Data centers news and discussion

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

!!!!

[caltrek]

I am so tired of these arguments that go something like you have to be an absolute saint before you can criticize less than saintly behavior. Because we benefit from some form of injustice does not mean we should ignore that injustice or pretend that it does not exist. Insisting on sainthood is just another way of discrediting critics. We should be able to support data centers and the new technology that they involve while at the same time noting that they pollute water, are noisy, and consume large amounts of energy. Acknowledging the problems can result in the adoption of proper mitigation measures. Denialism has shown to have catastrophic consequences on such issues as addressing the causes of cancer, global climate change, high inequality of wealth, destruction of ecological resources, etc. We should not be expected to disarm and therefore neutralize our effect just to avoid such denialism.

[caltrek]

Republicans Are Realizing That No One Wants Data Centers
By Sophie Hurwitz
August 20, 2026

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) The National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a memo Tuesday suggesting that, if incumbent Republican Ohio Sen. Jon Husted loses his upcoming election against former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the Republican Party’s position on data centers is to blame.

The memo, as Axios reported, says that “the data center brand is the anchor” of Brown’s campaign. “He has made them his de facto opponent, and no one is correcting the record,” the NRSC wrote, arguing that if “voters’ perceptions of data centers are not fixed quickly, the campaign against them will expand far beyond Ohio.” They go on to suggest that Republican candidates support some restrictions on data center development, such as only allowing their construction in communities that approve it by popular vote—while still opposing a total pause on data center construction, which they say would cause the US to “lose the AI race to China.”

While the NRSC urges caution, Donald Trump is still positioning himself as an unequivocal ally to data center developers. Speaking at a White House cryptocurrency event Wednesday, he insisted that “we’re building the biggest plants anywhere in the world.”

“If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state and I had a chance to get an AI plant or a data center, I would absolutely want it,” Trump said. “The jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid are just enormous. And if you don’t take it, you’re going to be left behind because there are plenty of places that want it.”

Data centers generate far fewer jobs than other industries, such as manufacturing and warehousing; while they do generate tax revenue, they also tend to be built with generous tax abatements.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... trump/

caltrek’s comment: So here is where we find out where the denialist-in-chief stands on the issue. At least the NRSC suggests “only allowing their construction in communities that approve it by popular vote.”

[caltrek]

‘I’ve Never Seen This’: Massive Collapse in Support for AI Data Centers Captured in New Poll
By Brad Reed
August , 2026

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) A poll released on Thursday shows a massive collapse in support for building artificial intelligence data centers among Republican, Democratic, and independent voters.

The poll, which was conducted by Embold Research and published by Heatmap Pro, shows that 75% of Americans now oppose building AI data centers in their area, including 61% registering strong opposition.

Just one year before, 42% of Americans said they opposed AI data centers in their areas, compared with 43% who expressed support.

The collapse in support has also been uniform across all demographics, the pollsters found.

“If you can think of a cohort of Americans, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t welcome a data center in their area,” explained Heatmap executive editor Robinson Meyer. “The shift against the facilities is represented across age, gender, income, partisan ID, and the rural-urban divide. Data centers are 43 points underwater with Republicans, 65 points underwater with independents, and 75 points underwater with Democrats.”

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/data ... -collapse

[caltrek]

Big Tech Is Building a New Feudalism
By Jim Hightower
August 19, 2026

Introduction:

(Other Words) As Big Tech, Big Finance, and Big Government collude to dig us into the unfathomable hole of artificial intelligence, an old country saying has new relevance: “If you find that you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the very first thing to do is quit digging.”

All across the country, entire communities are in an uproar as they learn that thousands of massive, billionaire-financed data centers are quietly being approved by their government officials, usurping farmland, local water supplies, and each area’s electric grid.

Why? So über-rich prigs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos can impose their grandiose, zillion-dollar schemes to displace human workers with super-intelligent bots. What’s not to like about that?

There are other major problems, too — including the sickening drone of gigantic cooling systems in each data center, running non-stop year-round, destroying community tranquility and people’s sanity; the sudden rise of global warming emissions caused by data center use of fossil fuels; the creation of easy targets for drone attacks on these sprawling interconnected computer networks; and the wholesale diversion of America’s research funding and talent to the private projects of billionaires.

Far worse, though, is that AI is the key for Musk, Bezos, and whoever else to impose a feudal, fascist, technocratic, rule over the rest of us — all in the name of progress. Maybe we should question this “future” before surrendering to it.

Read more here: https://otherwords.org/big-tech-is-pus ... dalism/

[caltrek]

AIs Natural Gas Addiction Could Be Deadly for Communities
By Todd Larsen
August 19, 2026

Introduction:

(Other words) Data centers are notorious energy hogs. With each hyperscale data center using as much energy as an entire city, they’re polluting surrounding areas, straining grids, and raising electric rates nationwide.

This is creating a backlash, with 70 percent of Americans saying they oppose building a data center near them.

Companies have proposed a solution that sounds good on the surface: data centers bringing their own power. If they use their own “behind the meter” energy, tech companies can get data centers running faster without increasing transmission or generation costs for other consumers.

But these dedicated power sources almost always run on natural gas — a polluting fossil fuel. Behind the meter natural gas is projected to account for 40 percent of all data centers’ power by 2030.

Amazon recently announced a data center in Texas that will be powered by its own natural gas plant. The facility could emit up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, making it the most polluting power plant in the country.

Read more here: https://otherwords.org/ais-natural-gas ... unities/

caltrek's comment: Of all countries, China is pointed to in the linked article as a country that is seeking to power its data centers with renewable energy.

[caltrek]

The Fight for Sovereignty in the Shadow of a Data Center
By Wolfgang Bronner
August 20, 2026

Introduction:

(Popular Resistance.org) Fisk University, an HBCU, is presenting a $400 million A.I. data center as progress for the North Nashville community. In truth, it means more pollution, more surveillance, and another chapter in a century of land dispossession dressed up as economic development.

Within Nashville, Tennessee, there has been a rapid implementation of numerous technological tools and digital infrastructure. This transformation has turned the city into a hub for the growing tech economy. This new technology ranges from license plate readers to SkyWatch towers to facial recognition and to phone-hacking. The list keeps expanding. In North Nashville, a prominent Black/African community, a new battle has emerged: a proposed data center to be located at Fisk University.

Considering the situation in Memphis, Tennessee, regarding the xAI data center; this announcement has ignited a storm of resistance. North Nashvillians, who live three hours away from Memphis, have seen how the xAI data center has inflicted devastating environmental and health costs, utilized massive amounts of water, and increased electric bills on Memphians. This has been the case in other locales where data centers have been constructed. While this seems like an isolated issue, it is a continuation in the domestic warfare committed against North Nashville through the systemic denial of their sovereignty and self-determination. This escalation, in particular, could lead to a reckoning pitting corporate interests against North Nashville, which has been exploited for generations. Fisk University, a historically Black/African institution that should be serving as a beacon of North Nashville’s self-determination, finds itself at a crossroads that exposes the connection between its institutional ambitions and the very corporate forces that have historically oppressed the surrounding community.

The rapid construction of data centers across the country is a part of a larger scheme: the merger of artificial intelligence with American militarism. The entanglement of Big Tech companies with the government has been plain for all to see.

Read more here: https://popularresistance.org/the-figh ... center/

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

we freaking know and have responded to that already

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

so we're just going to ignore the people getting fucking poisoned and the fact that most the jobs are from outside the community

[wjfox]

so we're just going to ignore the people getting fucking poisoned and the fact that most the jobs are from outside the community

No, you don't understand. Data centres are 100% good in every conceivable way, and if you disagree then you're "evil" and "anti-AI".
/s

[firestar464]

I am Johnny, Elon Musk Fanboy. Today is the day I get my paycheck. I use all of it to buy Dogecoin, and pay 10% in tithes to Daddy. He is my light and savior.

Today, I am in Memphis. I walk up to the datacenters and circle the building seven times, touching the fence with my hands. I let the infrasound and gas exhaust flow through me. It is a form of holy communion. Before this, I had never known true peace. Never before have I so strongly felt the presence of the coming Singularity.

I leave the datacenter complex, reinvigorated with a sense of belonging to humanity as I continue my pilgrimage to the Starship facilities in Texas. Along the way, I stop to open X to argue with people, explaining why being allowed to create nonconsensual porn of people is actually a good thing.

[wjfox]

Completely mental.

What use is AI going to be when we're all dying in a Mad Max-style apocalypse?

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Two planned datacentres will have higher UK carbon emissions than ExxonMobil, analysis finds

Exclusive: Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire sites predicted to emit 4.5m tonnes a year when fully running

Tue 25 Aug 2026 12.04 BST

The carbon emissions from just two planned datacentres in England will exceed all of the fossil fuel company ExxonMobil’s UK emissions, analysis has revealed.

Experts have said this demonstrates the “serious threat” datacentres pose to the UK’s legally binding climate goals.

Analysis by the non-profit group Foxglove reveals that when fully operational, the Wapseys Wood datacentre in Buckinghamshire and the Quest Park datacentre in Bedfordshire will use 1.3GW of power and will produce more than 4.5m tonnes of carbon emissions.

ExxonMobil emitted 3.9m tonnes in 2023, according to the global energy thinktank Ember.

AI datacentres use a massive amount of electricity to power servers and cooling equipment, and to run facility systems. There are currently 315 datacentres in the queue to connect to the UK’s electricity grid, representing 73GW of demand. This is almost double the peak winter energy demand for the entire UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... exxonmobil



Photograph: sdcm40campus

[caltrek]

If Big Tech Needs a New Power Plant, It Should Pay for the Whole Damn Thing
By Joshua W.J. Brown
August 25, 2026

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) There is a remarkably simple test for whether the AI boom is actually as economically transformative as its boosters say it is: Make the companies building it pay their own damn electricity bill.

Not just the meter at the server warehouse. The whole bill.

If a hyperscale data center requires a new power plant, transmission line, substation, distribution upgrade, water system, or grid-reliability backstop, put that cost on the project that caused it. If the economics still work, excellent. Build it. If they don’t, then the public has just learned something extremely important about the business model.

Pennsylvania moved sharply in that direction on August 18. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s new executive order requires data-center developers seeking state permits to meet Responsible Infrastructure Development standards. Among them: Developers must cover the cost of new generation, transmission, distribution, and related infrastructure needed for their projects without shifting those costs to households and businesses.

The order also requires local approval, ends the use of nondisclosure agreements for data-center projects, demands energy and water reporting, and ties state tax benefits to compliance. Pennsylvania’s special counsel for energy affordability is also supposed to work with utility regulators so data centers, rather than ordinary customers, absorb the cost of reliability measures created by their demand.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/d ... ay-power

caltrek’s comment: This is all just another example of socialism for the rich, and capitalism for everybody else. Except that maybe, just maybe, voters are saying “we have had enough.” Hence the demand to “pay for the whole damn thing.”

[caltrek]

Texans’ Fight Against 1 Million-square-foot Data Center Explained
By Giulia Carbonaro
August 27, 2026

Introduction:

(Newsweek) As the use of artificial intelligence continues to grow and the data centers needed to power it become increasingly unpopular among Americans, a fierce battle is being waged in Texas to stop the development of a 1.1-million-square-foot data center just outside Dallas.

The project by Virginia-based developer PowerHouse consists of four buildings on an 87.9-acre site along Denton Highway in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Westlake.

City officials have greenlit the project, saying in a social media announcement last month they expect it to generate an estimated $5 million annually in revenue for the first 10 years and $7 million annually after that. They say the facility would also create 75 jobs, while using 54 million gallons of water per year.

That is a rather small number compared to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) estimates that a medium-sized data center can consume up to roughly 110 million gallons of water per year for cooling purposes—the equivalent of the water used by a town with a population of 10,000-50,000 people.

Westlake homeowners and a nearby Buddhist monastery have expressed concerns about being so close to the planned facility and the impact of the infrastructure on their health and the areas’ noise levels, according to an NBC 5 DFW report.

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/t ... 6&ei=266

[firestar464]

[firestar464]

yes this will go over well with people, i'm sure they love being poisoned and forced to foot the energy bill