Helping China Win
This threat to American survival is so great that three steps must be taken immediately.
If you were trying to design a scenario in which Communist China becomes the dominant power in the world, you could hardly do better than the current anti-data center crusade.
Make no mistake about it. If the United States, through regulatory, jurisdictional, and political actions, blocks the development of data centers, it will virtually guarantee that the Chinese Communists will dominate the development of artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence is the most powerful development in the history of the human race.
In a brilliant book by Henry Kissinger, Craig Mundie, and Eric Schmidt, they capture how much this is the beginning of something new by calling it Genesis. This book followed an earlier article in Atlantic Monthly published on August 1, 2019, entitled ‘The Metamorphosis’ written by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher. There, they asserted that: “Humanity is at the edge of a revolution driven by artificial intelligence. It has the potential to be one of the most significant and far-reaching revolutions in history, yet it has developed out of disparate efforts to solve specific practical problems rather than a comprehensive plan. Ironically, the ultimate effect of this case-by-case problem solving may be the transformation of human reasoning and decision making.”
Directly relevant to the current fight against data centers, they assert that “This revolution is unstoppable. Attempts to halt it would cede the future to that element of humanity more courageous in facing the implications of its own inventiveness.”
In other words, critics of data centers can slow them down or limit them in America, but that will have no impact on the effort in the world. Since the Communist dictatorship will never tolerate the kind of social and political protest that could slow down or even stop the development of artificial intelligence, the result of a successful American anti-data center movement can slow the growth of AI in America, but have no impact on the Chinese Communist or Russian and North Korean programs. America would have signed a suicide pact if it had gone down this road.
Virtually none of the opponents and critics of data centers realize they are proposing to concede the future to the Chinese Communists. Yet their impact is real and growing.
There are currently $2.59 trillion in data center investments in America announced by companies that want to participate fully in the development of artificial intelligence. Already, some $46 billion has been blocked.
Furthermore, the anti-data-center movement has been having an increasing impact. Gallup reports that, by a margin of 71-27, Americans oppose data centers in their communities.
This threat to American survival is so great that three steps must be taken immediately.
First, the companies that intend to invest billions in data centers will have to invest several hundred million dollars in educating the American people about why this is vital to the country’s survival, why the attacks on it are false and demagogic, and why America’s very survival is at stake.
Second, on a case-by-case basis, an all-out effort should be made to understand local communities’ concerns and take steps to address them.
Third, in a worst case, the Federal government owns 640 million acres. If necessary to move as fast as or faster than Communist China, some government land should be sold at commercial rates to build data centers in sufficient numbers so that the Chinese Communists cannot out-produce us.
Neither Ukraine, Iran, Cuba, nor any other current crisis is nearly as important or nearly as potentially fatal as the anti-data center movement. It has to be defeated immediately if we are to sustain the momentum to lead the world in AI.
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The elephant in the room for datacenters' computing hardware such as the Nvidia Blackwell GPU's and their associated circuitry is their massive power consumption. A single rack of these devices (about the size of a refrigerator) consumes about 160KW. So much power in such a small space requires a large amount of cooling, so each rack is accompanied by another rack which is simply the liquid cooling pumps and a third rack which is the 800V power supply. Now imagine a datacenter full of these things and it's easy to see how one of these "AI factories" can consume more power than a medium sized city. The creaking old USA electricity grid simply can't support this massive increase in demand. Building the datacenter is one thing. Building the necessary adjacent power plant, particularly a nuclear power plant, is a different matter.
Since I have been watching the uproar about data centers, the third proposal that the Federal lands could be sold for use. I think that it should be at bargain prices as federal lands, as I understand it are not very close to urban centers which need to be available for people working at them can live and find sustennance. Also access to abundant electricity may be wanting. However, wasn't it a rule that the centers need to provide thier own power, (i.e, nuclear would be best) They should also be able to reverse purchase agreements on land they have or will be kicked off of. And absolutely yes, the citizenry needs to be educated. From what I have read, data centers should be less drain on the water supply than farming and is'nt it mainly farmland on which the centers have been proposed, As for Power, if they provide their own power and assist with upgrading of the power grid that would be a benefit. So educate the public.