Cut the after-school program, cut the competitive team, cut the band, and you don’t just lose the activity. You lose the only structured hours in a kid’s week where they sit next to somebody from a different part of town.

That’s the loss nobody puts on a budget line. The rich kid and the poor kid stop knowing each other. The rural kid and the city kid stop knowing each other. Two kids at the same high school, in the same building, can now go four years without a single real conversation, because one of them is on the club team and the other one is working. Or worse.

We are running the same experiment on adults, and we’ve been running it longer. Fewer leagues. Fewer lodges. Fewer front porches. More sorting.

(I wrote more about Putnam’s work with Our Kids here below)

The book that tied it together.

Jim Collins published What to Make of a Life this past April, and it’s a departure from the business books that made him famous. It’s built on 34 people studied in matched pairs across ten years, two people with comparable starting conditions who arrive at radically different places. He’s after the pivotal moments, what he calls the cliffs, where a life turns.

Here’s the connection I couldn’t stop thinking about at the bar. Collins studies the moment a person meets a decision that changes everything. Putnam studies whether a kid ever gets close enough to such a moment to meet it at all.

Same method, matched pairs, pointed at two different halves of one question. Collins asks what you make of a life. Putnam asks who was in the room when you were deciding.

For most people, the honest answer is a coach, a teacher, a neighbor, somebody’s dad who ran the concession stand. People they’d never have met if the gym had been locked.

People will be what they can see. Collins thinks its important for Gen Z and Gen Alpha to work in the office and avoid the at-home experience. Putnam warned us already what happens when high school kids are not allowed to mix in person after school. The divisions fester and grow.

I like to say, “Friends at work make work more friendly.” It’s humanizing to get to know the people you work with. Just like organized sports and afterschool activities.

So here’s my ask for the next 99 days.

That’s what takes me back to Dive Bars and the role they play in society.

Go somewhere with a jukebox and no membership.

I wrote a piece last fall called “Save The Jerseys for Sports, Not Politics,” about a conversation with , who ran against me for the same Congressional seat in a different primary. Watch that video and you genuinely cannot tell which of us was the Republican and which was the Democrat. The line that stuck with me from that whole exchange was hers, and it’s the thesis of everything above.

You can’t demonize people you’ve actually gotten to know.

Social media will not introduce you to your neighbor. It’ll show you the worst thing he wrote in 2019. A bar stool will introduce you to him, and it turns out he coaches a team, or he’s worried about his mother, or he agrees with you about four things out of six and you’d never have guessed which four.

Ninety-nine days. Go be in a room with somebody. Buy the next round. Leave the jersey in the car.

Then in November, do the boring thing and vote.

What’s your favorite dive bar?

One of mine’s on Lake Austin Boulevard and it’s about to turn 75. Tell me yours, and tell me about somebody you met in it who you’d never have met anywhere else. Hit reply. I read every one.

Joseph

Joseph Kopser
Co-Founder, USTomorrow.us

Joseph Kopser is a lifelong problem solver committed to building the teams needed to take on our toughest challenges. He is currently President of Grayline after he co-founded and served as CEO of RideScout, before it was acquired by Mercedes. He served in the U.S. Army for 20 years earning the Combat Action Badge, Army Ranger Tab and Bronze Star. He is a graduate of West Point with a BS in Aerospace Engineering and also received a Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School and former member of the Army Science Board. He was recognized as a White House Champion of Change for his efforts in Energy and Transportation as well as won the U.S. DOT Data Innovation Award. He co-authored the book, Catalyst, a book focused on helping teams adapt to change. He is the Chair of the Board of Advisors for the CleanTX, an economic development and professional association for energy innovation. In 2025, Joseph was selected for the Texas Business Hall of Fame Future Texas Business Legend Award. Joseph and his wife of 31 years, Amy, live in Austin and they are extremely proud of their three adult daughters living their best lives.

CBS Austin with ran a special edition of “Tech This Out” called Defending 250, about the companies building the tools we’ll need to protect the next 250 years

You can see our full discussion here.

They asked me on to talk about the hard part, the part nobody wants to slow down for: how do we move fast on artificial intelligence and still do it responsibly? I’ll come back to my answer. First, look at who else was in the room. Because every one of these companies is within an hour’s drive of my house.

The battlefield changed while we were still arguing about it.

Drones did it. Cheap, fast, and everywhere. In Ukraine, by some counts, roughly 80 percent of casualties now come from drones. That is not a future threat. That is the war being fought right now.

An Austin company called Allen Control Systems is answering it with a machine they named Bullfrog: a standard rifle bolted to an AI brain that spots a drone, measures it, predicts where it’s going, and takes it out of the sky, while the human operator stays focused on the mission. Their co-founder Steven Simoni will tell you we’re still underestimating this threat as a country. He’s right.

Cheap now beats expensive later.

Here’s the math that keeps defense planners up at night. Put a three billion dollar destroyer against two hundred naval drones that cost under a million dollars apiece, and the economics stop working in your favor.

Saronic, right here in Austin, is building the cheap side of that equation on purpose: autonomous boats built to scale. One of them, earlier this year, helped rescue two US Army pilots after their helicopter went down over the Strait of Hormuz. Their team put it simply. Two Americans got to see their families again. That’s the point.

Same story on land. Aeon Industrial is building a shoulder-launched guided missile called Zeus, with 3D-printed parts, aimed at a cost the taxpayer can actually afford. And in the small town of Luling, X-bow Systems has shrunk a rocket-motor factory that used to sprawl across thousands of acres and cost hundreds of millions of dollars down into something the size of a shipping container. A rocket factory in a box, mobile and front-line ready.

You can’t defend what you can’t build.

This is the thread I’ve been pulling on in this newsletter for a while now, from energy to housing: innovation is worthless if you’ve forgotten how to build the thing.

We used to know that. On the outskirts of Lockhart, a startup called Oklo is racing to bring a reactor named Groves One critical, part of a federal push to get new nuclear online. Their CEO put it in a way that stuck with me: America didn’t fall behind on nuclear because of safety. It fell behind on will. We still have the edge in designs and innovation. That edge means nothing if we don’t build them.

And when the Pentagon said crumbling barracks were hurting military readiness, an Austin company answered with robots. ICON 3D-printed ten military barracks in six months. The Department of War told the Senate that job would normally take two years. Six months. Next stop, Fort Polk, and a goal of nearly 900 structures nationwide.

Building at scale is never just one factory. It’s the thousands of suppliers behind it, and right now that base is scattered and brittle. Sustainment, another Austin company, is working to organize our national supply chain into a single connected network, so a program manager can find the American shop that makes the part instead of learning too late that only one supplier left in the country still makes it. You can’t surge what you can’t source.

Fast is not the same as reckless.

So back to the hard question CBS asked me. Here’s my whole answer, and it fits on an index card.

First, don’t panic. Second, stay transparent about what’s under the hood of what we’re building. Do those two things well, and over the long run we’ll be fine.

And there’s a floor underneath all of it that never moves. You cannot do anything illegal. You cannot do anything immoral. You cannot do anything unethical. And if you are ever faced with one of those three things, it is your responsibility to be the whistleblower. Not your option. Your responsibility.

That’s not a brake on innovation. It’s the thing that lets innovation be trusted with the keys. The founders I just named are moving at startup speed on some of the most consequential technology of our lifetimes. The reason I’m comfortable bragging about them is that the good ones know exactly where that floor is.

Which brings me to the news this week.

None of what I just described is a hypothetical. Look at the map.

The Strait of Hormuz, the same stretch of water where that Saronic boat pulled two American pilots to safety, slid back into a shooting war this month. Iran and the United States are trading strikes over who controls it, and roughly a fifth of the world’s oil moves through that one chokepoint. You’re already paying for it. Crude is back near eighty dollars a barrel and the number on the gas pump climbed while you weren’t looking. (I just paid over $100 at the pump to fill up my car.) I’ve written it here before and I’ll keep writing it: energy security is national security. We don’t get to treat the two as separate problems.

And in the middle of all that, the loudest debate in Washington about military readiness landed on testosterone. The Secretary of Defense ordered annual screening for troops over thirty, with hormone therapy on offer. I spent 20 years in uniform, so let me say the uncontroversial part first: I will always take better health care for the people who serve. Check their blood, treat what needs treating, good.

But I’ve stood next to enough Soldiers to know where strength actually comes from, and it has never been a number on a lab panel. It’s the young operator who keeps her focus while the machine tracks the drone. It’s the founder who could have built anything and chose to build for the people who serve. It’s knowing exactly where the ethical floor is and refusing to step below it. That’s readiness. You can’t prescribe it.

And in a serious time of war, I don’t want a single reader of this newsletter mistaking that debate for the main event. A conversation about testosterone at the Pentagon is not the prize. The prize is strategy and diplomacy, and right now we can’t afford to take our eyes off it.

We used to know how to write a strategy.

There’s an old framework we learn early in uniform for the levers a government pulls in a crisis and tries to prevent them. It fits in one word: DIME. Diplomacy. Intelligence. Military. Economic power. Pull one of those without the other three and you don’t have a strategy, you have a reaction. The best example this country ever produced came out of the early Cold War, a 1950 document called NSC-68 that lined all four up behind a single goal: contain the Soviets. Diplomacy, alliances, economic strength, and military force, all rowing in the same direction. In the decades since, politics has crept further and further into our national security strategy, and the coherence NSC-68 had is harder and harder to find.

The good news buried in the Iran story is that the innovation is real. Just as it was remarkable that a Saronic boat could pull two pilots out of the sea, ICON is printing barracks for our troops at a fraction of the old cost and on a timeline nobody thought possible. Those are the two things that have to travel together now: protect the warfighter, and cut the bill. The military is still the single largest slice of discretionary spending in the federal budget, and I’ll be honest with you. Across 20 years in uniform I watched us spend more than we needed to, delay decisions in ways that cost us dearly, and fall short of being the best stewards of your tax dollar.

In a fight, you spend whatever it takes to protect your Soldiers and bring them home. I will never argue otherwise. But firing a multimillion-dollar missile at a twenty-thousand-dollar drone boat in the Strait of Hormuz is not something you can keep doing.

My friend , the first Iraq War veteran elected to Congress and a former Under Secretary of the Army, made the point sharper than I could in his latest SitRep. Ukraine, he notes, has spent 18 months knocking out Russian refineries worth hundreds of millions of dollars with drones that cost a few thousand apiece, the military equivalent of crippling an aircraft carrier with something assembled from the electronics aisle. His conclusion is the one Washington keeps dodging: “Offense has become cheap while defense remains ruinously expensive.” The next war, Patrick writes, may be decided “not by which country can build the most exquisite weapon, but by which can survive the ugliest arithmetic.” A multimillion-dollar interceptor against a twenty-thousand-dollar boat is exactly that arithmetic, and the math does not get better with time. More from Patrick here: Ukraine’s Cheap Drones Exposed Russia’s Defenses. America Should Take Notice.

That’s the whole case for companies like Aeon. Reinventing how we build these tools lets us defend the homeland, stand up for democracy and freedom abroad, and hand the government instruments it can actually afford to use.

My one real concern in all of this is simple. We have the boats. We’re building the barracks. We can build the missiles that cost what they should. What we don’t seem to have right now is a strategy.

The people are the point.

The host closed the show with a line I wish I’d written. America’s greatest strength has never been the technology alone. It’s the people willing to imagine it, build it, and use it responsibly.

I know it seems like I am talking a lot about machines. But every one of them is really a story about a person who served, or who’s building for the people who do, and who decided Central Texas was the place to do it. That’s the arsenal of the next 250. It’s not in a catalog. It’s in a shipping container outside Luling, on a test stand in Briggs, in a reactor room in Lockhart, and it’s being built by people you can actually go meet.

I’d love to hear what you’re seeing out there. Who’s building something for the next 250 in your corner of the country?

Take care,
Joseph

Joseph Kopser
Co-Founder, USTomorrow.us

P.S. The full CBS Austin segment is worth seventeen minutes of your time: Defending 250.

Joseph Kopser is a lifelong problem solver committed to building the teams needed to take on our toughest challenges. He is currently President of Grayline after he co-founded and served as CEO of RideScout, before it was acquired by Mercedes. He served in the U.S. Army for 20 years earning the Combat Action Badge, Army Ranger Tab and Bronze Star. He is a graduate of West Point with a BS in Aerospace Engineering and also received a Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School and former member of the Army Science Board. He was recognized as a White House Champion of Change for his efforts in Energy and Transportation as well as won the U.S. DOT Data Innovation Award. He co-authored the book, Catalyst, a book focused on helping teams adapt to change. He is the Chair of the Board of Advisors for the CleanTX, an economic development and professional association for energy innovation. In 2025, Joseph was selected for the Texas Business Hall of Fame Future Texas Business Legend Award. Joseph and his wife of 31 years, Amy, live in Austin and they are extremely proud of their three adult daughters living their best lives.

The pause didn’t hold.

The pause broke over the weekend

The ceasefire went from fragile to finished. Iran attacked a container ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the United States answered with a series of strikes to protect the waterway, and the President said the plain part out loud: the deal is over. Talks that were supposed to run sixty days barely made it three weeks.

If you want to know what the fight is really about, do what I told you to do last time. Don’t watch the missiles. Watch the oil.

Brent crude is back up near the high seventies, its highest since the day the memorandum was signed. Shipping through the strait has collapsed, more than half of last week’s traffic simply gone, because tankers and the companies that insure them decided the risk wasn’t worth it. And the Treasury just moved to shut off the authorization to sell Iranian oil after July 17. Every one of those numbers is the market pricing the same thing it priced in June. Not the war. The chokepoint.

The protection money changed hands

Here’s the part I can’t stop thinking about, because I called it three weeks ago and then watched it happen in reverse.

In June, the story was that Iran wanted to charge ships for passing through Hormuz. Tehran called them fees for services. A strategist at the Naval War College said the only service Iran was actually providing was not attacking your ship. I told you we used to have a word for that, and it wasn’t service fee. The mafia calls it protection money.

This week the United States started talking the same way. According to reporting out of Washington, the plan now on the table would reinstate a blockade, appoint us the guardian of the strait, and charge other ships a twenty percent toll to pass through it. Read that twice. The exact arrangement I flagged as extortion when Iran proposed it is now being floated as American policy, just with our flag on the tollbooth.

I’m not making a partisan point. I’m making a physics point. A chokepoint doesn’t care who holds it. Whoever controls the narrow water controls the price of everything that moves through it, and the temptation to charge for passage is built into the geography. That’s why controlling that geography has cost us fifty years of Navy carrier groups, and why getting off the dependency, not renegotiating the toll, is the only real win.

The next chokepoint won’t be oil

I told you in June that AI data centers are the new fracking, that the shape of the story repeats every time a hungry new appetite collides with the physical world. Here’s the next repeat, and it’s already loading.

I wrote recently that the clean-energy transition we keep arguing about, wind versus gas versus nuclear, runs on rare-earth magnets. So do EV motors, transformers, precision weapons, and the power gear feeding those data centers. China controls roughly ninety percent of the high-performance supply, and on July 1 it stood up a new enforcement regime to police who gets them. We spent twenty years and two of my tours learning that the free flow of oil was national security. We’re about to learn the same lesson about the free flow of electrons, and the strait this time is a supply chain we handed to one country without a fight.

The oil chokepoint we can see from space. The magnet chokepoint we can’t see at all, which is exactly what makes it more dangerous.

This stuff is hard. It isn’t won on social media or with quick declarations. It gets won by the people who do the patient work of understanding it before the headlines force them to. I’d rather we be those people.

Take care,

Joseph

Joseph Kopser

Co-Founder, USTomorrow.us

P.S. If you missed the piece this one builds on, it’s here: Iran Ceasefire: Why Energy Security Is Still National Security. One question for you this week: when you read about the strait, do you see a war story or an energy story? Hit reply. I read every one.

Joseph Kopser is a lifelong problem solver committed to building the teams needed to take on our toughest challenges. He is currently President of Grayline after he co-founded and served as CEO of RideScout, before it was acquired by Mercedes. He served in the U.S. Army for 20 years earning the Combat Action Badge, Army Ranger Tab and Bronze Star. He is a graduate of West Point with a BS in Aerospace Engineering and also received a Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School and former member of the Army Science Board. He was recognized as a White House Champion of Change for his efforts in Energy and Transportation as well as won the U.S. DOT Data Innovation Award. He co-authored the book, Catalyst, a book focused on helping teams adapt to change. He is the Chair of the Board of Advisors for the CleanTX, an economic development and professional association for energy innovation. In 2025, Joseph was selected for the Texas Business Hall of Fame Future Texas Business Legend Award. Joseph and his wife of 31 years, Amy, live in Austin and they are extremely proud of their three adult daughters living their best lives.

Last month I wrote here that AI data centers are the new fracking.

That piece got me invited to share some of my thinking with the Austin Technology Council.

This time my focus was less on the power grid and more on people. On workforce, on disruption, and on what the displacement of jobs means for the next generation. If you think are politics are bad now, wait until AI gets into the mix and makes it harder for us to seek truth.

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But I did not go up there to sell doom and gloom. I told the room the truth about myself: I am a 99% AI optimist. I always leave that one percent open for the knuckleheads of the world who can still find a way to screw it up.

AI will displace jobs faster than a lot of people are ready for

That part is real, and I said so. But like almost every other step function in technology and innovation, the same wave that closes some doors kicks open whole new ones. New sectors get invented. New kinds of work appear that no previous generation could have imagined, and they turn out to be not just ways to make a living, but ways to support a family. I have watched it happen more than once in my own career. I believe it will happen again.

Then I walked the audience through a couple of ideas I have been chewing on.

We are going to need a “Trust Wall”

In a world where information is close to limitless, we are all about to face a never ending onslaught of outreach. Organizations are already using AI tools to scrape the web and figure out who you are, what you do, and what you like. Then they use it to write to you in a voice engineered to sound like your oldest friend.

Think about how many people already fall for scams over the phone or online today. Now hand the bad actors even better tools. It gets worse before it gets better.

The good news is that we get to build back. I call it the Trust Wall. It is a digital barrier we put up around ourselves to keep the flood of fake friendliness out. But a wall that only plays defense is not enough. If you are going to keep the bad actors out, you also need a way to decide who you let in.

Here is the line I put on the screen at ATC. When you can reach anyone, trust is the only key. Invention is now limitless and AI makes infinite outreach nearly free, so the walls get higher, the filters get better, and inboxes get buried. In that world the warm introduction stops being a nicety and becomes the only key that still opens the door.

Your friends, family, and network are the ones who get over the wall

Here is the part I find hopeful. The people who get to breach your Trust Wall, who get waved over the top, are the ones you choose. Your friends. Your neighbors. Your family. Your real network.

And when they are building their own Trust Walls at the same time, the whole thing compounds. A network of people who vouch for each other is a network that nefarious folks have a much harder time getting through. This is the same social capital I write about constantly: the trust we build simply by being in each other’s corner is one of the most valuable, and most fragile, things we have. In the age of AI it stops being a nice-to-have and becomes your first line of defense.

My friend Thom Singer put it perfectly in one of his ATC newsletters:

“Austin’s competitive advantage is not code, it is collaboration. Austin became Austin because people crossed paths and helped each other.” Thom Singer, at the Austin Technology Council

That is a Trust Wall described from the other side. The city that got built on people helping people is exactly the city that knows the warm intro is the only key.

When anyone can do the work, employers get to be choosy

Now play that out. If the new tools mean that just about anyone can do the technical part, and two candidates show up with near identical credentials, then employers get to be a lot more selective about who they actually want on the team.

Gone are the days of keeping someone around only because they are a wizard with the technology and you feel like you cannot replace them. Technology is about to be able to replace just about anybody on the technical merits alone. That sounds ominous, but it hands us something better: permission to focus on the winners.

The winners live at two ends of the same spectrum

On one end are the genuinely creative. The bold, original thinkers who see the world in a way the machine cannot. AI, at its essence, is a compilation of all the world’s existing knowledge. If you can blaze a brand new trail, a trail that is not already in the training data, you have a very bright future.

On the other end are the people who are just plain good to be around. Pleasant, thoughtful, engaging, the kind of person others cannot say no to. If an employer is choosing among twelve candidates who are all armed with the same tools, they are going to pick the one they most want to work with.

That is the whole thing on a bumper sticker: choose the novel, and the good to be around. When the tools are equal, those are the two edges that still cut.

So who actually gets hurt by AI? The dull jerks.

If you follow that logic all the way down, the people who struggle most in the long run are the dull jerks of the world. Dull, meaning they bring nothing new to the table. Jerks, meaning they treat people poorly. Land in either bucket, and worse in both, and unless you are cushioned by generational wealth, this is going to be a hard world to make your way in.

The one skill I tell folks to work on

Afterward, people asked me the question I get most from parents and from high schoolers and college students themselves. In a world of AI, what is the single skill worth working on the most? Technology? Liberal arts? Something else?

My answer surprised them. It is not really a subject at all. It is making sure you don’t grow up to be a jerk.

The future of work in an AI world is genuinely unknown. But history has a few known knowns. Adaptive people who are willing to take a risk tend to land on their feet over the long haul. You will take a lot of swings that come up short. That is fine. Keep stepping back up to the plate, keep repeating the same mantra I gave my kids growing up, try to be happy, try to do the right thing, try to have a good thing to say, and rinse and repeat that over a lifetime, and you are going to do just fine.

Why I still hold onto that 1%

That is why I am a 99% AI optimist. For every tool we build, yes, some people will find ways to use it to cause harm. But more people will find ways to guard against that harm, and more still will find ways to use it for good. I have bet my career on that math, and I am not changing it now.

So let me turn it over to you. Where are you right now on the spectrum of AI optimism? Optimistic? Pessimistic? Still a question mark? Hit reply and tell me, I read every one.

And tell me what you are reading. The book I just finished that gives me the most cause for hope is Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari, which traces our information technologies all the way from the Stone Age to the age of AI. It is worth your summer. (Maybe not exactly beach reading, but it is for me!)

Take care,

Joseph

Joseph Kopser

Co-Founder, USTomorrow.us

P.S. Where do you fall on the optimism spectrum, and what’s on your nightstand? Leave a comment or hit reply. I read every one.

Joseph Kopser is a lifelong problem solver committed to building the teams needed to take on our toughest challenges. He is currently President of Grayline after he co-founded and served as CEO of RideScout, before it was acquired by Mercedes. He served in the U.S. Army for 20 years earning the Combat Action Badge, Army Ranger Tab and Bronze Star. He is a graduate of West Point with a BS in Aerospace Engineering and also received a Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School and former member of the Army Science Board. He was recognized as a White House Champion of Change for his efforts in Energy and Transportation as well as won the U.S. DOT Data Innovation Award. He co-authored the book, Catalyst, a book focused on helping teams adapt to change. He is the Chair of the Board of Advisors for the CleanTX, an economic development and professional association for energy innovation. In 2025, Joseph was selected for the Texas Business Hall of Fame Future Texas Business Legend Award. Joseph and his wife of 31 years, Amy, live in Austin and they are extremely proud of their three adult daughters living their best lives.

That’s me in the red tank top, with the blond hair I still miss, pedaling a bicycle wrapped in red, white, and blue streamers down a street in our neighborhood. The little one on the Big Wheel is my sister Jennifer. The date is July 4, 1976. America’s 200th birthday.

For as long as I can remember, love of country and the Fourth of July have been the same thing to me. I owe a lot of that to my father, who did something rare for the 1970s: he not only took the pictures, he shot the home movies. This week, with the country about to turn 250, I went digging through eleven gigabytes of his movies and found this two minute clip of my sister and me riding in the Bicentennial parade.

More than any flag or firework, that clip is what the Fourth has always been to me. It is the one day on the calendar built to bring all of us together for love of country.

Every kid in America was in that parade (so I thought)

If you were a kid in 1976, you remember. The fire hydrants painted like minutemen. The Bicentennial quarter with the drummer boy on the back. Red, white, and blue on cereal boxes, gas stations, and garbage trucks.

And we were organized. It was our parents who pulled it off, especially the moms, like mine, pushing my sister up the hill on her Big Wheel when the climb got too steep for a three year old’s little legs. The whole street turned into the parade.

Here’s what I didn’t understand at five years old. The magic wasn’t the decorations. The magic was that everybody showed up to the same party at the same time. I write about this constantly now: the bonds, the norms, and the trust we build simply by being in the same place together, especially between neighbors. Scholars call it social capital, and it is one of the most important, and most fragile, elements of the human experience.

And it wasn’t that we had no other options. It was that everybody was so excited about the 200th birthday that they showed up anyway. You could see it in the sheer mob of kids on bikes. Most everyone showed up, and everyone showed out.

Trading the Bike for the Uniform

That feeling of patriotism, riding down the street on my red, white, and blue bicycle, is the same feeling I got to trade up for thirteen years later, when I swapped the bike for the chance to wear my country’s uniform. I reported to West Point for R-Day on June 28, 1989, and spent that Fourth of July less than a week into Beast Barracks, with a fresh haircut and a new salute, alongside a thousand other kids who had watched the same Bicentennial from their own bikes in their own hometowns.

Different parade, same pride. Whether I was on that bicycle in Kentucky or standing in formation in Cadet Gray, I felt the same two things I still feel every Fourth: pride in my country, and the deeper pride of being part of something much larger than myself.

The Fourth of July with no children

Fifteen years after that, on July 4, 2004, I was a Major at Saddam’s former Presidential Palace in Baghdad, sent there to help plan Iraq’s national elections. The 1st Cavalry Division band came down and set up by the pool. I wrote home about it that summer, in an e-mail diary that later ran in West Point’s Assembly magazine, and I’ve never been able to say it better than I did then:

The longer I sat there looking at all the contradictions, something seemed very out of place. We had American flags, patriotic music, a swimming pool, and ice cream—and some had beer. The only thing missing was children. I had never been to anything 4th-of-July-related without kids running everywhere. There was no one there to hold tightly and reassure as the fireworks boomed overhead, no one who would stare wildly into the sparklers as they lit up their face. There were plenty of people—but no one who really matters to me. Bittersweet. A holiday event I will never forget, but one I never hope to repeat.

That day in Baghdad taught me what the holiday actually is: the kids under the flags.

Why can’t you be a Republican?

By 2018 I was back in a Fourth of July parade myself, this time in Central Texas, running for Congress. Before the parade stepped off, I was in the staging area and wandered over to say hello to the folks on the Republican float. They had a great time giving me a hard time, and we went back and forth on the issues, all in good humor. What I loved most was that most of my answers landed far more in the center, far closer to where everyday people actually live, than anyone expected. I think it caught a few of them off guard. They were not quite ready for a former Republican, Combat Vet, businessman running as a Democrat.

But here is my favorite moment of the whole day. As I was walking away, one nice little old lady called my name and waved me back over to the GOP float. She pulled me in close to whisper in my ear.

“Why can’t you be a Republican?”

I loved her for that question. Not because of the party, but because she asked it sincerely, and a little distraught, having just realized in real time that she had been putting party over country, choosing a line on the ballot instead of choosing the candidate standing in front of her. I told her what I still believe. Service to your country in uniform, and service to your country in business, are not Republican values or Democratic values. They are American values. On that day, the 4th of July.

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The same curb

Two years later, at a small town Fourth of July parade in the Hill Country, I took my favorite photograph of the whole fifty years. The Republican float rolled by with a stuffed elephant and a cutout of Abraham Lincoln riding on a pickup. A few minutes later the Democratic float came down the same street. The same families waved at both from the same curb, and everybody’s kids chased the same candy. I captioned it that day: finding common ground, because democracy works for everyone.

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The full suit

By 2024 I had leaned all the way in. The Uncle Sam hat had grown into the full suit: stars, stripes, tailcoat, the works. Amy maintains I’m not allowed to wear it to dinner parties. The jury is still out on the 250th. I wore it to VFW Post 3377, where we’ve now spent our last several Fourths, three generations of family around one table, next to veterans who have their own Baghdads to remember.

What the 250th is really for

I’ve written before about whether the truths we celebrate on this day are still self evident. Last year I answered: maybe. That answer hasn’t changed.

But fifty years of my family’s Julys keep teaching me something simpler. At the end of the day, the Fourth of July should be the one great holiday that still brings all of us together. It is the day that reminds us of the child in every one of us. Whether that child grew up riding a red, white, and blue bicycle in a neighborhood parade, or is a kid on the other side of the world right now, on this very Fourth of July, dreaming of one day moving to the United States to build a better life.

We’ve gone from three channels to infinite channels, from one neighborhood parade to a thousand personalized feeds. The Fourth of July parade is one of the last things left that the whole country can still do at the same time, together. You can’t stream it. You have to stand on the curb next to people who didn’t vote the way you did, while your kids chase the same candy.

So here’s my one ask for America’s 250th birthday. Go to the parade. Stand on the curb. Bring a kid, yours or a neighbor’s. See it through their eyes. Long before they can see political division.

And somewhere in that pack of bikes and Big Wheels is a five year old who’ll be telling this story at the 300th. (This particular former 5 year old will be 105 years old).

Amy and I wish you and your family a joyful Fourth. Take care of each other out there.

Take care,
Joseph

Joseph Kopser

CEO, USTomorrow.us

P.S. I want to see your archives too. What do you remember about July 4, 1976? If you weren’t born yet, what’s your first Fourth of July memory? Leave a comment, or hit reply if you’ve got a photo. I read every one.

Joseph Kopser is a lifelong problem solver committed to building the teams needed to take on our toughest challenges. He is currently President of Grayline after he co-founded and served as CEO of RideScout, before it was acquired by Mercedes. He served in the U.S. Army for 20 years earning the Combat Action Badge, Army Ranger Tab and Bronze Star. He is a graduate of West Point with a BS in Aerospace Engineering and also received a Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School and former member of the Army Science Board. He was recognized as a White House Champion of Change for his efforts in Energy and Transportation as well as won the U.S. DOT Data Innovation Award. He co-authored the book, Catalyst, a book focused on helping teams adapt to change. He is the Chair of the Board of Advisors for the CleanTX, an economic development and professional association for energy innovation. In 2025, Joseph was selected for the Texas Business Hall of Fame Future Texas Business Legend Award. Joseph and his wife of 31 years, Amy, live in Austin and they are extremely proud of their three adult daughters living their best lives.

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First, a thank you, and what your financial support has unlocked.

I wanted the first donors-only edition of USTomorrow to be a little extra.

This is something new. It is the first edition written specifically for our paid subscribers who want to go deeper on an issue— the people who decided this work was worth a few dollars a month. I do not take your support lightly. You are the reason USTomorrow will be reaching even larger audiences soon. That is a direct line from your support to better work. Thank you.

85-5 and 358-32.

Those are the votes. Last week the Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act 85 to 5, and the House followed 358 to 32. In an era when we are told nothing can pass and no one can agree, the United States Congress just put up the largest housing bill in a generation, and it did it with margins you almost never see anymore.

I have to be honest with you. Even a news junkie like me almost missed it, the real work and the bipartisan passage by lawmakers in both chambers, on both sides of the aisle. The country still works when we let it.

As I write this, the bill has passed both chambers but the President has not signed it. In fact, he abruptly cancelled the signing ceremony and announced that he will not sign it until Congress also passes the SAVE America Act.

I will let others cover the daily back-and-forth. I want to do something the coverage is not doing, which is tell you why this Housing bill matters far more than the phrase everyone keeps reaching for.

That phrase is the American dream of homeownership. It is a good phrase. It is also hiding the real story, and if we only talk about owning a home, we will misunderstand what we just did.

Let me give you the heart of it now, and go into depth later.

If you have found the place you never want to leave, wonderful. That is its own kind of success, and no one should take it from you. But the American dream was never about owning the house you are standing in. It was about being free to move to a better one when you needed to. The dream has always been the freedom to go. For too many families right now, that freedom is slipping away, and this bill is about getting it back.

Here is what is waiting inside this edition. I make the case for three things the headlines are walking right past:

• Why your home is really how you find your neighbors.

• Why the dream was never the house. It was being able to leave it.

• Why a cheaper roof is the most pro-entrepreneur policy we have.

Plus the old stain none of this works without naming, and the one lesson from building RideScout that changed how I see every street in America. And there is one more thread I can only gesture at today, the quiet return of three generations under one roof, which I am saving for an edition all its own.

If you have been meaning to upgrade, this is the moment. Less than one fancy coffee a month. It funds the new teammates, the faster pace, and the full version of pieces like this one.

Consider this your invitation to come inside.

Read more

Back to USTomorrow….. We all spent four months watching a war with Iran, and this week we are watching “the peace.” If you want to better understand either one, do not watch the missiles. Watch the oil.

Twenty years ago this October, I deployed to Iraq for the second time.

By then I had learned which jobs in a war zone were the ones that got people killed, and one of the most dangerous was also one of the most ordinary. It was moving fuel. The convoys that hauled diesel and gasoline across that country were targets, and Soldiers died protecting them. I came home convinced that how we move and how we power ourselves is not a side issue to national security. It is national security. That conviction is why I started a mobility company, why I helped launch the Defense Energy Summit, and why I have spent twenty years working on energy whether the headlines cared or not.

This month the headlines do care.

Here is where things stand as I write this. After four months of open war that began at the end of February and reached all the way to the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding on June 17 to stop the shooting. It calls for a sixty-day ceasefire and, notably, for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Negotiators are now meeting in Switzerland, and on June 22 they announced a roadmap toward a final agreement within sixty days. That is the good news, if it’s real.

It is also fragile. Within seventy-two hours of the memorandum, follow-on talks were cancelled, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced it was closing Hormuz again, the U.S. military said the strait was open and that Iran does not control it, and the President of the United States went on social media to threaten to hit Iran “very hard again, only harder,” all while his own Vice President sat at the negotiating table. The single most important question, whether Iran gives up the right to enrich uranium, sits exactly where it started. Iran’s president says he will never back down from it. So handle the word “peace” with care. What we have is a pause.

Follow the Money

Now watch the oil, because the oil tells you what the war was actually about.

When the fighting was at its worst, Brent crude spiked above $120 a barrel. By last week it had fallen back to around $80, roughly a third off its peak . What moved the price was not the body count. It was whether tankers, and the companies that insure them, believed they could get through the Strait of Hormuz. Prices fell when ships started moving and rose when the talks fell apart. The market was not pricing the war. It was pricing the chokepoint.

Then came two revelations that sharpen the point.

First, the Wall Street Journal reported on June 16 that the deal waives American sanctions on Iranian oil, along with the banking, shipping, and insurance that make those sales possible. In plain terms, the first thing the winning side put on the table was letting Iran sell its oil again. (You may have seen this described as Iran being allowed to sell oil “in dollars.” That is not quite right. The accurate version is that the sanctions come off so the oil can flow, and Iran does not get its frozen funds back up front.)

Second, and this is the one I cannot stop thinking about, Iran has announced that once the sixty free days are up, it intends to charge ships for passing through Hormuz. Tehran is careful to call these “fees” for services like navigation and insurance, not “tolls,” and it has stood up a new authority to collect them. A strategist at the Naval War College said the quiet part out loud: the only service Iran is actually providing is not attacking your ship. We used to have a word for a payment you make so that nothing unfortunate happens to your cargo. We did not call it a service fee. The mafia refers to it as protection money.

Step back and look at the shape of it. We fought a war. We won it, by any military measure. And the moment the shooting stopped, the negotiation turned out to be about the free flow of oil to and from the Middle East, and about who controls the narrow water it passes through. Twenty years and two of my own tours later, it is still about the oil. It always was.

I have written before that fracking did something close to a miracle for this country.

In 2005 we were building terminals to import natural gas, certain we would run short. By 2017 we were a net exporter and soon the world’s largest LNG exporter. We bought ourselves a kind of energy independence almost no one predicted. But the rest of the world got no such gift. Europe, Japan, India, and especially China still depend on oil and gas that must move through places like Hormuz. As long as that remains true, keeping those lanes open stays an American interest — one we’ve paid for fifty years, not in cash, but in Navy carrier groups.

That is energy security as national security, and we are watching it negotiated in real time among the United States, Israel, and Iran.

This stuff is hard. It is not won on social media or with quick declarations.

Here is what worries me, and it is the reason I am writing today instead of just reading the news like everyone else.

I have argued in this newsletter that AI data centers are the new fracking. The shape of the story repeats. A new and voracious appetite, this time for computing power, collides with the physical world, and the binding constraint is energy. Data center electricity demand in this country is on track to nearly double in just a few years. Right here in Texas, the grid operator is now holding a queue of requests to connect that is larger than the entire current peak demand of the state, and close to ninety percent of it is data centers. Last week our utility commission approved a brand new process just to triage who gets to plug in. Read that again. We are building a system in which a handful of players compete for access to scarce power through a single chokepoint, and a central authority decides who passes.

We have seen this movie. We have the receipts, in blood and treasure, from forty years of it in the Middle East. The difference, and it is the only unqualified good news in this whole essay, is that this chokepoint is ours. The uranium is in Wyoming. The natural gas is under Texas. The reactors, the transmission lines, and the rules for who connects are decisions we get to make at home, on our own timeline, without a fleet. We spent two generations, and too many of my friends, learning how dependence works when the resource sits under someone else’s dirt. We are about to find out whether we learned anything, now that the resource sits under our own feet.

I will say one more thing, and I will try to say it the way I try to say everything here, as someone who has voted for both parties and cares more about getting this right than about who gets the credit. I have been a student of military history my whole life, of national security for forty years, and of energy security for more than twenty. Watching the past four months, what concerns me is not ideology. It is the apparent belief that a region with three thousand years of memory can be handled like a real estate deal. (If you want a detailed analysis of how bad the MOU and deal are among several interest groups, you might enjoy the AIPAC breakdown point-by-point of the deal. I’ve personally never seen AIPAC push back this hard on Trump.). While I won’t share private conversations, many Trump voters and national security professionals I know believe this deal is shaping up to be weaker than the Obama-era agreement.

You cannot threaten to restart a war while your own diplomats are still in the room and call it strategy. You cannot declare the Strait of Hormuz “permanently toll free” in a press release while the other side stands up an agency to charge for it. Complexity does not care how confident you sound. The free flow of oil, and now the free flow of electrons, will be governed by the people who do the patient work of understanding how the system actually behaves. I would like that to be us.

You always get what you pay for

A White House that prefers shortcuts and “get rich quick” thinking tends to underestimate how complex these systems actually are. The Reflecting Pool debacle is my favorite example, but I digress.

So here is my penny for your thoughts. Do not let the ceasefire headlines convince you the story is over, and do not let the word “energy” get lost in the shuffle as a buzz word. What happened this month is the oldest story in modern statecraft: power, in both senses of the word, moving through a place narrow enough to squeeze. We have a rare chance to write the next chapter at home, on our own terms, with the tuition already paid. Energy security is national security. It was true in the fuel convoys outside Mosul. It is true in the Strait of Hormuz tonight. And it will be true in the server farms rising on the Texas prairie, if we are wise enough to see it coming.

Let me know what you’re seeing out there.

BTW— If you’re able to make it, I’m speaking on the topic of AI and its impact on business and society at the Austin Technology Council on June 30th. Join us if you can.

More soon,

Joseph

Joseph Kopser

Co-Founder of USTomorrow.us

Joseph Kopser is a lifelong problem solver committed to building the teams needed to take on our toughest challenges. He is currently President of Grayline after he co-founded and served as CEO of RideScout, before it was acquired by Mercedes. He served in the U.S. Army for 20 years earning the Combat Action Badge, Army Ranger Tab and Bronze Star. He is a graduate of West Point with a BS in Aerospace Engineering and also received a Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School and former member of the Army Science Board. He was recognized as a White House Champion of Change for his efforts in Energy and Transportation as well as won the U.S. DOT Data Innovation Award. He co-authored the book, Catalyst, a book focused on helping teams adapt to change. He is the Chair of the Board of Advisors for the CleanTX, an economic development and professional association for energy innovation. In 2025, Joseph was selected for the Texas Business Hall of Fame Future Texas Business Legend Award. Joseph and his wife of 31 years, Amy, live in Austin and they are extremely proud of their three adult daughters living their best lives.

The truth is, I’ve barely been home. Over the last two months I’ve logged more miles than I can remember in any stretch of my life:

• France, for Amy’s birthday.

• Boston, for the retirement of one of my favorite professors from 25 years ago.

• Lexington, Kentucky — my hometown — to watch the Texas women’s softball team win the SEC Championship.

• And a long Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, where my sister-in-law sang the National Anthem and my father-in-law was honored on the big board, out on the field, as the hero of the game during the third inning.

I can’t recall another two-month stretch where I’ve been away from home — and away from the 24 hour news, and my normal routine — as much as I have been lately. And here’s the strange part: it was both refreshing and disheartening at the same time.

Let me give you a few examples.

The last time I was really plugged in this spring was the final weekend of February, when we launched what was supposed to be a very quick war in Iran to disarm their nuclear capability. Here we are on June 3rd, and instead I’ve come home to a never-ending series of Trump and a seemingly ineffective negotiating style that has sent energy prices spiking around the world. This morning’s Wall Street Journal carried reports from the OECD warning of possible recessions stretching into 2027.

At the same time, I fear the souring of our 250th anniversary as a country. Our president seems intent on making it about him — and less about the achievements of the world’s most successful and longest-running democracy.

I consider Jon Stewart the Mark Twain of our time. On Monday, he did a great job of summarizing the season of political turmoil.

But here’s what stepping away gave me. With that time, I tried to fill the void and seek meaning in ways that reminded me how precious life really is.

A friend recommended the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. As a self-confessed productivity geek — always hunting for the right life hack to squeeze more out of a day — this book hit me like a lightning bolt. The premise is that we’ve become so over-engineered by modern technology that we’ve forgotten to step back. The shift Burkeman asks for is simple but profound: stop thinking about how you’re using your time, and start thinking about how your time could be using you — in a more fulfilling way.

I’m only on Chapter 3, and I already love it. I recommend it to you. (Here is a quick Ted Talk from the author if you don’t have time for the book)— I recommend you make the time. In a world of endless political noise, Burkeman reminds us that finite time is best spent on what actually builds the tomorrow we want

Looking forward

There are still a lot of answers that remain out of reach.

The political landscape is a head-scratcher. It’s hard to know what happens in November. Will enough people — Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike — feel the exhaustion and still have the energy for one more season of political push? That’s what would let the midterms become a defining moment in our nation’s history.

With the primary losses of Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and our own Senator John Cornyn here in Texas, I think space may be opening up — if only behind the scenes — for Republicans to push back and try to check the administration in a number of areas. We’ve already seen signs of it: the $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6th rioters, as it’s been described, looks set to meet an untimely end.

But the larger question remains. And the Senate race here in Texas is the one to watch: James Talarico versus Ken Paxton.

The Paxton crew has a number-one mantra they’re running on loop — an older clip of Talarico talking about meat and meat products, and about the unknown nature of God, and the controversy that sparked. It’s already been packaged into a scathing campaign ad, and it’s going to be a tough video to overcome once it starts spreading in MAGA circles.

Here’s what more people need to realize: Paxton isn’t even in that video. He never speaks. He never moves. The whole thing is Talarico’s own footage — and Paxton himself only shows up at the very end, in a photo standing next to Trump. But if Democrats are not careful, Republicans will run those clips over and over, and if that’s all everyday voters see, Talarico is likely to lose. A Senate seat that shapes AI investment, energy jobs, and education funding for the next generation for our kids’ future.

Think about what that would mean. The U.S. Senate could be filled by a Trump acolyte who was not only indicted by his own Republican-controlled state legislature, but who stood alongside Trump as a speaker at January 6th. I honestly can’t think of a lower point. Many of his own former staffers have said publicly that he should go — including Congressman Chip Roy, who once served as Paxton’s first assistant attorney general. As Roy put it: “For the good of the people of Texas and the extraordinary public servants who serve at the Office of the Attorney General, Attorney General Ken Paxton must resign.”

Whether you’re a Republican tired of the chaos or a Democrat ready for new energy, the real question is whether we show up.

We’re going to need to motivate a lot of people that don’t vote to vote.

We’re also going to convince a lot of our neighbors to vote outside their party lines.

The work that doesn’t wait for November

While many of us keep our attention on the midterms, there’s still real work to be done in the workforce — specifically, coming together as a community to talk honestly about the impact of AI data centers and their explosive growth.

Here’s a fact worth sitting with: if it weren’t for AI and the investments it’s driving nationwide, many experts believe our economy would already be in a recession right now.

As my last newsletter argued, AI has become the new fracking.

I’d encourage you to read the 100-plus comments I received on the LinkedIn post about that article. What struck me — and you’ll appreciate this, having read this far — is that it was obvious many of the people commenting never read the actual newsletter (imagine that!) They took the headline and formed their own opinions. If anything, that’s an indictment of where we are today.

Over to you

Let me know what you’re seeing out there. I’m genuinely curious where people are putting their energy this summer and into the fall, as we head toward a midterm cycle that matters.

What’s the most exciting race where you live? What should I be paying attention to and highlighting in future newsletters?

Hit reply. I read every one.

Take care,

Joseph

Joseph Kopser

Co-Founder of USTomorrow

Joseph Kopser is a lifelong problem solver committed to building the teams needed to take on our toughest challenges. He is currently President of Grayline after he co-founded and served as CEO of RideScout, before it was acquired by Mercedes. He served in the U.S. Army for 20 years earning the Combat Action Badge, Army Ranger Tab and Bronze Star. He is a graduate of West Point with a BS in Aerospace Engineering and also received a Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School and former member of the Army Science Board. He was recognized as a White House Champion of Change for his efforts in Energy and Transportation as well as won the U.S. DOT Data Innovation Award. He co-authored the book, Catalyst, a book focused on helping teams adapt to change. He is the Chair of the Board of Advisors for the CleanTX, an economic development and professional association for energy innovation. In 2025, Joseph was selected for the Texas Business Hall of Fame Future Texas Business Legend Award. Joseph and his wife of 31 years, Amy, live in Austin and they are extremely proud of their three adult daughters living their best lives.

That story is going to repeat itself in towns and counties across this country. A March Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans now oppose building AI-supporting data centers near them. I have not seen public sentiment swing that hard against a piece of physical infrastructure in a long time.

So before the country splits into “data center yes” and “data center no” camps and stops talking to each other, I want to lay out how I’m thinking about this. Because if we get the debate wrong, we lose more than we know.

Start with what change actually is

In the opening chapter of Catalyst: Leadership and Strategy in a Changing World, my co-author Bret Boyd and I spend the whole first chapter on one question: what is change, really?

Not innovation. That’s the easy part. Change is what happens to everyone around the innovation. It’s the disruption to a town’s tax base, a worker’s identity, a homeowner’s view out the kitchen window, a utility’s load forecast. Innovation is a press release. Change is a fight.

Every wave of new technology runs into the same pattern. The people closest to the disruption push back first and loudest, and they are often right about the specific harms they see. But the question is never “is this disruption uncomfortable?” Of course it is. The question is whether we shape it together or let it happen to us.

Data centers are this generation’s test of that question.

The closest parallel: fracking

If you want to know how this story plays out, look back about fifteen years.

Hydraulic fracturing wasn’t a new idea in 2010. The basic technique dated to the 1940s. What changed was that horizontal drilling and modern fracking finally made it economic at scale. The early days were chaotic. There were real environmental problems. There were towns that voted it down, lawsuits, documentaries, kitchen sinks lighting on fire on YouTube. A lot of the concern was legitimate.

Then look at what happened. In 2005, the U.S. was importing about 15% of the natural gas it consumed and building LNG import terminals because we were sure we’d run short. By 2017 we were a net exporter. By 2023 we were the world’s number one LNG exporter, ahead of Qatar and Australia. Cheap domestic natural gas displaced a huge amount of coal, which, whatever you think of fossil fuels, was the single biggest driver of falling U.S. carbon emissions in the 2010s. (I highly encourage Michael Webber work that you can find here. His documentary goes deep into the story of energy.)

Fracking wasn’t harmless. I am not arguing that. But on the net, over the long arc, fracking did more good than harm for American energy, American manufacturing, and American geopolitical leverage. The people who screamed loudest in 2010 weren’t wrong that there were problems. They were wrong about the shape of the future.

AI data centers are the same shape of story. We’ve had data centers for decades. Every credit card swipe runs through one. What’s different now is that modern AI models have a voracious appetite for compute, and that compute requires new chips, larger campuses, and a frankly mind-boggling amount of power and water. U.S. data center electricity demand is projected to nearly double from roughly 80 GW today to 150 GW by 2028, and to consume about 12% of all U.S. electricity by 2028. A typical 100 MW AI campus drinks 1.5 to 3 million cubic meters of water per year for cooling.

Those numbers are real. The concerns are real. And just like fracking in 2010, they’re getting tangled up with something else.

Two kinds of “no”

When I read about a town meeting where a data center package gets voted down, I try hard to separate two very different groups of people standing at the same microphone.

The first group are neighbors and ratepayers genuinely worried about water tables, electric bills, traffic, and the night sky. Those are not unreasonable things to worry about. We should listen.

The second group are people with an ulterior motive. Folks who don’t actually want the digital economy to scale at all, or who are using local zoning as a proxy fight for a much bigger argument about technology itself. (Keep an eye on the Chinese or Russians messing with our social media influecning this political debate because they do not want the Americans to win the AI race). I see those two groups getting looped together, and the result is that the legitimate concerns of the first group never get answered, because the political energy gets captured by the second.

I’ll also say what is true about the other side. The hyperscalers and tech giants building these campuses have not, historically, been great citizens at the local level. They show up with lawyers and tax-abatement asks before they show up with listening sessions (some are better than others with community outreach! My friend Jose Beceiro is a great example). Some of them pour money into political causes that run directly counter to my own beliefs. They have earned a chunk of the suspicion they’re getting. They need to do dramatically better as stewards of the communities they enter and the watersheds they tap.

But “the developers have behaved badly” is not the same as “the infrastructure shouldn’t exist.”

The silver lining that few are talking about

Here’s the part that gets me genuinely excited, and I don’t think it’s getting enough airtime.

If we structure the incentives correctly, the private sector building this AI infrastructure is about to fund the biggest acceleration in new energy production, storage, and distribution in modern American history. Hyperscalers are signing power purchase agreements for new nuclear. They are restarting Three Mile Island. They are building behind-the-meter gas-plus-renewables, deploying batteries at unprecedented scale, and quietly pioneering microgrid campuses.

Picture a data center campus that is also a community microgrid. Generation, storage, and load on one site, with the spillover used to stabilize the regional grid and, in some scenarios, deliver heavily subsidized or near-free electricity to the surrounding community. That is not science fiction. That is a structure we can negotiate for, if local governments come to the table understanding what leverage they actually hold.

The communities that say “no, never” miss that leverage entirely. The communities that say “yes, but here’s what we want in return” are about to write themselves a generation of upside.

And then there’s China

I don’t bring up China to wave a flag. I bring it up because the math is the math.

China is on track for roughly 400 GW of spare power capacity by 2030. That’s about triple the projected power demand of the entire global data center fleet. In the first half of 2025 alone, China installed 357 GW of new wind and solar, more than the entire installed power capacity of India. Chinese data centers pay less than half of what American ones pay for electricity, and a project there moves from plan to operation in months rather than years.

Meanwhile, nearly half of planned U.S. data center builds for 2026 have been delayed or canceled. Power shortages. Transformer backlogs. Local opposition. Permitting purgatory.

If we lose this round, the country that wins it is one that does not recognize the rights of its own people, does not have a free press, and does not subject its decisions to the consent of the governed. I am not willing to hand that government compounding leadership over the most important general-purpose technology of our lifetimes because we couldn’t figure out how to talk to each other about a 200-acre campus in our county.

We’ve seen this movie

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, Luddite weavers smashed the looms because they were certain the machines were coming for their livelihoods. They were, in a narrow sense, right. And in the longer sense, no industrial society since has ever willingly gone back. The looms won. The question was always whether we would build the schools, the safety nets, and the new jobs fast enough to bring the people forward with the technology.

That’s the same question on every college campus where students boo speakers who want to talk honestly about AI. I get the fear. I also know that booing the conversation off the stage doesn’t make the technology go away. It just guarantees that the people who do show up to shape it don’t look like you.

A few months ago I had a long conversation with my friend Brett Hurt, founder of data.world and one of the clearest thinkers I know on the ethics and architecture of AI. We spent most of it on a single point. The potential of this technology, properly harnessed, is staggering. The risk isn’t that AI gets built. The risk is that it gets built somewhere we don’t have a say in how.

What I’m asking of you

I know this is not the most popular position to take with the US Tomorrow audience. Push back. That’s the point of this newsletter.

But before you vote no at the next zoning meeting, I’d ask four things.

1. Replace “yes or no” with “yes, and what do we get?” Demand water reuse, grid contribution, ratepayer protection, workforce pipelines, and a local tax structure that actually funds schools. The leverage is real.

2. Insist on public-private partnerships. Private capital, nonprofit accountability, workforce-development institutions, and local voters at the same table. Not separate tables.

3. Hold hyperscalers to a higher standard of citizenship. Make community stewardship a precondition, not a press release.

4. Don’t let the loudest voice in the room speak for the whole town. The folks with ulterior motives are organized. The folks who just want a fair deal need to be more organized.

We’ve done bigger things together than this. The interstate highway system. Rural electrification. The internet itself. Each one came with real, painful disruption. Each one paid back the country many times over because we decided to shape the build instead of refusing it.

The looms are coming either way. Let’s be the country that owns them.

— Joseph

Co-Founder of USTomorrow

Catalyst: Leadership and Strategy in a Changing World, co-authored with Bret Boyd, is available wherever books are sold. The first chapter is the foundation for how I think about everything in this piece

Joseph Kopser is a serial entrepreneur and leadership development expert. Prior to that his company, RideScout, was acquired by Mercedes. He served in the Army for 20 years after graduating from West Point and Harvard. He was recognized as a White House Champion of Change in clean energy and won the U.S. DOT Data Innovation Award. Co-author of Catalyst: Leadership and Strategy in a Changing World, co-authored with Bret Boyd, is available wherever books are sold.

It’s been a month since I’ve sent a USTomorrow newsletter. I did something I haven’t done in a long time. I unplugged. No email, no news, no scrolling. Amy and I spent two glorious weeks in France— a river cruise through France’s wine country (there is a future Thomas Jefferson newsletter there) and the Loire Valley (and a future Leonardo da Vinci newsletter there) — and for the first time in years, I let myself be fully present somewhere that wasn’t a screen. From there I went to Boston to celebrate the retirement of one of my favorite professors at the Harvard Kennedy School, David King — an evening of speeches and toasts that recharged my batteries in ways I wasn’t expecting. And then home to Lexington for Mother’s Day, to visit my mom in her final resting place.

I came back with a lot to write about. Future newsletters will get into:

• Why more Americans need to get a passport and actually travel abroad — there is no substitute for seeing your country from the outside.

• Why we’d all be better off watching less news and substituting short-form for longer-form pieces. The attention economy is winning, and we are losing.

• Why beating up on our European allies is both wrongheaded and historically illiterate — and why a walk through Paris, from the Revolution to the modern day, will show you more American tributes than most Americans have ever bothered to count in present day Paris.

But that’s for later. I’ll package those up over the coming weeks.

What I want to focus on today is the fact that during those two weeks unplugged, I got to read several books cover to cover (Amy says I have to clarify that I listen to Audible). Of those four, the one most worth your time right now is almost ten years old: Robert Gates’ A Passion for Leadership, published in 2016, on the discipline of leading large organizations — bureaucracies, governments, and businesses alike. We are watching in real time, in both the public and private sectors, what happens when people running large organizations lack the skill or experience Gates spent his career honing. Much of what he foreshadowed and warned against a decade ago is playing out right now. More importantly, the book offers a recipe for going forward.

So let’s start there.

If you know Robert Gates, you know he is a national treasure. His perspective on service isn’t theoretical. It runs through the CIA, the presidency of Texas A&M, and his tenure as Secretary of Defense — decades of institutional leadership across both parties. I’ve been a fan since I first met him shortly after he became SecDef in 2006, when he and his team flew into Mosul, Iraq. What struck me wasn’t the visit — it was how far forward he came to the front. When he writes that he wants to hear from Soldiers and frontline supervisors, he means it. I heard the same thing from friends and mentors who knew him well — Steve Smith, George Casey, Pete Chiarelli — and from leaders like Howard Schultz: Gates is the real deal. I later got to host him at the University of Texas in 2012 for a fireside chat with our ROTC cadets. It was off the chain amazing.

One detail in the book stuck with me harder than I expected: Gates traces his own life of service back to John F. Kennedy’s call to public service. A generation of Americans heard “ask what you can do for your country” and built careers around it. Gates was one of them. I was another, in my own small way. In 1989, while still in high school, I gave a speech to the United Way on the same theme — service to country, service to community, service to something larger than yourself.

I think about that speech often, because I think we’ve lost something in the decades since.

People become what they can see. I tell audiences this constantly. If young people grow up watching leaders campaign against government, mock career public servants, and treat the civil service as a punchline, we shouldn’t be surprised when they choose other paths. Role-modeling isn’t a soft skill. It’s the single most consequential thing a leader does — and the cheapest investment we can make in the next generation of public servants.

Gates also lands hard on something every leader of a large organization needs to internalize: numbers don’t lie, but people do — in the way they manipulate them. Pick the wrong metric, and you incentivize the wrong behavior every time. Body counts. Standardized test scores. Quarterly earnings. Arrests. Wait times. Every one of these has, at some point, distorted the very thing it was meant to measure. The point isn’t that measurement is bad. It’s that lazy or politically convenient measurement is corrosive. Choosing the right goals is the leader’s job — and getting it wrong cascades through every layer of the organization below.

This points to a bigger problem in America we don’t talk about enough: numerical illiteracy. We are a country that struggles to read statistics, weigh one measurement against another, and tell absolute risk from relative risk or correlation from causation. A democracy that can’t read its own data is a democracy that can be sold almost anything. The consequences land hardest on the institutions trying to make evidence-based decisions in front of a public that has been trained to feel rather than calculate.

The media environment doesn’t help. Gates notes — and he’s right — that the press rarely focuses on people doing what’s right. “If it bleeds, it leads” was always true of news. Social media has industrialized it. Every platform is engineered for clicks, outrage, and stickiness. There’s a new book by David Epstein on the importance of constraint and focus, discussed in a recent EconTalk with Russ Roberts, that I’d recommend to anyone trying to think clearly in this environment. Leaders who govern well in the next decade will be the ones who can quiet the noise long enough to choose where their attention goes — and what their institutions optimize for.

The parts of Gates’ book that hit hardest, though, weren’t the program cancellations or the policy victories. It was his respect for career public servants — the civil servants, federal employees, state workers, and local administrators who show up regardless of who won the last election.

There’s a figure in Army culture sometimes called “the little old lady in tennis shoes” — a euphemism for the career public servant who outlasts every commander rotating in and out. She knows where the bodies are buried. She knows why the last three attempts at reform failed. She knows which lever to pull to make something actually stick. She’s invaluable. And she’s perpetually underestimated. The political reflex to campaign against government, to treat these people as obstacles rather than partners, is one of the most damaging habits we’ve developed in modern American politics. It costs us reform we could otherwise be celebrating.

Years ago, a friend and colleague — Margaret K., herself a career public servant whom I met running for Congress — pulled me aside after I made an offhand remark. I had said, half-joking, that if something was “good enough for government service, it was good enough for me.” She looked me in the eye and calmly explained how demeaning that phrase is to the people who forego private-sector pay and public recognition to serve with diligence and integrity. I’ve never used it since. And I’ve never forgotten the lesson.

Here’s what baffles me about the current moment: there is a real need for innovation and reform across many sectors of government. Gates proves it’s possible. In 2009 and 2010, in the Pentagon, I watched him cancel the Army’s Future Combat Systems and other programs that were bloated, out of scope, and over budget. Hard, consequential reform — done by earning credibility with the people inside the system, not by declaring them the problem.

When you walk into an institution with contempt for the people who built it, label them as obstacles, and govern by humiliation, the backlash from both inside and outside is predictable. That’s not resistance to change. That’s how human beings respond to being treated as enemies in their own house. I wrote about the Elon Musk disruption with DOGE when people could not believe what he was doing. I think Elon should have read Gates’ book before he started.

Gates also reminds us that humor matters in leadership — at every level. People are surprised when I say this, but even in combat we made room for levity and sarcasm. Not despite the stress. Because of it. Leaders who can’t laugh — at the situation, at themselves — burn out themselves and their teams.

If there is a single thread running through A Passion for Leadership, it’s this: real change in any large organization, and especially in government, comes down to two disciplines.

Listen more than you talk. And power down responsibility to the people closest to the work.

That’s it. That’s the whole job.

If we want a better government — and the next generation of Americans willing to build it — we should start by modeling those two disciplines ourselves.

Joseph Kopser

Co-Founder of USTomorrow.us

More about me at JosephKopser.com

It was only a matter of time for me to need to bring this previous USTomorrow piece back for another run. Here is it in full from just after the Vice President went to Rome last year.

From May 19th, 2025

With all the talk about the new Pope, the Vice President’s return to Rome and religion being in the news so much recently, I wanted to highlight a great book that stays top of mine for me when people talk religion and politics. (Which I hope more people do!)

I want to recommend: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta. This book offers insight into the evolving role of the evangelical church and how its internal battles have influenced American politics.

Understanding the Evangelical Movement

Alberta, himself a Pastors’ son and practicing Christian, provides a nuanced look at the modern evangelical movement through the experiences of pastors, congregations, and everyday believers. He explores how shifts in values and priorities have led to divisions within the church, which in turn reflect and contribute to the polarization we see in politics today.

You might recall I did a recent piece on how Democracy grows stronger when more Christians reflect Christ’s compassion—and when secular voices make space for faith in public life. It’s why I found the book so compelling.

USTomorrow by Joseph Kopser

A Gay Atheist Jew, the Pope, and American Poverty

Author's Note: I wrote this newsletter about the Pope prior to news of his passing. I went back and updated the newsletter to put emphasis on the Pope's call for Christians and Catholics to live in a more Christ-like way…

Read more

a year ago · 2 comments · Joseph Kopser

A Mirror for Our Politics

For many conservative Christians, America has been seen as a special, divinely blessed nation. However, Alberta points out that this national pride has sometimes evolved into political/Christian nationalism. He traces key moments in recent history, such as the Trump presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic, to show how these events have deepened existing trends within the evangelical community.

Alberta aims to explore the complexities of how faith and politics have become intertwined, leaving readers to reflect on the future of both the church and the country.

In writing this post, I found a great interview between Tim Albert with fellow Pastor’s son, Jon Ward, before the book went to press. It’s a great discussion if you enjoy audio podcasts.

Border-Stalkers

Tim Alberta's new book portrays a tug of war for the soul of American Christianity

Hello friends…

Listen now

3 years ago · 16 likes · Jon Ward

Final Thoughts

I believe The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory is a valuable resource for understanding the broader cultural and political shifts we’re witnessing. It sheds light on the challenges facing the evangelical community while offering important context for the current political climate. I encourage you to read it and share your thoughts.

It might even help with a family member or neighbor where you both don’t understand each other’s political views when it comes to understanding why the country is still nearly 50-50.

Let me know what you’re seeing out there.

Joseph Kopser

Co-Founder of USTomorrow.us

AI isn’t a political position. It’s a tool—no different than the computer or the internet. The real issue isn’t the technology itself, it’s how we choose to use it. But before we even get to that point, we have a more basic problem: most people don’t actually understand how it works.

And that’s where leadership comes in.

You Can’t Lead What You Don’t Understand

In the Army, I learned a hard truth about leadership: you cannot lead what you do not understand.

Back in 2006, when that photo was taken in Mosul, Iraq, I was serving as the Squadron XO for 1/9 Cavalry. We had nearly 1,000 Soldiers and hundreds of pieces of equipment spread across everything from vehicles and weapons to communications, medical, and intelligence systems.

I wasn’t the expert in any one of those areas.

I wasn’t the best marksman. I wasn’t the master gunner. I wasn’t the mechanic or the intel officer.

But I had to understand how it all worked.

Because when something broke down—and it always did—I had to make decisions. Real decisions with trade-offs between time, money, and mission risk. If I couldn’t follow the troubleshooting recommended, I couldn’t lead effectively.

Leadership isn’t about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about having enough understanding to see the whole picture while your team is deep in the details.

The Same Lesson in Business & Politics

That lesson didn’t go away when I left the Army.

When we built RideScout, I wasn’t the lead developer. But I had to understand how the product worked and how the MVP was being built. If the CEO is disconnected from the technology, the company is operating blind.

You don’t need to write the code. But you do need to understand the logic.

AI Is Today’s Version of That Problem

Today, that same challenge is showing up with AI.

I talk to a lot of people (i.e. business leaders) who are trying to stay “high level” on AI. They read summaries, attend panels, and talk strategy. But they’re not actually using the tools.

That’s a mistake.

The pace of change right now is fast enough that what worked even a few months ago can already feel outdated. You can’t lead through that kind of shift from a distance.

My Own Approach

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been forcing myself to get hands-on.

Not just reading about AI—but actually using it. Testing tools. Breaking workflows. Trying to understand where it works well and where it doesn’t.

And I’ll be honest, it’s been fun.

It reminds me of sitting in front of my first computer (and IBM PCjr), trying to get BASIC code to run. That same sense of figuring things out as you go.

Where I Think People Are Getting It Wrong

What concerns me is that a lot of leaders (business and political) are hesitant to admit they don’t understand this yet.

So instead, they default to safe language—frameworks, policies, strategy decks.

But without real understanding underneath, that’s not leadership. It’s just positioning.

The baseline has shifted. If you’re not willing to engage directly with the technology, you’re not really leading on it.

Bringing It Back to the Bigger Point

AI shouldn’t be something that divides us politically.

It should be something that challenges us to step up.

To learn.
To experiment.
To get a little uncomfortable.

Because that’s what leadership has always required.

The Question

So here’s the question I’ve been asking myself:

Am I actually learning how this works… or am I just talking about it?

Curious how others are approaching it—what’s one AI tool you’ve used that actually helped you understand things better?

Joseph Kopser

Co-Founder of USTomorrow.us

I promised I had theories. But first, I wanted to hear from you.

And you delivered.

Heads up: If this topic resonates with you, there’s a couple of opportunities to learn more linked below. Join if you can.

You’ve Seen This Before

The response from readers was thoughtful, personal, and, in the best way, a little heartbreaking. It confirmed what I suspected: the Kelly Hall story isn’t an anomaly. It’s a pattern. And many of you have watched it play out up close.

M, put it plainly:

“I read about that Hall election and my heart sank. I think we simply stopped paying attention to elections and the process and now we are seeing the results. Another unfortunate result here in Bexar County. We simply must do a better job of creating voters who seek to be informed about candidates. League of Women Voters has our Voters Guide and we distribute 50,000 in both English and Spanish. The TX Trib does a voters guide, our local SA Report does a voters guide. Anecdotally people tell us they read at least one of those to get informed — but obviously not enough.”

O. spoke to something even more fundamental — the real-world constraints on civic engagement:

“My husband and I read the background and platforms of every candidate. Also every bill put forth, outlining the pros and cons. It doesn’t require a lot of time — but most people have their noses to the grindstone to pay bills, feed their families, and maybe catch an episode of a favorite show at the end of the day. It is sad but true. You pointed out that sometimes their decisions are based on race, gender, affiliations, or if they are good looking should they even make it to the polls. Sad but true.”

C. brought up a powerful and specific example — one that illustrates just how consequential name-based and identity-based voting can be in down-ballot races:

“It has happened in the past and it has happened in several cases this election. If you remember Tim Sulak — who was an experienced judge — he ran for reelection in 2016, when Hillary was on the ballot. Basically young women voted for the woman on the ballot and he lost. I think women are as qualified and many times more qualified to be elected, but I try to look at qualifications versus sex. People who don’t research candidates should be very cautious voting in races just because of the name.”

And Sharon Lawrence— who spent nearly a decade working in the elections industry — highlighted our last newsletter publicly and added her own expertise over at her Substack. She wrote:

“You raised an issue that has frustrated me for over two decades so I was thrilled to see this post!”

has been writing thoughtfully on these similar issues for years. I encourage you to follow her work: sharonlawrence.substack.com

The common thread running through all of this feedback? Our system, as currently designed, makes it far too easy for uninformed choices to drown out informed ones — especially in primaries. Which brings me to the good news.

There are real solutions. And one of them is elegant in its simplicity.

What If the Top Three Advanced?

Among the most compelling responses I received came from J., who cut right to it:

“Do away with primaries by party and have one primary. Top three are in the final election, most votes wins.”

I love this idea — and not just because it would have helped me personally (more on that in a moment). There are a lot of reasons why we need to look at changing the system.

A combined, nonpartisan primary where the top three vote-getters advance to the general election would fundamentally change the incentives in our political system. Here’s why it matters.

Go back to Texas House District 19. Under a top-three system, Kelly Hall — who spent $750 and ran no campaign — would almost certainly not have been one of the three finalists. Javier Andrade, the Army veteran and cybersecurity professional endorsed by the Austin American-Statesman, would have made it to the general election. Voters who had no idea there was a primary - or no intention of voting in it - would have gotten a second opportunity to do due diligence and weigh in during the general election.

It would have helped me too. In HD47, I ran a real campaign. I knocked on doors, raised money, built a coalition. Under a top-three primary system, I would have advanced to the general — where a much broader and more informed electorate would have decided the outcome. That’s how it should work– even if I lose, at least more folks will get a voice.

And then there’s Ken Paxton.

In the 2026 Texas Senate race, Paxton — the indicted Attorney General — finished fourth in the primary (if you combined them, he was fourth behind Talarico, Crocket and Cornyn. Under a top-three system, he would not have made it to the November ballot, not to mention the ongoing potential for a bruising, divisive, and expensive GOP primary runoff or the meddling of a fickle President.

Many of my Republican friends told me they felt torn during the primary: they wanted to vote for me in HD47, but felt their higher calling was to vote in the GOP primary specifically to keep Paxton off the Senate ballot in November. A combined primary resolves that tension entirely. You don’t have to choose your tribe over your conscience.

A top-three combined primary doesn’t eliminate competition. It expands it. It gives voice to the voters in the middle — independents, crossover voters, people who don’t neatly fit into either party’s base — and it rewards candidates who can build broad coalitions rather than just mobilize the hyper-partisan minority of the electorate that currently decides primary results.

It’s not a perfect system. No system is. But it’s a serious improvement over what we have now.

Unfortunately, the very elected officials required to change the laws are in power now and could give up that power if the combined primary system were implemented, so unfortunately, there is little will to fix it.

The Independents Are Coming

Here’s the thing: the frustrations that lead to elections like the Kelly Hall outcome — and the solutions readers like J. are proposing — aren’t fringe ideas anymore. They’re the emerging mainstream.

According to new research from , nearly half of all Americans now identify as political independents.

Let that sink in. Half the country doesn’t feel represented by either major party.

And it’s not hard to understand why. When a winner-take-all primary system — stacked on top of gerrymandered districts — consistently produces candidates who appeal to the ideological extremes, voters in the broad middle have a rational response: they disengage, or they opt out of the party label entirely.

The rise of independents isn’t just a polling curiosity. It’s a signal. People aren’t abandoning their civic values — they’re abandoning the vehicles that no longer reflect them. And that creates a genuine opening for a different kind of politics: one built around competence, integrity, and the ability to actually govern.

Which brings me to two friends of mine who are doing exactly that.

Two Leaders Worth Your Attention

Seth Bodnar — U.S. Senate, Montana (Independent)

Up in Montana, my friend Seth Bodnar is running for the United States Senate — as an independent.

Seth is a West Point graduate, a Rhodes Scholar, and a former Army Ranger. He’s also the former president of the University of Montana. He brings exactly the kind of record and character that voters say they want — and he’s betting that enough Montanans are ready to elect someone who doesn’t owe a party anything.

Mayor Jim Penniman-Morin — Cedar Park, Texas (Re-Election)

Closer to home, my good friend and fellow Army veteran Mayor Jim (as many hall him) is running for re-election in Cedar Park.

Jim is a West Point graduate who has brought the same discipline and integrity to leading Cedar Park that he brought to serving our country. He’s exactly the kind of local leader that makes democracy work at the ground level — the kind who actually shows up, does the homework, and earns your vote.

I’ll be co-hosting a fundraiser for Jim next week, and I’d love to see you there. If you can’t make it in person, you can send your financial support directly. RSVP or donate here.

Local elections are where the rubber meets the road. Cedar Park deserves a leader like Jim, and races like his are often decided by small margins. Your support matters.

The Thread Connecting All of This

Reader feedback. Combined primaries. The rise of independents. Friends running as the kind of candidates we say we want.

These aren’t disconnected stories. They’re different angles on the same challenge: a political system that too often produces outcomes that don’t reflect what most Americans actually want — and a growing movement of people determined to change that.

Democracy doesn’t fix itself. It gets fixed by informed voters, better rules, and people willing to step up and run.

You’re already doing your part by reading and thinking carefully. Now let’s keep pushing.

As always — reply and let me know what you’re seeing out there.

Joseph Co-Founder of USTomorrow

Over the last four months on the campaign trail for the Texas House, I got a second look from a front-row seat, seeing how the system actually works—not how we hope it works. What I saw should concern anyone who cares about accountability, participation, and results.

As we head toward the midterms, I’m launching a USTomorrow series to take a clear-eyed look at where our system is falling short—and what we can do about it.

But this isn’t just my perspective.

I want to hear from you (and the other nearly 9,000 UST readers)—what you’re seeing, what’s not working, and what needs to change. Because if we’re going to rebuild trust in the system - and overcome the gigantic effort underway to sow doubt in it - it starts with honest conversations and shared ownership of what comes next.

Do Your Homework Before You Vote

How does a candidate win an election without running a campaign at all?

That’s not a rhetorical question. Voter “preferences” sometimes deliver surprising results.

In the Texas House District 19 Democratic primary (next door to the District I ran in), a candidate who reportedly believed he had stepped aside from the race still ended up winning the nomination. He (Kelly Hall) had spent only about $750 covering filing fees, put up no yard signs, and did little of any traditional campaigning. No website. And yet he won by nearly 20 points. In mid-January, Kelly changed his mind to not run for Texas House and decided to run for mayor of Round Rock.

Meanwhile, the opponent he defeated (Javier Andrade) was an Army veteran and cybersecurity professional who had received the endorsement of the Austin American-Statesman.

When the results came in, the outcome surprised nearly everyone—including the winner himself. Friends reportedly interrupted a Call of Duty session to let him know he won the primary.

So how does something like that happen? Seriously. I’m asking you, the reader, to reply and let me know how you think it happens. I have my theories that I plan to lay out in the next several USTomorrow newsletters.

For now, let’s take a look at a few underlying factors. Because the answer isn’t just about one contest. It reveals something deeper about how voters behave—especially in primary elections and down-ballot races.

The Information Problem in Down-Ballot Races

Political scientists have studied voting behavior for decades and consistently find the same pattern:

The farther down the ballot you go, the less information voters tend to have.

When voters lack information, two things usually happen:

Ballot roll-off – some voters simply skip the race entirely.

Shortcut voting – others rely on cues instead of research.

Those cues can include:

• Name recognition

• Incumbency

• Ballot order

• Perceived gender or ethnicity inferred from names

Researchers call these heuristics—mental shortcuts that help people make decisions quickly.

Sometimes they work well.

Sometimes they don’t.

And in low-information environments, they can produce surprising outcomes.

Primaries Magnify the Problem

Primary elections amplify this effect.

Unlike our currently hyper-partisan, gerrymander entrenched general elections, where party labels provide a strong signal, primaries usually feature candidates from the same party. Voters cannot simply choose the candidate with the (D) or (R) next to their name.

Without that cue, voters must rely on other signals to make decisions.

At the same time, primaries usually have lower turnout and less media coverage.

That means fewer voters—and less shared information.

Which is exactly the environment where unexpected outcomes become possible.

Civic Literacy Matters

This is where civic education becomes critical.

Surveys from the Annenberg Public Policy Center show that about 70% of Americans can name the three branches of government.

That’s encouraging. (And a little discouraging its not 95%)

But it also means millions of voters struggle with even basic civic knowledge—making complex ballots harder to navigate.

Civic education isn’t just about memorizing facts.

It’s about learning how to find credible information, compare candidates, and evaluate sources.

In other words:

It’s about learning how to do your homework as a voter. Don’t vote unless you really know who you are voting for. In this case, 7,887 voters “for” Kelly Hall are likely to have done literally zero homework on the race before casting a ballot.

The Ballot Box Is Powerful

Every election season, one song captures the essence of American democracy.

Willie Nelson sings it simply:

“The biggest gun we’ve got… the ballot box.”
“If you don’t like who’s in there, vote ’em out.”

He’s right.

The ballot box is one of the greatest inventions in human history.

It allows citizens to change leadership without violence.

But powerful tools only work when we use them carefully.

If the ballot box is the “weapon” of democracy, then responsible citizens have two jobs:

Show up.

Aim.

Showing up means voting—especially in primaries, where fewer voters determine who appears on the November ballot.

Aiming means taking a few minutes to understand the candidates before casting your vote. Or skip that race and don’t vote.

A Simple Civic Habit

Doing your homework doesn’t require hours of research.

It might simply mean:

• Filling out a sample ballot before voting

• Reading one or two trusted voter guides

• Looking up the candidates’ backgrounds

• Checking credible journalism or endorsements

Those small steps replace guesswork with knowledge.

And when millions of voters do that together, democracy becomes stronger.

Granted, the Texas House District 19 race may be unusual.

But the conditions that produced it—low information, primary turnout, and shortcut voting—exist in elections across the country.

If we want the ballot box to do its job, we have to do ours.

Because democracy works best when citizens vote with reasons.

Before we end, why do you think Kelly won by nearly 20%?

Let me know what you think and what you’re seeing out there.

Joseph

Co-Founder of USTomorrow

Yesterday the voters of House District 47 made their decision.

While it wasn’t the outcome we worked so hard toward, I want you to know how deeply grateful I am for the trust, the encouragement, and the belief you placed in this campaign.

Running for office is a humbling experience. You knock on doors in the heat (yes, in Texas in Feb/March it was hot!). You have conversations with neighbors who agree with you and others who don’t. And along the way you are reminded that democracy is not an abstract idea — it’s a very human process, one conversation at a time.

Now that the voters have had their say, it’s now our job to ensure the elected are working to break the partisan expectations are holding our communities and our country back.

Over the past months I met thousands of people across our district. Parents worried about their kids’ schools. Small business owners trying to navigate an uncertain economy. Veterans looking for leaders who understand service. Young people eager to participate in shaping the future of Texas.

Those conversations will stay with me going forward. I would welcome you to join us to power that effort.

From the beginning, this campaign was about doing things differently in our politics. Moving closer to the center to push back on the politics of division.

Many of you stepped up to be part of that experiment.

You donated your hard-earned money.
You opened your homes.
You volunteered your evenings and weekends.
You shared the message with your friends and neighbors.

Together, we raised resources, reached thousands of voters, and built a community of people who believe that leadership should still be about service.

That matters.

Because elections come and go, the work of building stronger communities never really stops.

As many of you know, my life has always been guided by service — first as a Soldier, later as a husband, father and entrepreneur, and now through my work writing and speaking about the future of our country through USTomorrow. That mission doesn’t end because of an election result.

If anything, the lessons of this campaign reinforce what I’ve long believed: our country doesn’t just need better politics — it needs more citizens willing to engage, listen, and lead.

You helped prove that spirit is still alive.

Thank you for standing with us.

Thank you for believing that leadership grounded in service still matters.

And thank you for the friendships, conversations, and community that came out of this campaign. Those will last far longer than a single election cycle.

Lastly, congratulations to Pooja Sethi on her victory. Primaries matter.

With gratitude,

Joseph Kopser

PS— I’ll be following up soon with my next chapter.

I ask the tough questions. I don’t back down to bullies, and I’m not afraid to buck the line with my own party because I want results.

In business, it’s called disruption.
In politics, it’s called caring.

Thank you for caring and standing with your neighbors to build a better Texas. Polls are open tomorrow 7 am and as long as you’re in line by 7 pm, no one can turn you away. So if you haven’t yet, please VOTE!

Our ad on Youtube now has over 375,000 views. I plan to keep it running through 7 pm tonight. Click here to help us make that happen.

Thanks again for everyone that donated with their time and money to support our efforts to make a change.

Take care,

Joseph

www.KopserForTexas.com

PS-- It’s not too late to be a donor yourself!

And something important is happening.

Turnout is at record levels.

For the first time since 2002, more Democrats have voted in the Texas primary than Republicans. No matter where you fall politically, that kind of participation matters. Engagement matters. Showing up matters.

When more people participate, democracy gets healthier. My friend, mentor and Harvard Professor Robert Putnam writes extensively about the benefits of civic participation. I’ve written extensively about him in the past.

That’s the USTomorrow lens.

When I zoom out and look at the long arc of civic life in Texas, I see something encouraging: people are paying attention again. They care. They are taking ownership of the direction of their communities.

That’s a good thing.

But let me switch hats for a moment.

When I put on my candidate hat for House District 47, record turnout creates both excitement and urgency.

Excitement — because engagement means voters are listening.

Urgency — because in HD-47 alone, there are still more than 20,000 eligible voters that have not yet voted.

Twenty thousand. In a race where about 25,000 voters will end up voting, that is a HUGE unknown factor in the outcome.

That’s not a statistic. That’s neighbors. That’s parents at pickup line. That’s young professionals. That’s veterans. That’s entrepreneurs. That’s people who care about Austin’s future but haven’t yet plugged into the system.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

We’ve done what campaigns do.

Mailers have gone out.
Doors have been knocked.
Canvassers have walked neighborhoods.
Volunteers have made calls.
Data has been analyzed.
Neighborhood ambassadors have stepped up.

And digitally — we’ve leaned in.

One of our YouTube ads is approaching 200,000 views.

That sounds like a big number.

But think about your own daily scroll. How many videos do you fly past in seconds? How many messages do you barely register?

Attention today is fleeting.

Which means consistency matters.
Repetition matters.
Presence matters.

If we want to reach voters where they are — we have to meet them there. Over and over again.

Luckily, Mother Nature gave us a gift this weekend.

Blue skies. Great weather. The kind of weekend where you can knock every possible door and still feel grateful to be outside.

So that’s what we’re doing.

All gas, no brakes as Coach Sark likes to say.

Because participation doesn’t just happen. It’s built.

Here’s what I believe — whether I’m writing USTomorrow or running for office:

• High participation is healthy.
• Engagement strengthens institutions.
• Showing up changes outcomes.

And the more we build that muscle now, the stronger our country will be in the years ahead.

If you haven’t voted yet — today is the last day of early voting in Texas.

If you’ve already voted — thank you.

And if you believe in what we’re building in HD-47 and want to help keep the fuel in the rocket, you can visit the campaign website and chip in to help us finish strong. I want to keep our ads running all the way through the Tuesday night at 7 pm!

Because democracy only works when we power it.

See you at the polls.

— Joseph

The campaign trail has a way of consuming every spare hour. But before I go any further, a quick public service announcement:

If you live in Texas, early voting starts on Tuesday, 17 February. Have a plan. March matters. Check out commercial that just dropped called, “Fighting Forward.”

Now back to the reason for this newsletter.

I recently joined my friend Brett Hurt — Austin entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and host of the podcast Love Conquers Fear — for a wide-ranging conversation about AI, consciousness, spirituality, entrepreneurship, and public service.

It may have been one of the most personal interviews I’ve ever given.

And I’d love for you to watch it and tell me what you think.

You Are the Average of the Five People Around You

Early in the conversation, Brett asked:

How do you prevent yourself from being programmed?

I’ve told audiences for years:

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

If you’re constantly angry about politics…
If you believe the world is falling apart…
If everyone around you reinforces that belief…

Pause.

Look left. Look right.

The people around you may be amplifying your fear.

And fear is profitable. Algorithms reward outrage. “If it bleeds, it leads” didn’t start with social media — but social media perfected it.

If you want to deprogram yourself, don’t start with technology.

Start with your relationships.

Spend time with people who see the world differently.
Break the echo chamber.
Choose curiosity over certainty.

Faith, Loss, and the Unexplainable

Brett and I went deeper than AI.

We talked about faith.

I shared two moments that changed me.

The first was when our firstborn, Keaton, was an infant. One afternoon she was in her crib, babbling — but it wasn’t random baby noise. It sounded like a conversation. A rhythm. A response. As if she were talking to someone.

No one was there.

But it didn’t feel imaginary.

The second was the night my father died.

I had spoken to him on the phone. Something felt off. Deeply off. I told Amy I thought it might be the last time I’d hear his voice.

That night I woke up in a startle from a dream — an ambulance coming straight toward me. Minutes later, the phone rang.

He was gone.

You can call that coincidence.
You can call it grief.
You can call it subconscious processing.

Or you can call it something else. I call a believe in a higher being. I call him God. You might have a different name, but I’ve been a big fan of God and Jesus for a long time.

I’ve come to believe we are more connected than our five senses allow us to perceive.

Science is starting to hint at what faith traditions have whispered for centuries:
We may be connected in ways that defy our current vocabulary.

Flatland and the Fourth Dimension

In the podcast, I described an idea that has stuck with me for years.

Imagine a two-dimensional world — “Flatland.” If you place your hand through it, the inhabitants would see five separate lines. They would not see the hand that connects them.

What if we are like that?

What if our three-dimensional selves are shadows of something more?

Quantum entanglement tells us particles can be connected across vast distances. Spiritual traditions tell us we are one body.

Maybe those are not competing ideas.

Maybe they are describing the same reality from different angles.

AI: God’s Final Exam?

Brett asked me about artificial intelligence and abundance.

Here’s what I believe:

I am a 99% AI optimist.

(That last 1% is reserved for the 2006 movie Idiocracy.)

AI is a tool — like fire, electricity, or the printing press. It can accelerate destruction or unlock abundance.

But here’s what’s different this time:

The rate of change.

When Bret Boyd and I wrote Catalyst, we argued that change itself isn’t what disrupts societies — it’s the speed of change.

AI is moving at breakneck speed.

Used wisely, it could:

• End scarcity in energy.

• Transform healthcare.

• Personalize education.

• Increase productivity beyond anything we’ve seen.

Used poorly, it could amplify fear, division, and concentration of power.

Which brings us back to something spiritual.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Love conquers fear — or fear conquers us.

Those are the only two long-term options.

Texas, Humanity, and Abundance

Brett asked me what I hope for Texas.

My answer:
Let Texas be Texas — at its best.

Texas has always been a place of misfits, entrepreneurs, immigrants, risk-takers, oil wildcatters, technologists, and dreamers. It is a crossroads state.

But we must remember:

Your success is not my loss.

We can build abundance — in energy, in education, in opportunity — if we stop believing that someone else’s gain diminishes us.

That applies to Texas.

It applies to America.

And it applies to humanity.

The Real Question

The real question isn’t whether AI will change the world.

It will.

The real question is:

Will we use it to deepen connection — or to widen division?

Will we become more thoughtful?
More empathetic?
More aware of one another?

Or will we allow ourselves to be programmed by fear?

We are entering a moment of enormous technological acceleration.

But the deeper shift required is a heart shift.

I’d love for you to watch the full conversation.

What do you think is the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on society?

Are you optimistic? Concerned? Somewhere in between?

Reply to this email or blog with your comments. I read them all.

And if you live in Texas — vote.

— Joseph

But I was lucky enough to be shaped by someone he deeply influenced.

Her name was Mrs. Audrey Grevious—my sixth-grade teacher at Maxwell Elementary School. And on this MLK Day, I want to honor them both.

Back in 2020, the week John Lewis passed away, I shared a short video tribute to Mrs. Grevious. Today, I’m reposting it—not as nostalgia, but as a reminder. The truths from that moment still hold. Maybe even more so now.

Mrs. Grevious lived in the same era as John Lewis. She sat at lunch counters demanding equal service. She stood up, quietly and consistently, for dignity and fairness. But what made her extraordinary to generations of students wasn’t only her place in history—it was how she showed up for us, personally.

She knew us. She remembered our names. She cared about who we were becoming.

Whether it was her favorite annual production (the Nativity), overseeing graduation, or reminding a bunch of awkward sixth graders that clip-on ties could, in fact, be cool—she made sure every one of us felt seen. More importantly, she taught us something simple and enduring:

When you see a problem, go fix it.

That lesson stuck.

When I later watched Good Trouble, the documentary about John Lewis, the connection clicked even more clearly. For people alive today who struggle to understand the anger, the frustration, or the urgency they see around them, Lewis’s life offers context. He didn’t protest because it was fashionable. He protested because democracy demanded participation—and courage.

That, to me, is the through-line.

From MLK, to John Lewis, to Mrs. Audrey Grevious. From lunch counters, to classrooms, to ballots cast. American history isn’t a straight line. We’ve had progress and setbacks, hope and heartbreak. But we grow better together when we remember that democracy is a shared project.

If this moment feels confusing—or heavy—I’ll offer two simple suggestions. First, learn the history. Watch the films. Read the stories that explain how we got here. Second, listen.

One place to start is with my friend and mentor, Rick Lynch. He hosts leadership tours of Selma, Alabama and it’s reported to be quite moving for all those involved. He writes:

An immersive event for your team to develop leadership skills through the lens of the Civil Rights Movement and the events that occurred in Selma, Alabama.— Rick Lynch

MLK Day isn’t just about remembering a great man. It’s about honoring the teachers, mentors, and quiet leaders who carry those ideals forward—one classroom, one conversation, one act of courage at a time.

Today, I’m grateful for all of them.

—Joseph

People still seem genuinely surprised to meet a combat veteran running as a Democrat, or a tech entrepreneur campaigning from the center-left. But what’s been most refreshing this political season is something else entirely: the re-emergence of faith as a message rooted in humility, service, and moral accountability—rather than as an interpretive tool to divide Americans.

For decades, the political right has tried to claim faith as its exclusive moral high ground, extrapolating policies that too often disparage, exclude, and harm. And, too often, the left has put the lessons of faith aside in attempts to build a bigger tent. That’s why the voice of James Talarico, currently running for US Senate as a Democrat in Texas, is such a welcome disruption and one that has provided much appreciated leadership to candidates up and down the ticket, on both sides of the aisle.

Many first encountered Talarico during his appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience—a masterclass in calm, thoughtful civility.

More recently, a conversation with Ezra Klein went deeper, exploring the complexity of faith and its uneasy relationship with modern politics.

Talarico speaks openly as a Christian, but not in the performative way we’ve grown accustomed to in politics. Like me, he appears to center his faith on the red-letter words—the actual teachings of Jesus—rather than the layers of interpretation that so often become tools of control. He reminds listeners that Jesus wasn’t only gentle and welcoming; he also flipped tables in the temple when religious authorities drifted toward corruption and power.

One of Talarico’s most pointed observations stuck with me: if far-right evangelical politics truly reflected the Gospel, we’d see far more energy devoted to caring for the poor, the sick, the stranger, and the meek—and far less to protecting entrenched power structures.

If you want to go deeper into how faith has been warped into a political weapon, I’d point you to a USTomorrow piece I wrote last year reflecting on The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory—a powerful examination of how parts of evangelical Christianity migrated from the teachings of Christ toward the pursuit of political dominance.

More recently, in a conversation with Ezra Klein, Talrico explored money, capitalism, and the role of billionaires in society—another area where labels tend to replace nuance. It reminded me of a terrific interview from my friend Brett Hurt on his show Love Conquers Fear, featuring John Mackey.

Mackey—co-founder of Whole Foods Market—describes himself as a “conscious capitalist.” His argument isn’t that markets are perfect, but that when guided by values, capitalism can lift people out of poverty, provide dignity through work, and strengthen families and communities. It’s a message that shows up not just in conversation, but in how he has chosen to lead his life.

Here’s the connective tissue: when any institution—political parties, churches, corporations—consolidates too much power, it starts to behave like a monopoly. And monopolies tend to confuse ownership with virtue. Military service. Business experience. Patriotism. Faith. None of these belong to one side of the political aisle. Rather, they provide the appropriate foundations from which to build (or rebuild) a better future for humankind.

Seeing someone like James Talarico speak openly about faith—with depth, compassion, and moral courage—is causing many voters to pause and rethink long-held assumptions. Democrat. Republican. Independent. Left. Right. Every day, each of us get to redefine what service, contribution, and belief in something larger than ourselves really means.

And one final point that’s vitally important. Research increasingly shows that as young people feel more detached—from community, from purpose, from one another—they often fall deeper into isolation, anxiety, and the hollow substitutes of online life. Faith communities, at their best, offer something profoundly human: gathering, belonging, shared responsibility across generations. Political gatekeeping and polarization have the potential to deprive an entire generation of the strength many of us have been offered by these communities. At our core, we are tribal creatures. We are wired for community. For taking care of one another. For building something that lasts longer than any election cycle.

Restoring faith in our politics doesn’t require everyone to believe the same things. It requires that we look within ourselves and listen to each other, not the political industry and related donor lists. It requires remembering that faith, service, and contribution were never meant to be weapons. They were meant to be shared commitments—toward a healthier society, and a more hopeful tomorrow.