Chapotraphouse

Every new data center is stil harmful though. I don’t live in the US but new US owned data centers get built here quite regularly and they have ruined our ecosystem and power grid already.

Newly built schools are forced to buy their own power generator because there is no capacity left on the energy grid.

Even if a lot won't, some are actually being built. I've visited the new Abilene AI data center in person (they preemptively addressed potential concerns about power/water usage, claiming "we're not the bad guys") and they're expanding it like crazy...

They're still going to clear and pollute a ton of land in their journey of failure

The data centers won't get built, the US will collapse any day now, Russia's victory is assured in another 6 months with a major offensive and Ukraine's front will collapse due to not enough soldiers and the tide will completely turn, the US won't build capacity to decouple from China. Nothing but cope and I have to admit cope from the left is still cope.

Maybe the AI bubble implodes, maybe it doesn't. The bourgeoisie seem serious about marshaling their funds to create a real dagger of automation to hold at the throat of labor to drive down worker power in a time of decline and no more expansion.

America's infrastructure is shit because the bourgeoisie don't care, because there's no reason to invest in it. Because like a lot of things they own its best kept in a just barely working state and a few catastrophic failures that kill some proles are a small price to pay for operating "lean". America can build things and data centers are relatively easy to build. There's lots of construction companies in the US. It's not like shipyards where you need these special spaces, special equipment, special know-how, special supply-chains, and specially trained workers and where the bourgeoisie don't really care about matching China's capacity so far.

As to power that's easily solved, repeal EPA regulations, run dirty generators off diesel and fracked gas, bring dirty power plants online, charge consumers through the nose to pay for expansion of capacity, blame consumers running air conditioning or appliances too much for rolling brown-outs that happen. Run the grid overloaded at 110% capacity, etc.

Even if they build 50% of the planned amount it's going to create problems. Even if they're delayed by a year or two.

That's actually good for AI because the sooner they get built the sooner the mirage of LLMslop is revealed. "AI" is only perceived valuable right now because it's pretending it's on the edge of being realized but constrained by various small hurdles. Them constantly saying "just 100 more data centers and it'll be omnipotent" is the whole point of the grift.