Wednesday marked the occasion of National Support Your Local Chamber of Commerce Day. To celebrate, the Irving-Las Colinas Chamber hosted an event, headlined by Dallas-Fort Worth business magnate Ross Perot Jr.
Perot was recently named chairman of the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The country’s largest lobbying group represents 3 million businesses, as well as state and local chambers nationwide.
Speaking with media and at a fireside chat with Irving-Las Colinas Chamber CEO Beth Bowman, Perot touched on many topics, including one of particular salience: artificial intelligence.
Here’s are the highlights, edited for length and clarity, about one the largest, and fastest growing, industries in the U.S., one already impacting business, national security and many other aspects of American life:
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How is technology changing the focus of American businesses?
Perot: “You have a stunning revolution coming. The United States should dominate the AI revolution. It’s the China mode versus the U.S. and Western model of AI. And I think the U.S., Western models are for sure going to dominate the Chinese model. If you want your information control with the Chinese Communist Party, you hang out over there.
“Texas, being very local, we’re now No. 2 to Virginia in data centers coming in. And with the excess power, excess natural gas we have, which is bringing in the AI data centers. Texas is well positioned, and the country is very well positioned for the economic boom that we’re going to have.
“North America will dominate the world for the next 100 years if we get full integration with North America, which includes immigration reform, energy reform and all the energy in North America being brought to bear. No one can touch us. Europe is getting old. China’s really getting old. Japan is old. We’re still young. We’re growing.”
What industries do you believe hold the greatest potential for Texas, and how can chamber leaders, along with our state and local elected officials, help foster success?
Perot: “Fifty years ago, since 1976, we added over 100 million people to the United States. Our economy is eight times larger than it was 50 years ago. Think of all the companies that are [here] now. No one knew Facebook. No one knew the internet. No one had heard of Amazon. That great revolution occurred in 50 years, because we had economic freedom.
“The next 50 years with economic freedom, which we’re going to fight for at the Chamber every day, we should have it even better than the past 50 years. And so I’m very optimistic it. Just AI alone, I think we’re just starting out, and none of us quite know what this is going to be.
“It’s going to be the American AI story if we do our job. From a chamber perspective, stay close to the client, stay close to your political leaders. And when you see these new ideas come, you have to stay out on the leading edge, and you really need to work to stay looking over the horizon.”
What role can the U.S. Chamber play in creating guardrails for the continued development of AI?
Perot: “We’re advocating for as much freedom as you can in the AI models. You’ve gotta let our creative talents flow. This is why Biden got in trouble with Northern California and the tech crowd, because he’s trying to contain and control AI. That’s why the tech investors started to go Republican, because they wanted their freedom. So we advocate for the freedom.
“Then there’s a backstage limit of what you can do, and that’s national security and intelligence. And I’m expecting the national security community to put up a guardrail that we might not even see, that will protect the nation, so that’s what we’re advocating for: give them the freedoms, and then let the market decide.
“We all have to be really educated on these models, because they’re changing all the time. I use ChatGPT all the time, and he gives me some really great answers, and he gives me some really odd answers, and it’s like, ‘Wow, where did this come from?’ Now they get better, but they hallucinate. But then also the data you feed into that large language model, if it’s not good data, you’re going to get a bad output. It’s AI with training wheels right now. There’s a lot of work, and we all need to watch it.”
A crowd heard from Ross Perot Jr who was taking part in a lunchtime fireside chat with Irving City Councilman David Pfaff at The Constellation Club in Irving, Texas, October 15, 2025. Perot, who was recently appointed as the Chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, spoke to Chamber representatives from around the region and state on National Chamber of Commerce Day.
Tom Fox / Staff Photographer
Do you think AI is a bubble?
Perot: “We’re going to look back, and it’s going to be great for America, it’ll be hard on investors. It’s a little bubble. But thank goodness people are willing to spend trillions to build out this unbelievable infrastructure that will carry us for decades.”
Is the chamber hearing concerns from small [businesses] about resources such as water and energy, especially in Texas?
Perot: “We all are concerned about energy and water, and luckily, we got political leadership that’s on top of it, that is very aggressively trying to get it built out. This state is really pushing both, and Governor [Greg] Abbott has done a great job in both areas, but we need more, and he knows we need more, and we’re going to continue to push.”
Texas is an oil and gas state, but what about new generation power, like nuclear?
Perot: “We’re everything. We’re an all-the-above state. So wind, solar, nuclear. The Army just rolled out that small nuclear program yesterday, Janus, little nuclear reactors that are going by military bases. You take those little mini nukes and put them next to the AI data centers, you’re done.
“You’re seeing more and more of the big AI go off the grid. They’re generating their own power, a lot of them right now with Texas natural gas. And so natural gas will be their bridge. And then you’ll see small nukes end up, like at a stargate in Abilene, you’ll have a small nuke out there probably before you know it.”
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