Five hours by air to Las Vegas.
That's how long it took Governor Mike Dunleavy to reach CES, the world's largest technology conference.
He was the only out-of-state governor to attend, giving him unique access to emerging technologies and a global stage to tell Alaska’s story.
We were honored to sit down with the Governor for an exclusive interview and attend his panel on state innovation with Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo.
"We're very different. We have no interstates. We're 740,000 people at the top of the world," he told the audience.
But that's exactly the point.
Dunleavy is making a credible play for data centers – an industry with an insatiable appetite for cheap power, cold air, and abundant water.
"North to the Future" is Alaska's state motto. Dunleavy is taking it literally – making a pitch for long-term capital deployment.
Bundle up.
Zach Silber
Editor-in-Chief
Standard & Works
P.S. Like Dunleavy, this was Standard & Works' first time at CES. We’re excited to share tons of insights in the days ahead – on building a modern industrial workforce, the future of manufacturing, and why CES is a new front in the competition among places to attract investment.
1. 🎯 Playing a Different Game
Gov. Mike Dunleavy on a panel at CES on January 8th
"The competition is a little different for us," Dunleavy told me.
"When you have a state like Minnesota next to Wisconsin, there's competition there. But Alaska is so far away, so unique."
That distance shapes the pitch. Rather than chase today's deals, Alaska is building for the constraints of tomorrow – when power, water, and sites run short in the Lower 48.
"It's really best to look at Alaska as where do you want to be in 5, 10, 15 years? If you have to build a data farm today, there's places down in the Lower 48 that are ready for that,” Dunleavy said.
“In five years, if you want to build a data farm, I think Alaska is the place you want to look at.”
Dunleavy says Alaska can also outcompete other states whose regulations are burdensome – particularly on AI restrictions.
"You'll see some states contract," he predicted. "They'll get to a point where they have to make a decision and probably change their laws and their approach. But that may be too late for some opportunities for them."
Alaska’s position?
"We're not going to squander opportunities."
2. 🇺🇸 Alaska’s Strategic Moment
Dunleavy points out Alaska is the only state to receive its own executive order – a sign of its importance to the country
Alaska is critical to American interests.
Two numbers tell the story:
60% of Alaska is federally controlled.
That's 222 million acres in federal hands, which on its own would be America's second-largest state.
Dunleavy also points out Alaska is the only state to receive its own executive order from President Trump. It came on Inauguration Day – a Day 1 priority.
Dunleavy says he coordinates closely with the Administration to execute the order, which spans permitting, oil and gas leases, mining leases, and logging.
"From our perspective, the Trump administration has been a godsend," he said.
3. ⚡ The Energy Advantage
Dunleavy says the Alaska LNG Project will enable low-cost energy to attract data centers and industry
"We're on the verge of consummating our big gas line," Dunleavy said, referencing the Alaska LNG Project.
The 42-inch gas pipeline will run 800 miles from the North Slope for export to Asian allies like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand
Multiple intersection points will enable domestic use, opening possibilities for data centers and energy-intensive industry
"What we want to do is not just export that gas, but we want to have industry and businesses such as data farms, cryptocurrency, others come to Alaska and get five to seven cent kilowatt hour (kWh) gas for 20 or 30 years," Dunleavy said.
For data centers – where power is the dominant operating cost – Dunleavy’s 5¢ kWh projection means the pipeline will enable electric generation at a lower cost than nearly every major U.S. hub:
23% cheaper than Northern Virginia (6.5¢) and Phoenix (6.5¢)
26% cheaper than Dallas-Fort Worth (6.8¢)
34% cheaper than Las Vegas/Reno (7.6¢)
38% cheaper than Columbus (8¢)
45% cheaper than Austin/San Antonio (9.2¢)
Electricity Price Info: JLL Research
That cost advantage compounds when you factor in how Alaska's climate dramatically lowers cooling costs.
"If you build a one gigawatt plant down in the Lower 48, especially in the Southwest, and you build the same one gigawatt plant up in Alaska, you could potentially save billions of dollars over 20, 25 years just in power savings because of our ambient temperatures," Dunleavy said.
Add in an inventory of renewable resources …
150 volcanoes, 30-40 of them active, can support geothermal,
Second-largest tides in the world …
… and Alaska doesn’t need to choose between fossil fuels and renewables.
It has both and can deploy whichever the market demands.
4. 💧 The Water Advantage
Gov. Joe Lombardo (NV) and Gov. Mike Dunleavy join a CES panel on January 8th
"We don't have a water problem up there," Dunleavy said during a panel on state innovation at CES.
Sitting alongside Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, the contrast was immediate.
"Nevada's a little bit different," Lombardo acknowledged, noting constraints around hydrology and energy.
Alaska's position:
65% of America's wetlands
40% of the nation's surface water supply
Vast tracts of land without competing uses
For developers with 20-30 year operating horizons, Dunleavy sees Alaska as a unique hedge against water scarcity in places like the Southwest.
In what might be one of the rarest yet most compelling pitches of any state in the nation right now, Dunleavy invites CapEx investors to “get cheap water with permits that extend out many decades.”
5. 🌐 The Center of the World
Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is the country’s second-busiest cargo airport
"If you're a logistics company, we are the center of the world," Dunleavy said. "We are nine hours from every industrialized place in the Northern hemisphere."
Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is the second-busiest cargo airport in the U.S., third globally.
As the Arctic warms and northern shipping routes open, Dunleavy says Alaska is positioned to capitalize on being an intercontinental crossroads.
But Dunleavy sees beyond cargo.
"Alaska’s position on the globe is a terrific place as a data transportation hub,” he said.
“Bringing dedicated fiber from Asia to Alaska, Europe through the Arctic to Alaska, to the Lower 48 - it’s going to position Alaska really well in terms of the speed of data being transported.”
6. 👷 The Workforce
Workers on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline which opened in 1977
"Alaska's a blue collar state," Dunleavy said. "It's a red state. It's the only red state left on the West Coast, but it's also a very unionized state (17.7%). Third-most unionized in the country."
"Blue collar built Alaska. There’s a lot of Teamsters, a lot of IBEW folks up there. They do great work, but we don’t have enough of them.”
To address the gap, Dunleavy says Alaska is launching a multimillion-dollar blue collar training initiative – essential, he argues, to building the data farms and grid infrastructure the state is pitching.
A unique advantage for Alaska: the state’s fiscal structure reflects a social contract built around resource development:
No income tax
No sales tax
An annual Permanent Fund Dividend paid to every resident
"I think we have a great tax regime, a great permitting regime," Dunleavy said.
7. 🚀 The Living Laboratory
CES has 2.6 million square feet of show space featuring emerging technologies
Beyond telling the Last Frontier's story, Dunleavy said he came to CES to learn.
"A lot of these products down here could be applied to Alaska in a very positive way to help us build our future," Dunleavy said.
"Alaska has 225 communities that are off the road. Some of our communities are 500, 600, 700 miles away from any other community with a road."
That isolation makes Alaska a proving ground for technologies the rest of the world will eventually need.
Telemedicine: "We just received a large grant from the federal government to transform our healthcare."
Wearables: "Wearables that transmit your biometrics, your health at the moment to a doctor so you can figure out what's going on before things get out of control."
UAVs: Unmanned aerial vehicles are critical for logistics and emergency response in roadless communities.
Space: The State of Alaska owns a spaceport on Kodiak Island and is expected to play a role in the federal government’s Golden Dome missile shield program.
GovTech: Dunleavy used his CES visit to explore products and services that can be used in state government and deployed with companies in Alaska.
“We’re thinking, what’s the future going to look like?” Dunleavy said.
8. 🧊 One More Thing
The Naval Communications Station on Adak in the Aleutian Islands
Alaska has been on my mind since I was a kid.
I shared with the Governor how my grandfather was stationed at the Naval Communications Station on Adak in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands during the Cold War.
A cryptologist (codebreaker), he told me stories of overnight stints in remote listening stations, hearing the staccato of morse code and sometimes the snow-muffled footsteps of Russian frogmen coming ashore outside.
My family visited the state when I was young – it’s the kind of formative trip that sticks with you. There's something about a place that remote, that vast, that shapes how you see the rest of the country.
I've been to 49 states (just missing Hawaii). It's these kinds of personal connections that explain why I care so much about the places of our country, and how they piece together the puzzle of how America works.
It’s why I launched Standard & Works.
🎙 Click to watch our full interview with Governor Dunleavy on Spotify
