The argument isn't that data centers are coming. They are. But AI as a driving force is specious. The majority of current cloud capacity is taken up with redundant material that no one wants to delete. Saving things electronically doesn't appear to be a problem to the average computer user, but a gazillion videos of cats still take up a lot of space in the cloud. Rather than figuring out how to manage an avalanche of files, the tech bros, who are billionaires, want us to pay for their infrastructure and also pay their taxes. Pretty cheeky.
Shaun Kenney is right to push us beyond the usual NIMBY skirmishes and to see Virginia’s data center boom as part of a larger re industrialization of America. Data centers now undergird streaming, finance, logistics, health care, AI, and even national security, and his argument that they can anchor new AI driven industrial zones is the kind of long range thinking our region badly needs. I share his desire for communities that plan ahead instead of fighting every change piecemeal.
But a truly strategic vision has to grapple with what, exactly, is being “industrialized.” These facilities are not just job sites; they are the core infrastructure for large scale collection and analysis of data about all of us, controlled by a handful of powerful firms and a federal government racing to expand AI capacity faster than Congress can agree on basic guardrails. Right now we have a federal build faster push, a patchwork of state tax breaks and moratoria, and local boards improvising national policy at the zoning hearing level with limited technical support.
If we are going to welcome data centers as the backbone of a new industrial era, Virginia’s legislators and regional leaders need to become fluent in the technology and its risks and move us from one off deals to clear rules for where these facilities go, how they use shared resources, who pays for the upgrades they require, and who controls the data they process. Otherwise, we risk building an impressive new “factory system” whose primary output is not shared prosperity, but concentrated information power over the public.
Wow, a lot to digest, but most of it indigestible.
1) We should read a book about the future written by the billionaire Palantir guys? Palantir (founded by Peter Thiel who brought us the vacuous J.D. Vance): the company that is in the business of collecting the full range of information on Americans (who you are; where you are; what you're doing; etc.) and selling it to ICE, the Intelligence agencies, and the deep diving tentacles of the nation's security apparatus. The company that developed and sold AI targeting systems used by the U.S. and Israel in Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza taking obviating the need for a "man-in-the-loop" so that the killing of tens of thousands of civilians becomes nothing more than a video game and violates on the basic premises of Just War Theory. Yeah, that's an objective voice about the future.
2) The naivete that the mega-monopolists of Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon will allow any upstarts (Anthropic) to usurp their ability to print money can only be described as, well, normal for most of America. And the partisan author of this piece seems to have forgotten that the CEOs of the above were all donors to Trump's campaign and inaugural events, were photographed with him and are the recipients of his tax cut largesse while the rest of us get screwed, including the author. Also, those are the companies who stand to gain the most from the "AI-ing" of our techno-economy, the build out of data centers and who are going to be laying off the most workers as AI storms into the work force taking no prisoners.
3) Books to read instead of Palantir clap-trap: First, Enshittification by Cory Doctorow. Second, How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil. Third, Life on a Little Known Planet by Elizabeth Kolbert.
4) And all the while our ecosystem(s) degrade, the oceans rise, arable land acreage decreases, climate events increase in severity and number, renewables get sidelined, fossil fuels get subsidies and our response is, and I paraphrase the above, "AI will save us." Short term (years) benefits will mean nothing to the long term (decades) impacts we are facing. We're too ignorant and greedy to survive.
Classic trope from the billion-dollar DATA CENTER industry Playbook Strategy #5: blame the customer who BTW, is being taken for a fool to believe they're at fault: 'DATA CENTERS have arrived and it’s about time they did — and IT'S YOUR FAULT TOO!!!' (caps and exclams for emphasis!!!).
Before reading any more of the 'FXBG Advance' horse hooey on DATA CENTERS, I just scrolled down to the bottom of this article, 'The Technological Republic' by Shaun Kenney for the DISCLAIMER statement.
Again, it's not there.
Some of us realize that 'FXBG Advance' is losing subscribers for not putting the DISCLAIMER statement in its DATA CENTER articles, but there are others who are hanging in there just for the convenience of having 'FXBG Advance' show up in the morning email.
Since 'FXBG Advance' is taking money from the DATA CENTER industry: Did Mr. Kenney get a stipend for getting permission from "The Republican Standard' to spin more hype on the Goliath big boys' game strategy against the stakeholders Davids? who are already taking the hit in their power bills, as per the Virginia SCC/State Corporation Commission?
Where's the 'FXBG Advance' article on how many 'straws' are in the non-proprietary Water Services Agreements with Caroline, Fredericksburg, King George, Spotsy and Stafford sucking the 6th Most Endangered River in the US, the Rapp dry?
the data center glazing from the advance is exhausting man
The argument isn't that data centers are coming. They are. But AI as a driving force is specious. The majority of current cloud capacity is taken up with redundant material that no one wants to delete. Saving things electronically doesn't appear to be a problem to the average computer user, but a gazillion videos of cats still take up a lot of space in the cloud. Rather than figuring out how to manage an avalanche of files, the tech bros, who are billionaires, want us to pay for their infrastructure and also pay their taxes. Pretty cheeky.
Shaun Kenney is right to push us beyond the usual NIMBY skirmishes and to see Virginia’s data center boom as part of a larger re industrialization of America. Data centers now undergird streaming, finance, logistics, health care, AI, and even national security, and his argument that they can anchor new AI driven industrial zones is the kind of long range thinking our region badly needs. I share his desire for communities that plan ahead instead of fighting every change piecemeal.
But a truly strategic vision has to grapple with what, exactly, is being “industrialized.” These facilities are not just job sites; they are the core infrastructure for large scale collection and analysis of data about all of us, controlled by a handful of powerful firms and a federal government racing to expand AI capacity faster than Congress can agree on basic guardrails. Right now we have a federal build faster push, a patchwork of state tax breaks and moratoria, and local boards improvising national policy at the zoning hearing level with limited technical support.
If we are going to welcome data centers as the backbone of a new industrial era, Virginia’s legislators and regional leaders need to become fluent in the technology and its risks and move us from one off deals to clear rules for where these facilities go, how they use shared resources, who pays for the upgrades they require, and who controls the data they process. Otherwise, we risk building an impressive new “factory system” whose primary output is not shared prosperity, but concentrated information power over the public.
Wow, a lot to digest, but most of it indigestible.
1) We should read a book about the future written by the billionaire Palantir guys? Palantir (founded by Peter Thiel who brought us the vacuous J.D. Vance): the company that is in the business of collecting the full range of information on Americans (who you are; where you are; what you're doing; etc.) and selling it to ICE, the Intelligence agencies, and the deep diving tentacles of the nation's security apparatus. The company that developed and sold AI targeting systems used by the U.S. and Israel in Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza taking obviating the need for a "man-in-the-loop" so that the killing of tens of thousands of civilians becomes nothing more than a video game and violates on the basic premises of Just War Theory. Yeah, that's an objective voice about the future.
2) The naivete that the mega-monopolists of Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon will allow any upstarts (Anthropic) to usurp their ability to print money can only be described as, well, normal for most of America. And the partisan author of this piece seems to have forgotten that the CEOs of the above were all donors to Trump's campaign and inaugural events, were photographed with him and are the recipients of his tax cut largesse while the rest of us get screwed, including the author. Also, those are the companies who stand to gain the most from the "AI-ing" of our techno-economy, the build out of data centers and who are going to be laying off the most workers as AI storms into the work force taking no prisoners.
3) Books to read instead of Palantir clap-trap: First, Enshittification by Cory Doctorow. Second, How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil. Third, Life on a Little Known Planet by Elizabeth Kolbert.
4) And all the while our ecosystem(s) degrade, the oceans rise, arable land acreage decreases, climate events increase in severity and number, renewables get sidelined, fossil fuels get subsidies and our response is, and I paraphrase the above, "AI will save us." Short term (years) benefits will mean nothing to the long term (decades) impacts we are facing. We're too ignorant and greedy to survive.
Classic trope from the billion-dollar DATA CENTER industry Playbook Strategy #5: blame the customer who BTW, is being taken for a fool to believe they're at fault: 'DATA CENTERS have arrived and it’s about time they did — and IT'S YOUR FAULT TOO!!!' (caps and exclams for emphasis!!!).
Before reading any more of the 'FXBG Advance' horse hooey on DATA CENTERS, I just scrolled down to the bottom of this article, 'The Technological Republic' by Shaun Kenney for the DISCLAIMER statement.
Again, it's not there.
Some of us realize that 'FXBG Advance' is losing subscribers for not putting the DISCLAIMER statement in its DATA CENTER articles, but there are others who are hanging in there just for the convenience of having 'FXBG Advance' show up in the morning email.
Since 'FXBG Advance' is taking money from the DATA CENTER industry: Did Mr. Kenney get a stipend for getting permission from "The Republican Standard' to spin more hype on the Goliath big boys' game strategy against the stakeholders Davids? who are already taking the hit in their power bills, as per the Virginia SCC/State Corporation Commission?
Where's the 'FXBG Advance' article on how many 'straws' are in the non-proprietary Water Services Agreements with Caroline, Fredericksburg, King George, Spotsy and Stafford sucking the 6th Most Endangered River in the US, the Rapp dry?
Now that would be news.