Doug Burgum, on the Record

On his background in tech:

Dad passed away when I was a freshman in high school. So my mom went back to work, widow with three kids. . . . And then when I was in my mid-20s, I had a bit of farm ground I got from my dad. I literally bet the farm on a software startup. . . . We went from sort of 10 STEM small-town kids to you know, fantastic, at the time, one of the top 10 IPOs on Nasdaq. We had a great run as a public company, very successful, and then we were acquired by Microsoft. I stayed at Microsoft for seven years. . . .

I retired from Microsoft in 2007, came back to North Dakota, and had three kids. I had been trying to do parenting and commuting to Seattle and all over the world. And I needed to spend more time on the parenting side and so came back but then started two other companies, one that was focused on trying to basically save downtown Fargo. It was going down and I knew from—we had now almost a 2,000-person campus at Microsoft in Fargo—that we had to have a community that was going to attract and retain young people, a community that was going to be vibrant and safe, and so got into, sort of backed into, historic building renovation and restoration. And then began to understand the economics of cities and mixed-use infill and all these things that public policy, we’re driving or not driving in terms of how federal policy and federal incentives are actually subsidizing sprawl, creating uneconomic cities, driving up property taxes, affecting individuals in lower income groups.

Because a lot of these cities are being built—they’re great if you’ve got dual income and three cars, you can live in a city where each of your kids can drive to the high school that’s here and the mall that’s there or whatever. But it doesn’t work very well for families that might not have those same economic means. So we got very interested in the economics of cities during that time period, and was one of the reasons in the end, why we decided to run for governor, but also started a venture business in North Dakota, investing in purpose-driven software companies.

On why he’s running for president:

We’ve never had a candidate run for office who’s got a background and understanding around technology, and understands how technology is changing every job in every industry more so than ever. . . .

In both 2016 and 2020 we’ve won by some of the largest margins of any gubernatorial races in the country. And we’ve done that with an idea that we’re basically running on the issues we’re running on now. Economy, energy, national security—these are the things that if you get these right, these are the economic underpinnings and the security underpinnings that really enable America to reach its fullest potential. We talk about it in terms of the best of America, because we see that every day in places like North Dakota and places where we go where you can have two things happening simultaneously, great things happening with great companies in great communities with great nonprofits doing things that are really neighbors helping neighbors, and at the same time, you can have a federal government with a set of policies around the economy and around energy policy and around national security, which are all interrelated, completely going 180 degrees in the wrong direction. So that’s what we’re running on, because we care deeply about people, we know that we can make a difference.

On whether the U.S. is in a cold war with China:

Well, let me first say that I think it’s odd that it’s not being acknowledged, because when you think about the 1960s and ’70s, sort of the standard definition—if you’ve got military aircraft dodging each other, if you’ve got naval ships within 50 yards of each other, if you’ve got spy balloons coming over the country, if you’ve got a spy base going in Cuba, I mean, it seems like that would be the definition of a cold war unless we’ve changed what it is.

I also see it as a governor because part of a cold war that didn’t exist in the ’60s—today is also cyber war. And we’re under cyber attack every day, the state of North Dakota, every day. Come and see our ops center—North Korea, Russia, China, Iran . . . they’re attacking our cities, our tribes, our universities, our K-12 districts every single day. . . .

I mean, so I feel that we’re on the front line of defense in a cyber war, and then no one actually says we’re actually in a cyber war. I mean, why wouldn’t we just say that? . . . When we have the two largest economies in the world, and they’re incredibly intertwined, and then we have [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken going over and then [Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen, I’ve read everything that I can find written about these things, I haven’t heard that Blinken even mentioned the word energy when he was there.

China is the world’s largest importer of oil and gas—over 10 million barrels of oil a day. And I suppose maybe he can’t bring up energy policy because back here, the de facto policy is we’re going to shut down any fossil-fuel-based, carbon-based industry in America, as opposed to saying, “Hey, if we’re a true energy superpower, to have a negotiation, internationally and economic statecraft, you have to have leverage somewhere in the negotiation.” . . .

Some of our sanctions have been really absurd, because all we’re doing is shifting who the suppliers are. Sometimes in those cases we might be affecting American farmers more than we were affecting the Chinese. Now we put sanctions on Russia, around oil and gas, belatedly, and so great. So they’re, “Oh, we’re really sticking into Russia, they’re selling at a 20% off world market.” Well, who’s buying it? China. I mean, the farmers I talk to in Iowa would like to buy their diesel tomorrow at 20% off for their tractors, but they’re not getting a chance to do that. We’re certainly not only just turning Russia into China’s gas station, we’re also giving China an economic advantage for manufacturing.

On China and the economy:

When we look back at Russia, when they collapsed, at the size of their economy, I think it was less than $2 trillion, or something like that. I mean, it was like half the size of what healthcare is in America right now. Or it’s the size of Texas or something, even today. So it’s a very different thing. We could isolate them, and they could operate within the Soviet bloc. If we take a look at even right now with our allies in the Pacific, I think if you take the five—Japan, Philippines, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand—those five together are about half the size of the U.S. economy. But the last time I checked, they were selling five or six times as much into China as we are. So we buy from China, but we don’t sell to China. It would be great if they were dependent on us, as opposed to us dependent on them.

What they would buy from us, though, on the restrictions on technology is we should not be giving up things that allow us to have an advantage relative to innovation. Because that’s how the American economy wins. . . .

The first time I was in China was as a student in 1980. The first time I was there as an entrepreneur was 1989. I was on my way back from setting up Australia as the first Great Plains international partner. . . . On the way back, I swing through China. And I’m told that there’s this market where you can go to in Shenzhen where they sell software, U.S. software. . . . So I go there and I walk in, and we’re at like a 250-person company in Fargo, not selling outside of North America, and I said, “Hey, do you have Great Plains?” and they’re like, “Sure.” And they walked me over and I can buy on a 5¼-inch floppy for $1—we were selling our stuff for $5,000 a module. For a buck, I could buy a copy of Great Plains in 1989. And so then along the entire pathway of my career in software, every company I’ve been in, we’ve never been able to establish a big business in China. And when you go there, your stuff is already there. . . .

So stealing intellectual property is something that I’ve lived with. And so in that sense, [China] can’t be trusted. So we have to figure out whether its military defense, telecommunication and other advances and where we are with AI right now. The people that are calling for us to slow down AI development, you know, when I see that online, I’m like, OK, well, that must be one of the 40% of the social media accounts that are Chinese bots saying we should slow down. Of course, they want us to slow down, right? We have a lead. And so we have to just keep pushing ahead on all these technologies.

On China and energy policy:

I think we have to have energy be part of the discussion. . . . Supposedly we have an existential crisis. And you can never say the word climate without saying crisis. And now you can’t say climate without existential crisis. I mean, those three words somehow have to go together. When, if we don’t have baseload energy, no one’s going to have air conditioning in Arizona and Florida. I mean, we know all these growth states that are like, oh, these red states are growing, and they have warmer latitudes, and we’ve got the power to be able to supply them to allow them to have resilience in the current environment if it gets warmer or colder. Energy has to be the base.

So then some of these agreements that we’re in, where we’re going to reduce our emissions now, but China can keep building their CO2 emissions until 2035? I was checking, and they’ve got 41 coal plants permitted. They’re opening about one every two weeks in China. And they’re doing that with 1980s technology, and they’re not even doing it with the year 2000. It started with Obama, and Obama was saying, we’re going to shut down the baseload energy industry, and we’re specifically going after coal. How about you go after CO2? Isn’t CO2 the problem or is coal the problem? . . .

Where are the highest concentrations of rare-earth minerals in America? In some of the lignites in places like Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. So we could do both, as opposed to this idea that somehow we’re going to solve our climate problem by shutting down liquid fuels. We’re going to go with EVs, but then we have to buy all of our rare-earth minerals from China? I mean, this is the most absurd thing. . . .

You can’t separate China policy from what they’re calling climate policy—but I’ll call it energy policy—because it makes it makes no economic sense. I mean, it’s like economic poverty, manufacturing poverty, for our country to pursue what they’re doing. . . . We can’t shut down everything in the U.S. and then allow everybody else to keep using old technology. Why aren’t we selling the new clean technology from the United States? If you’re really concerned about CO2, you would want to have every drop of energy produced in the United States. We do it cleaner, safer, better. It’s so hypocritical—I mean, in North Dakota, we’re 400,000 barrels of oil below where we were pre-Biden. . . .

So part of the policies would have to be, if you were going to actually have national security, we would have to be able to provide U.S. energy to all states in the lower 48. . . . A Burgum administration policy would be sell energy to our allies, stop buying it from our enemies.

On media reports of China buying farmland in the North Dakota:

Well, there’s a lot of misinformation around that as well. Because in North Dakota, we have some of the strictest anti-corporate-farming laws in America. . . . I mean, literally you’ve got to be second cousins or closer to be able to buy farmland and operate in North Dakota, super strict thing. So then every headline is, “China’s buying farmland.” It’s like, China can’t buy farmland in North Dakota, it’s against the law. They can’t do it. They did buy some land inside the city limits of Grand Forks inside an ag-industrial park. . . . But in the current environment, it was just a complete no-go. And so the minute the Air Force said no, we said no, we’re not doing this thing and we’ll look for somebody else to come in and take over this kind of thing because there’s obviously a business opportunity there.

On the culture wars:

Well, I think . . . they have nothing to do with being president of the United States. The 10th Amendment is very clear about what the federal government’s role is, and what’s not specifically for the federal government, that limited number of things is designated to the states or to the people. I mean, it’s a one-sentence amendment in the Constitution that I believe is basically overstepped all the time, all the time, all the time.

And I’ve seen it as, again, small business. medium business, governor, I’ve seen the federal overreach. So Dobbs? Support Dobbs—leave it up to the states. I was a candidate for not even 12 hours and the first question on CNN was how do you feel about signing a federal abortion amendment? I said I wouldn’t sign it. . . . We said, it’s up to the states, the states have to decide. What works for North Dakota is not going to work for California or New York, it doesn’t even work for Minnesota, I mean, right next door. Two states can have very different approaches on some of these cultural issues. . . .

I vetoed a book-banning bill. And if there’s a parent in a small town that’s got a concern about one book that was in the wrong section, they’ve got options. They can decide not to go to the library, they can talk to the librarian, and if they don’t get the right answer from the librarian, they can go to the library board and the library board’s got a policy about how do you move a book from one section to another. But to pass a state law where you’re going to criminalize librarians, and then we’re going to have to have the library book police on what sections, that’s going the wrong way, that’s adding red tape, that’s adding regulation. And if the Republican Party believes in freedom and responsibility and parental rights, and whatever, then, let’s get it figured out and say some of this stuff, that would be state overreach. That one we were able to sustain.

These are hot topics. They matter deeply to some people. But we’re running a race to get the federal government focused on the stuff that matters. And part of national security is border security. . . . Today there won’t be a headline anywhere in the U.S., but there’ll be another 330 people that die of overdoses today. If 300 people died in a plane crash, it’d be in the news for the next month or a year. . . . We have to secure the border, No. 1. These are large criminal enterprises. I mean, there’s big, big money, moving this amount of stuff. And when I say secure the border, it’s not just build the wall. You build the wall, and then they can still fly a drone or an ultralight over the top of it in 10 seconds and drop enough fentanyl to kill everybody in New York City. And there’s technology, there’s ground sensors, there’s things that we have to do, but there has to be a comprehensive approach. . .

So I just sort of feel like it’s a failure of leadership at all levels. And explicitly, one of the things the federal government is supposed to do as part of their national security is actually secure the border. That’s one of the things that the federal government is supposed to do, as opposed to, you know, weigh in on lots of things that aren’t part of the job description.

On getting the required 40,000 donors to get on the debate stage:

Well, we’re gonna be on the debate stage because we’re entrepreneurs, and we’ve got the resources to make it happen. But it’s a goofy rule, and I’m not sure what problem they were trying to solve. But it’s just a question of, what’s your tolerance for cost of acquisition? . . . I guess they’re eliminating people that either don’t have the resources or don’t have the ingenuity to understand how to do that. If competition is good for America, good for the Republican Party, and whether it’s Asa [Hutchinson] or anybody else, having a broader set of ideas early in the primary would seem to be part of the American tradition. So it’s a clubhouse rule from the RNC. We’ll cross it, we’ll be there.

On his pathway to the presidency:

I think at some point, Republicans are going to decide who has the best chance of beating Joe Biden. And that’s the position that we want to demonstrate that we’re in, because we’re running a campaign where it’s not about, hey, we’re going to win Iowa or just win New Hampshire. I mean, you know, you guys have all the data—Santorum and Cruz and Huckabee all won Iowa and they didn’t win the nomination. We’re trying to win the White House in November of 2024. We understand that this critical juncture in time, that the leadership really matters, leadership that understands the global economy, understands technology, understands what working families are going through, actually cares about the country, has got a track record of—you know, in North Dakota, we treat the taxpayers like they’re customers. There’s so much we can do to reduce the size and scope of the two million federal employees just by having a business mind-set around how you actually get it focused on what it really needs to do.