In this fireside chat, MARA CEO Fred Thiel sits down with Siemens USA CEO Barbara Humpton to explore the intersection of energy, technology, and national security. As energy becomes a defining factor in global power dynamics, Humpton emphasizes that how we produce and use energy is key to future prosperity. With China rapidly expanding its energy capacity, the U.S. must modernize its own infrastructure, and fast. One powerful solution lies in what MARA calls “digital energy”: using compute-intensive processes like Bitcoin mining to convert excess or stranded energy into economic value.
Humpton shares her career journey from an aspiring math professor to a tech executive whose early projects helped end the Cold War. Today, she leads Siemens USA with a focus on digitizing and decentralizing the power grid. She explains how our traditional, centralized model of energy generation is breaking down. Instead, we’re entering a world where energy is produced in many places, at different times, and must be managed dynamically. That’s where technologies like battery storage and dispatchable computing loads come in, allowing energy to be used more flexibly and efficiently.
Bitcoin mining, she argues, is a misunderstood but powerful tool in this transition. By serving as a flexible energy consumer, mining can stabilize the grid, absorb excess renewable power, and generate value in the form of bitcoin. MARA’s approach, locating data centers near energy sources and only operating when power is abundant, is both cost-efficient and grid-friendly. As AI and digital infrastructure grow, data centers will need to act more like utilities, managing energy with the same sophistication as they manage data.
The conversation also touches on the geopolitical implications of Bitcoin and energy. Humpton and Thiel warn that as global competition intensifies, especially with the rise of quantum computing, the U.S. must stay ahead in both Bitcoin mining and cybersecurity. Bitcoin offers not just financial freedom, but resilience against digital threats. As Humpton puts it, we’re at a turning point where the energy grid, digital infrastructure, and national security are becoming one and the same, and MARA is right at the center of it.
