The Forum - Ep 2: Energy: The New Cold War – Daniel Turner on Power, Freedom, and America’s Enemies

"Control the oil, control the world."

Energy: The New Cold War

In this episode of The Forum from Proud American Studios, host Trey Lindsey and Mike Koscielniak sit down with Daniel Turner, founder of Power the Future, to unpack a simple but explosive idea: energy is the new Cold War. From coal towns in Appalachia to tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and rare earth deposits in Greenland, Turner draws a straight line between American energy policy and the strength of our enemies abroad.

He argues that when Washington bureaucrats wage war on coal, cancel pipelines, and kneecap domestic oil and gas, the damage doesn’t stop at gas prices—it shatters communities, feeds addiction and despair, and pushes whole regions into institutional poverty. At the same time, those same policies make petro‑states like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela richer, more aggressive, and more capable of funding terrorism and war.

From coal country to “institutional poverty”

Turner founded Power the Future after watching what federal climate policies did to coal communities in places like West Virginia and across the Appalachian region. When a one‑industry town loses its mines, its factories, or its drilling rigs, people don’t just lose a paycheck—they lose the ability to sell their homes, fund their schools, keep their churches and small businesses alive, and hold onto hope for the next generation.

He describes how the Obama‑era war on coal and the Biden administration’s hostility toward projects like the Keystone pipeline destroyed not only 14,000 immediate jobs, but also the pipeline welders’ future work and long‑term career paths. The combination of shuttered industries and collapsing opportunity helped fuel the opioid crisis in coal regions from West Virginia to New Mexico, Kentucky, and Ohio, where despair made cheap, potent drugs an easy escape.

Is it really about climate—or control?

When you control energy, you control everything—transportation, food, manufacturing, healthcare, and even the ability to heat your home or run your small business. Turner argues that America’s energy industry is the last great sector still mostly in private hands, and that “statists” on the left want it nationalized in all but name. He connects this impulse to historical dictators, noting that from Stalin to Chavez, seizing the energy sector is always one of the first moves after consolidating political power.

The episode digs into the push for EV mandates, gas‑engine restrictions, and hyper‑detailed regulations that now reach down to leaf blowers, generators, ceiling fans, and more. Turner warns that in places like China, EVs are already a tool of state control—easy to track, easy to shut off based on social credit scores, and perfectly suited to monitor and limit citizens’ movements. He believes similar “control through energy” instincts are active in American climate policy, from forced electrification to attacks on traditional vehicles and tools.

How bad energy policy arms America’s enemies

On the geopolitical front, Turner is blunt: energy revenues are the lifeblood of some of America’s worst adversaries. Iran’s oil exports surged from roughly a quarter‑million barrels a day to more than 3 million once sanctions were relaxed, creating hundreds of millions of dollars a day in new revenue. That money doesn’t build schools—it funds terror proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, destabilizes key maritime choke points like the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, and finances aggression across the Middle East.

The conversation also revisits Donald Trump’s warning to Europe in 2018: keep buying Russian gas and you are signing your own death warrant. Europe ignored that warning, doubled down on Russian oil and gas, shut down coal and nuclear plants, and ended up paying some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world while funding Moscow’s war machine. Once Europe had made itself dependent, Putin could threaten to cut them off any time they considered pushing back.

Turner points out that Venezuela’s oil is deeply tied to China’s rise and energy security. By controlling Venezuelan exports and leveraging naval power, the United States can squeeze Beijing’s access to affordable oil, raise China’s input costs, and expose the fragility of its economy without firing a shot.

China, EVs, rare earths, and the Arctic front

China’s greatest vulnerability, Turner argues, is its lack of a robust domestic oil supply. That’s why Beijing is chasing pipelines through unstable regions, partnering with Russia over vast distances, and pouring money into EVs, coal‑fired power, and rare earth mining. EVs help China reduce its dependence on imported oil, while also giving the state a powerful tool to monitor and control its own population.

The episode then moves north to Greenland and the Arctic, where Turner sees the next strategic battlefield. The region is rich in undiscovered oil and gas and packed with rare earth minerals that are essential for everything from smartphones to advanced military systems and AI hardware. China already dominates 90–95 percent of the rare earth market, and calling itself an “Arctic nation” is part of its strategy to justify a foothold in the region. Strengthening America’s position in Greenland and the broader Arctic is, in Turner’s view, another way to undercut Beijing and secure the resources needed for the next era of technology and defense.

Energy, AI, and America’s future

Turner describes this moment as the first time in history when power and energy translate directly into intelligence. AI systems require enormous amounts of electricity to train and operate at scale, meaning the nations that can bring abundant, affordable energy online fastest will dominate the next wave of innovation.

He isn’t anti‑AI; he likens today’s anxiety around artificial intelligence to the early fear of the internet and believes that, in the right hands, AI can yield medical breakthroughs and turbocharge human productivity. But he argues that “the right hands” have to be American hands, and that requires robust, reliable domestic energy—especially fossil fuels—to power data centers, networks, and compute infrastructure.

Why energy dominance matters

Throughout the episode, Turner returns to one core theme: energy dominance is not just an economic slogan, it is a strategy for peace. If America uses its own abundant oil, gas, and coal to keep prices stable, fuel allies, and deny adversaries the revenues they need to build armies and terror networks, fewer American service members will be asked to fight and die in foreign wars.

Energy abundance at home means cheaper goods, more resilient supply chains, and higher living standards for American families. Abroad, it means keeping Vladimir Putin, the Ayatollahs in Iran, and the Chinese Communist Party from ever becoming rich enough to turn their ambitions into global chaos.

Turner closes with a personal story about his father’s passing, pointing out that even the dignity of a peaceful, comfortable death in a modern hospital is made possible by fossil fuels—from the steel in the IV stand forged with coal, to the plastic tubing made from oil, to the carefully controlled gases derived from natural gas. For him, fossil fuels are the great equalizer, giving ordinary people a quality of life that kings of old could only dream about—and that’s why he refuses to stop fighting for American energy, with America first but the free world in mind.

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