Fifty years ago, critics called the idea of a single integrated-circuit chip for a computer a fantasy. As the creator of that chip, I called it the future. I was right.
The critics are back, this time casting AI data centers as a crisis for American infrastructure, water and local communities. They’re wrong again. The data center companies are the heroes, not the villains. Yes, AI is hungry for electricity and water. But data centers are feeding it. The companies building these data centers are pouring billions of dollars into new power sources and new water sources.
McKinsey estimates $7 trillion in global data-center capital expenditure by 2030, with more than 40% flowing to the U.S. Having committed that kind of money, these companies are now building their own dedicated sources of electricity and water. Those investments will make energy less expensive and more readily available for everyone, not just for the tech companies footing the bill. And within the next 20 years, fusion reactors and “super-hot rock” geothermal sites will likely deliver electrical energy and clean water costing not much more than sunshine and rainwater.
These solutions will help support America’s all-of-the-above energy portfolio, while reducing and hopefully eliminating dependence on Arab oil.
The leading technology is enhanced geothermal, with Meta signing a geothermal power deal last year to supply its data centers. Next come small “modular” fission reactors—compact nuclear plants that can be factory-built and deployed almost anywhere. And eventually, enormous fusion reactors will harness the same power that generates sunlight, fueled by deuterium, a form of heavy hydrogen found in virtually limitless supply in seawater.
The technology is well understood for advanced geothermal and modular fission; the challenge is commercialization at scale, and data-center capital is significantly accelerating that timeline.
AI data centers are essential to American dominance of the worldwide AI race. Opponents are stirring up opposition to the AI data centers, miscasting them as a major problem to infrastructure. If they succeed, the effect will be to drive data centers into foreign countries, hampering America in the AI race. Local opposition has already delayed or denied dozens of U.S. data center developments. That friction has only intensified the industry investment in dedicated power sources that bypass the existing Grid entirely.
Moreover, the infrastructure issue is only temporary and will soon be resolved as advanced geothermal and modular fission reactors are commercialized. In the near term, companies are deploying modular gas turbines that can power data centers in weeks rather than years — and can supply the Grid during peak demand.
The activists hide these critical points—“temporary” and “soon”—and miscast it as an endless problem. But here is the irony: the activists are actually helping because focusing attention on a problem in America focuses investment and produces much quicker solutions. Data centers accounted for roughly 78% of all built-environment venture investment in 2025. The Data Center companies have the wealth and the motivation to make it happen sooner rather than later.
The world became addicted to cheap oil, and that addiction continues to this day with expensive oil. But, metaphorically speaking, future generations may wonder what the Strait of Hormuz had to do with the world’s energy supply because the Strait did not have any geothermal sites or fission reactors—all it had was seawater. And by then, geothermal sites and modular reactors will have been dispersed around the world, rendering the oil chokepoints irrelevant.
I’ve seen this before. When I set out nearly sixty years ago to put a whole computer on a single chip, the critics tried to make it sound like a fantasy. I founded Micro Computer, Inc. in the 60s, got it financed, and that “fantasy” went on to run the world. The same skepticism now aimed at AI and data centers that power AI will look just as shortsighted in hindsight.
My work on the microprocessor came out of my efforts to help America win the cold war against the Soviet Union. Today, I’m writing this for the same reason: keeping America first. As America celebrates its 250th birthday, let’s remember that the data centers powering AI are financing America’s future, not draining it.
Gilbert Hyatt is an American engineer, scientist and inventor known for his pioneering work in microcomputer technology.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Logically, you would expect the states and cities to be competing to host data centers. These are clean high paying jobs that probably will attract educated affluent people. In Chicago, where I live, we have one fifth of all the world’s fresh water in the five great lakes, and we have massive nuclear power plants in Clinton, Illinois that operate at less than full capacity. We have the Mississippi River to the west, the Illinois River in the central state, and the Ohio River to the south providing all the fresh water you could ever want. We have world class universities that can provide specialists of every type. Yet our Democratic billionaire governor, Pritzker, a child of inherited wealth, signed a bill for a one year pause on data centers. It makes no sense. But then global warming makes no sense either.
What was Pritzer’s justification?
I’m not sure why he did that. I can tell you that he is part of the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party and is rumored to have ambitions to run for president. And around here the Democratic Socialists have begun switching their cause of the day from opposing global warming to opposing artificial intelligence. By ordering the popular flavor of the day, he probably wants to appeal to the Democratic Socialists on the left should he decide to run for president. In my opinion, with the current Democratic Socialists antisemitism, I don’t think a Jew like Pritzker has a prayer of ever winning the Democratic nomination for president. But in my opinion, he probably doesn’t see that.
Seems to me that being a billionaire who inherited his wealth and calling himself a progressive is an oxymoron. What I mean is that if you really are a progressive, then just give away your billion dollars.
He may realize he could never win the presidency but he’s working at this to enhance his reputation so he might get another important job when the Dems win again. Just guessing as I don’t know him or much about your state.
People opposing data centers and AI are anti human development obstructionists. When AI is married to quantum computing a whole new world will unfold. Musk is putting data centers in space eliminating the energy requirements on the Earth anyway so it is very temporary.
Is putting data centers in space? I know he’s talking about it, but I haven’t heard him say how they’re going to be cooled. The only option in space is to radiate heat and for a large data center that requires a huge radiator (smaller if you can make a heat pump to greatly increase coolant temperature that gets radiated).
This is one chicken that I very strongly recommend not counting until you see one hatch.
“I know he’s talking about it, but I haven’t heard him say how they’re going to be cooled.”
Space is -270C. Cooling will not be an issue. 24/7 solar power will reduce energy costs significantly. He’s not just talking about it. It’s a primary objective being actively developed.
Per Google AI, “Modern data centers consume massive amounts of electricity, with power requirements ranging from 1 to 5 MW for small facilities and 100 MW or more for hyperscale campuses.” Let’s look at the geometric mean, a 10 MW data center. Computers like to be cool, to radiate 10 MW from a 50°C with a 100% efficient black body radiator, it can handle some 620 W/m2 per https://www.spectralcalc.com/blackbody_calculator/blackbody.php So we need a radiator some 16,000 m2, or 125 m squared. This is pretty big. Of course, I haven’t touched on the power source’s efficiency. If it’s a nuclear reactor, it might be 50% efficient, if it’s perovskite solar panels, maybe 25% efficient. I assume those radiators can be at a higher temperature, but we could need another 16,000 m2, but perhaps that can be on the back side of the PV array.
That’s something like 4X the size of the ISS – and completely filled in. For a solar powered data center a high orbit to give you more than 50% daylight would be nice. Or just do the heavy computing when the sun shines. Note that the moon suffers from occasional solar eclipses, what we call a lunar eclipse, so even at that distance, it’s not 24×7 power. It takes a lot of energy to get to high Earth orbit, so keep that in mind.
At any rate, I have not looked into what Musk is dreaming of. If you have, please share.
The solar array need to face towards the sun while the heat radiators need to face away from it. So the radiator could be mounted on the back side of the PV array. Just make sure there is some type of heat shield between them. PV’s get less efficient when they get hot.
You are right that large thermal radiators will be required but Musk has run the numbers and thinks space based data centers will be the low cost solution. It remains to be seen if they can pull it off but they are moving forward on it without reservation.
Cooling in space is a huge problem because space acts like a giant vacuum flask. All you have is radiation cooling, and that is very inefficient compared to Earth based cooling systems.
Earth based systems require massive amounts of water. Large thermal radiators will dissipate the heat efficiently at -270C.
Scott Manley did a YouTube video about this recently. Doing the sums he reckoned that large radiating surfaces will, of course, be needed but that they are not excessive.
If we have conflicts on Earth, how are data centers in Space going to be protected, more and more countries are developing rockets that can get into space, most of them have weapons that could be carried to space. The electronics we put in space now are compact and powerful and take up small enough space that they can be protected from solar storms, shielded from solar storms, how much lead or water will it take to shield a major data center? What about protection from space debris, Elon Musk has thousands of satellites, if space debris takes one out it is not missed much because of how many are up there. If space debris takes out data centers, those are huge investments, hard to move to avoid debris. When the United States developed, we had citizens and military at the edge of civilization and it was difficult to protect them. Now, we are putting equipment and people in Space and we have not armed them against we know not what threats that they will face that have not already identified. Every now and then, the people in the space station go hide in the escape capsules, and those may not be safe enough. If all the people on Earth become peaceful and if all aliens from other places are peaceful and if the Solar Storms become benign, if everything goes good, there may not be much trouble, if any thing goes bad, there may be much trouble. Just something to think about.
What I think about is how the next Carrington event will impact space infrastructure.
Do let us know when a space alien shows up. So far, zilch.
There are several issues here.
Number one AI, we are going to have AI whether some like it or not. I have no problem with AI in the US, I feel AI will be handled more responsibly here than anywhere else.
Number two the crowds who are voicing their opposition to AI are the same ones opposed to almost all other progress fossil fuel, nuclear, dams, heating and cooling, individual freedom, free markets, capitalism and so on. They will always find something to complain about, they move from one issue to another, they have lost all credibility by now.
Number three we don’t have a shortage of energy, we have the resources, the know how and the ability to build all the power we need our only obstacle is obstructionist government.
Number four water. Water is a resource we must use judiciously. The naysayers act like once AI has used water it is gone forever, I don’t see how that is possible. Why can’t that water be recycled and reused or used for other purposes?
Number five I was all in with this guy until he started talking about geothermal and fusion. We don’t need to make promises about some future processes that may or may not become feasible. Like I said before we have the resources, know how and ability to make more power than we need. Let’s not travel down the DEFRA road. Any new technology that comes on line we should embrace if it works, let’s not make promises we may regret later.
Kind of hard to reuse it when it goes up out of the cooling tower into the sky.
It will return to the earth as rain in short order.
Rain or Snow, Water or Ice, water evaporates, cooling the surface, or where ever the water evaporates from, carries much of the energy in water vapor to high altitudes, changes to water or ice, releasing energy, radiating energy, much of it to space, then the water and/or ice falls back to the surface, doing more immediate cooling or, in the special case of much of the ice, the ice gets sequestered along with other multi year ice that spreads and thaws and does much cooling years later, as it spreads and increases Albedo and reflecting energy and does much cooling as the area of ice thawing increases and does much cooling many years later. The capacity for much cooling is stored in massive amounts of multi year ice and the IR out from the ice does no cooling when the IR out goes out, the cooling occurs years later when the ice thaws. My freezer removes energy from water to form ice, the ice thaws and provides cooling much later in my cooler at the beach. Evaporation and snowfall works like my freezer to send energy away from earth that did not immediate cooling, it was just used to form sequestered ice. Sequestered ice spreads and thaws, accomplishing the cooling years later.
My reply answered Bob’s question in the quote – Bob wasn’t asking about the natural water cycle, Bob was asking why the water could not be recycled or reused. I could have said in other words, because it’s too damn expensive to do so.
When it rains, much of the water trickles back down into the same reservoirs that the water was originally drawn from. It doesn’t have to be recycled within the plant itself in order to be recycled.
I’m also skeptical about both. Geothermal is nice in that it is a dispatchable renewable energy source, but it is a niche source. Fusion still has a lot of unanswered questions on materials, means to convert released energy to electric power, and production of Tritium if using D-T reactions.
We know there are places where geothermal works very well, we know fusion works in the sun and in fusion bombs, we did not know how to accomplish fracking until we learned how to do fracking. I am skeptical as to when geothermal and fusion will supply much more of our energy, but I am not skeptical that it will be possible, will it be more cost effective than other methods, that is a question, and when.
As for geothermal, you still need to deal with the fact that there are few places on the planet where the ground is hot enough for geothermal to be practical, and many of those are already being exploited. Sure, we can drill pipes many miles down almost anywhere, but we could do that now, if it were practical.
Water is a serious issue in a dry place like the mountain west — look at the issues with the Colorado River at present. They ought to be able to use fin-fans for cooling rather than evaporative towers. We have a power plant in Wyoming that uses fin-fans.
Beyond that, however, the author sounds a little like he is from the 1970s. We are not dependent on Arab oil any longer.
Absolutely true
Up front cost of total loss cooling is just way cheaper. Long term, I don’t know.
It’s a matter of economics, fin-fans are more expensive to operate than are evaporative cooling. Compare that to the cost of transporting electricity from areas where water is more plentiful.
Whichever option is determined to be more expensive long term will dictate which option is chosen.
Here in Wokeachusetts, almost everyone I talk to about how much I like AI, they start telling me about all the threats it poses. Amazing, here in well educated population, so much fear…..
These are the same people who have been convinced that a few parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere are going to kill us.
They are sheep who let government tell them what to believe and feel.
What the idealists don’t understand is that life is full of trade offs. We can’t build a utopia- much of what we like about modern life also comes with some negatives. The worst of those we try to stop- but small stuff must be ignored. They want modern life with zero defects in how it all works. Zero pollution- a perfect climate- everyone equal. This insanity raises its head in every generation.
My problem with the AI wave is that it appears to be a bubble, one that may burst very messily. Recently I’ve seen reports that companies are regretting some of their commitment to shifting to AI tools and are hiring back some of the people they dumped. (My personal sense is that only an AI can understand some the code it generates since people only have about seven cells of shortterm memory. That could make understanding problems in that code very challenging, though AI can help.)
More annoying is the material going into data centers and the ripple effect on everything else. Last year in April I rebuilt this computer and bought 32 GB of fairly pedestrian DRAM for $55. Newegg now lists it at $230, but that’s down from $280. (There are getting to be hints that some of the huge data centers that are planned will be scaled back a lot.)
I suppose I can’t complain, I got a good price, and certainly better than the dollar a byte price for core memory (a good price) around 1970! The first DRAM I bought was 16 kB for a TRS-80 for $75 in 1979. Amazing! And here in New Hampshire, the surge in egg prices didn’t impact me, as bird flu didn’t have a big presence here, so $4 per dozen from the farm down the street.
When the Internet bubble burst in the 1990s, some companies almost went out of business having built more equipment than they could sell for months. The AI bubble may be more spectacular. With luck, it will be time for another rebuild then.
I bought my first 1gb Seagate drive in the early/mid 90s for $2500. A year later the same drive cost $1500. Two years ago I bought 4 refurbed 16tb drives for about $300, 5 year warranty. A short term hike in RAM isn’t a disaster, it’s just a blip.
Geothermal will never be more than a bit player when it comes to power generation. Like hydro, there simply aren’t that many suitable sites.
Yes,…but how about http://www.deepfission.com ?
Spending a lot of money to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
That is optimistic, wonderful, why are we not already using nuclear power to clean water and pump it through pipelines to wherever it is needed? Brackish water could even be used to replenish the Great Salt Lake. Pump Seawater there and separate fresh water and put the brackish into the lake. Why are we not using more nuclear power to power regional power grids that can run independent when the huge, complicated, grids fail? If we do have any major conflicts, we cannot protect wind and solar and battery farms along with the long transmission lines and complicate grids that use chips from China to control much of it. Many who promoted the Green Energy and got wealthy on those scams, are now trying to invest in Data Centers and they now realize they need 24/7/365 reliable, abundant, power that can be protected from man and nature.
I do not believe that one person produced the latest advance in processor hardware and I do not have any time for fantasists touting the nuclear fusion dreams.
And I do not believe that a machine will ever have the quality called human intelligence by simply becoming a gigantic calculator or collecting and mixing up all the beliefs in all the cultures in all the languages of the human race.
Phillip Chalmers, I found this about Gilbert Hyatt;
https://alter.systems/c/35c01d6f-64e9-4b83-81cf-45d9e40d60d5
He did not claim to develop the latest advance in processor hardware, it looks like he started it.
I have be using computers, mostly as word processors, for over four decades. While they have been very useful they seem to intrude more with each new one or update with less control. This seems to be an advertisement and doesn’t go into enough detail like so many advertisements which have been increasing over the same period. Also increasing over the years is the jumping around in TV like ads, ball games, etc., suggesting that they might do it mostly because they can. This doesn’t allow enough time for thought to consider which machines would need. Talking too fast doesn’t work either.
Because?
AI will have to do better. Here’s AI saying it was wrong, and thanking me for correcting it.
Unfortunately, its “aim” was wonky. It proceeded to provide the same nonsensical answer to a similar question later on.
Time will tell, but the isolationist policies of the US, plus its hubris, might convince the 95% of the world’s population that isn’t American to ignore the petulant chest thumping of the US, and get on with life.
In the meantime, the US leads the world in incarceration rates and drug overdose deaths – also per capita road fatalities in developed countries.
You may want to be a bit more specific about “America first”. Having a 39 trillion dollar national debt certainly puts it in first place, but I’m not sure how laudable that achievement is. Will borrowing money to build data centers reduce this debt?
Sorry, but I don’t share your enthusiasm about AI that you wouldn’t trust with your life.
I don’t agree. It’s not about ChatGPT doing your research and rough draft. The staggering buildout of massive AI data centers isn’t for cooler chatbots or better video generation. The capital and resource-intensive infrastructure in violation of Net Zero goals is being laid for the ultimate integration of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and real-time carbon footprint tracking, including personal footprints.
Standard servers can’t handle that level of granular, predictive surveillance. AI data centers are being built to process the unfathomable amounts of data needed to tie your account directly to your compliance.
Traditional banking systems just log transactions. An AI-driven programmable CBDC system analyzes them in real-time against fluctuating policy goals. Every item you buy has a carbon cost. AI is the only tool capable of dynamically calculating the ecological footprint of each person, from the steak bought to the miles driven.
The “governance” means undemocratic control. It won’t just be a passive dashboard showing you how much CO2 emissions you are causing. You can volunteer for that now. The AI infrastructure will be programmatic. When you reach your monthly, AI-calculated carbon allotment, your CBDC wallet simply won’t authorize the transaction for that flight, that second pound of beef, or that extra gallon of fuel. You don’t think CO2 is the control knob for climate? Sorry, that ship has sailed.
It is a frictionless, automated rationing system run by algorithms that don’t care about your individual needs or wants. Tended by nameless, faceless technocrats.
It’s the logical endpoint of technocratic efficiency. Global governance requires a global enforcement mechanism that bypasses local laws and national boundaries. By routing the entire global economy through AI data centers tasked with resource allocation and currency programmability, the need for overt force disappears. The software does the governing. You don’t need a police state when the code itself restricts your ability to participate in society the moment you cross an arbitrary climate threshold. The grid is being built right now under the guise of “tech progress”—and some are cheering for it. If you doubt this is coming talk to an estate planner.
The arts have been way ahead of me.
The dystopias of the Terminators or the Matrix are still things of fantasy, but it seems Panam and the Hunger Games are coming to us soon; not needing time travel or autonomous mechanical entities but good old fashioned malevolent human beings following myopic collectivist political philosophies.
We will not need names, each of us will have a number! Heard any stories about something like this before?
Perhaps Data Centers aren’t the villain. But the industry and the politicians that support that industry is.
Where I live both the city council and the Data Center companies refuse to provide any hard data on the amount of electricity and water used. They make claims that it won’t be all that much. But because they fail to provide any real data to support their claims residents don’t believe them.
All we know if that the city leaders gave the Data Center companies a 50% tax abatement. The city says it made the deal because of the jobs it will generate. But Data Centers employ very few people. The job number claims are a lie. Sure, some temporary construction jobs (by outside companies) will be created but that doesn’t benefit the residents seeking work.
What the residents (who pay high property taxes) see is a kickback. A bribe. Rather than the Data Center paying its fair share of property taxes the city is giving half of it back for a few measly jobs. What a bargain.
One Data Center is going to employ 40 people. 40. For that it gets a 50% tax break. By that standard shouldn’t a local person opening a restaurant and employing 20 people get a 25% tax break? Why doesn’t that ever happen?
Want to know what the city council is doing now? It will build an ASR well. Aquifer Storage and Recovery well. The Data Centers will be pumping water from the aquifer. Of course the amount is a ‘secret’, unfit for the ears of the residents.
The ASR well (paid for by the Data Centers) will allow the city to pump municipal water and treated water into the aquifer. Why?
I thought the Data Centers weren’t supposed to use much water? I bet the city will never release any data on how much water it injects into the aquifer. Again why? Is it to hide how much the aquifer is being depleted?
You can see why so many people don’t like AI and Data Centers. You can see why so many residents are against their cities allowing them to be built. We need transparency. Trust us with the truth if you want us to trust you.
Can’t say this often enough! WAKE THE F*CK UP! TOTAL SLAVERY IS UPON US!!
Stop these monstrous data center boondoggles by any means necessary!
AI is designed to be anti-human/anti-life programmed by technocrat control freak psychos – garbage in = garbage out. Everyone got along just fine without all these absurd and downright satanic electronic gadgets that did not exist until recently. NOBODY NEEDS THIS AI CRAP!
IT’S THE OMNIWAR! They can stick their f*cking damned AI, Wearables, Chips, CBDC/NO CASH, NANO, Digital IDs, and Jabs up their asses where the sun don’t shine! iaindavis.substack.com
HELL NO TO GENESIS MISSION/STARGATE/DEEPSEEK! HELL NO TO AI! technocracy.news
Life everywhere is being assaulted by THE TECHNOCRATIC OMNIWAR! RESIST! DO NOT CONSENT TO ALL THINGS DIGITAL, ‘SMART’, AI, 5G, NO CASH – ALL OF IT! dhughes.substack.com Technocrat ruling class psychos get a sadistic thrill from their powers over life and death and hurting all who stand in their way and they need the resources worldwide to build their digital total slavery control grids (herd survivors into 15 minute city digital prisons)!
CREATIVITY! ARTISTRY! IMAGINATION! SPIRITUALITY! HUMOR! LOVING KINDNESS! These are all BEAUTIFUL, the best ways to fight THEM!
I also have a landline, a wired laptop and a wired monitor screen, and I never had or will have those infernal mobile devices designed to enslave you. I also use cash as much as possible, no cash is TOTAL SLAVERY.
How to fight back against this TOTAL SLAVERY!
RESIST! DO NOT COMPLY! DITCH THE DAMNED ‘SMART’ PHONES AND THE DAMNED QR CODES AND GO BACK TO LANDLINES OR FLIP PHONES AND USE CASH AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE! INSIST ON CASH! CBDC IS TOTAL SLAVERY!
It is heartbreaking to witness the holocausts happening and so many fellow citizens are brainwashed/bamboozled by the propaganda media, they are oblivious!
MISTAKES WERE NOT MADE! THEY can’t get rid of the ‘useless eaters’ fast enough!
Peddling pure poison! Folks have to wake up to reality: health comes from organic diet, daily exercise and clean living and never from a needle or a pill except in dire, rare traumatic injuries.
It was NEVER about health! The Powers That Should Not Be were ALWAYS about they want you DEAD or a SLAVE! This is a painful truth to accept but we the people must wake up and fight back! And toxic injections/pills were/are a huge part of their arsenal!
This horrifying Congress Critters, Gates, Governor ‘Gruesome Newscum’, ‘Lone Scum’, Soros, ‘Benedict’ Biden and Harris and even Trump, Vance, and ‘Ramaswampy’ et al are blatant fully owned and operated puppets of their globalist technocrat parasite masters same as other numerous ‘PUBLIC SERPENTS’ infesting by design from above, the bureaucratic apparatus.
Can’t say this often enough! The Military/Industrial Complex and the Biowarfare/industrial Complex, WEF agenda and the evils assaulting humanity are from one and the same source – it is the 99% against the diabolical GREED of the 0.01% who should not be in charge of anything!
The monsters in human skin suits who rule the world get a sadistic vampiric thrill and boost from perpetrating the vilest most demonic crimes against the most vulnerable (babies and small children) and then corrupting the system to get away with it scot free! We the People must stop them, there are a lot more of us than them!
Please check out this substack! ponerology.substack.com
JAB INJURIES: GROSS CALAMARI BLOOD CLOTS/AUTISM TSUNAMI/SADS/TURBO CANCER/BIZARRE TERMINAL ILLNESSES: More tragic victims of the ruling parasite genocidal enslavement agenda, sacrificed on the altar of psychopathic greed and hatred of humanity.
And BIG pHARMa is an arsenal making permanently sickly addicted slaves dependent on their products – the complete opposite of actual health.
Can’t say this often enough!
SCREW THE HYPOCHONDRIA GERMAPHOBIC FEAR HYSTERIA! DO NOT CONSENT! Avian flu is for the birds! RESIST!
KEEP FIGHTING! All the perps who pushed this greatest crime against humanity, all the way down to the local level, must get their comeuppances!
Proudly ANTI-VAXX! Reiterating for the sake of newbies and to support this post.
Ban all vaccine jabs! There has never been a ‘safe and effective’ vaccine since Edward Jenner’s fraud over 200 years ago as per ‘Dissolving Illusions’ by Suzanne Humphries and ‘Turtles All the Way Down’ by Anonymous. Health can never come from a needle or pills, but from healthy eating, healthy exercise and healthy living! virustruth.net
Divide and rule! Agents provocateurs anyone, FALSE FLAGS, propaganda social engineering psyops? Keeping us proles at each others’ throats while the globalist technocrat predators laugh all the way to the BIS and The Bank of Rothschild’s!
BURN BACK BETTER!
PSYCHOPATHS! MEGALOMANIACS!
Bless and thank you for doing what you do.
Some topics really do bring out the nut jobs.
Just because I am paranoid does not mean that there in no-one out to get me! Catch-22
Wrong on several counts.
Who cares, let me state at the outset, what you did 50yrs ago — irrelevant. Don’t tell me what some fancy new power source can do in the future because these are being built today, driving up electricity costs today for local residents. Don’t tell me that these will create new sources of water — that’s just an inane comment. These consume vast amounts of water from local sources and put back much into the same local source — but not as potable water, but highly degraded, fouling local waterways.
Coming into North Dakota and buying up farmland — in just my county: 5,000 acres for _solar_, 2,000 acres for wind, and multiple more thousands for the campus itself — is destroying local communities, our way of life. I have been to 5 meetings with the county’s planning and zoning commission. I have heard not one single person speak in favor of this — NOT ONE. Yet, the commission moves ahead anyway. They are our representatives but act like our leaders. What no one can explain is why they are jumping on this bandwagon.
Two- to three-thousand construction jobs over the next 5-7yrs is pitched as a good thing. But this will require temporary man-camps — electricity and water in train — scarring the community for years after the construction of the data centers ceases. Our county has maybe 10,000 residents, so this isn’t a trivial influx of temporary residents. Electricity, water, fuel, groceries, beers, whatever supply chains and costs will all be permanently affected. Our local power coop has already petitioned for a 20% surcharge on residents to pay for this nonsense. Why a rural a county in ND with zero infrastructure for this is being targeted for hosting this is never explained.
And to one man’s point here in the comments — what the AI data center is being used for is not discussed. Are we building and supporting our own jail cells?
As for the simpletons who argue (assert) that those of us who oppose this nonsense are BLM, anti-patriots, socialists: In fact, we are America, the last bastion of patriotism, gun rights, independence, liberty, hard work, diesel trucks, build-it-yourself sorts of fellows. We don’t rebuild computers is our mom’s basement and think that is cool. We mine your power supplies, grow your wheat, raise your beef. Don’t criticize what you don’t understand.
Do you equally object to every manufacturer that buys up 5 or 10 acres of farmland in order to build a new factory?
Of course not. But likewise, I don’t think we should be encouraging porn film manufacturers to move to town, or a nascar short track. Think it through Mark.
Almost all, yes. Put factories on land useless or already ruined which will be close to populations of people living packed together and needing work to make a living. Leave the arable land to grow food to feed them.
Wind and solar to reliably power a data center is just PR window dressing. Data centers require around-the-clock and uninterrupted power supplies. At the present time, they will have to construct their own quick start, reliable, baseload, low cost combined cycle or single cycle gas-fired power plants. If not for the Climate fanatics, they could even build a coal fired power plant, but that is a bridge too far with today’s politics. If you value your community and local environment, don’t argue against the data center, but argue vehemently against wind and solar power. Hopefully in the near future, data centers will be able to construct on-site small modular reactors, but those are not yet ready for primetime.
Exactly the points that we have been making to the county with regards to the solar and wind. We, shareholders in the coop, must foot the bill to build out the power requirements in base load. The idea that these data centers will pay for their own power is also PR fantasy. If they are on the grid, we pay for it.
As for the data centers themselves, the traffic and noise and light pollution are fairly invasive to our way of life as well. But, again, most importantly, I can’t find anyone in favor of the data centers, but can’t throw a tennis ball at a parade without hitting someone against it.
There’s not a good argument for AI data centers. ‘The US must lead the world’ is just as convincing as covid shots and Biden won 2020 fair and square and Newsom is the future. It’s just crap arguments, stem to stern. Many on this site take the opposite position, vehemently defending the case for AI data centers for no other reason than folks they don’t respect are against them. Really, Flash, read the comments and the non pareil gaseous arguments against. It’s ‘you’re stupid’ and ‘my dad can beat up your dad’ level stuff and nothing more.
Whew. This guy just throws every ingredient into the blender, an illogical mix of good ideas, bad ideas, and sloganism. Fusion when? Geothermal? “All of the above”? “Addiction to cheap oil?” “Expensive oil?” (Except for occasional price spikes, such as the 1970s Arab oil embargo or the recent short-lived Iran conflict, we pay the same for a barrel of oil or a gallon of gas at the pump today as we did in 1960 when adjusted for inflation.)
At 88 years old with quite a career of accomplishment, Mr. Hyatt makes some good points here, but his reasoning is rather clouded.
I take issue with this final sentence in the above article:
“As America celebrates its 250th birthday, let’s remember that the data centers powering AI are financing America’s future, not draining it.”
IMHO, that is only a remote, unproven possibility. The (scientific) jury is still unsettled on whether or not “data centers” devoted to Artificial Intelligence are a net gain or net loss financially, let alone being such to humanity in general.
Data centers do not necessarily generate revenue for America as opposed to generating revenue for corporations and venture capitalists, hence it is absurd to say they are “financing” America’s future.
The only financing of America’s future that is occurring now is being done through means of government entities continuing to accumulate national debt—now close to $40 TRILLION USD and impossible to pay off—that will be requiring interest payments across an untold number of future generations of US taxpayers.