I always find it interesting when people conflate yesterday's data centers with the hyperscale AI campuses being proposed today. They're fundamentally different in terms of power demand, water use, footprint, and infrastructure. Pretending there's no distinction doesn't make for an honest discussion.
You may be correct but that doesn’t mean that all the relevant issues can’t be addressed and mitigated. It might be that national standards are required, so that local authorities who are already busy, are well-informed and armed. We cannot turn our backs on new data centers, large or small, anymore than we can turn our backs on citizens who may be asked to live next to improperly built ones.
At least you didn't say “I always find it funny how…” The valid point being there are data centers everywhere, perhaps not at scale, but let's not pretend most people arguing against them know this already.
Good analysis. I was at Google in 2006 when The Dalles (in Oregon) was being constructed, at the time one of the biggest in the world. This was long before the term "AI Data Center" became a redundancy. These were not the Nvidia GPU-heavy servers we see now.
We can ask then, why AREN'T tech companies buying up all that commercial urban real estate, whose prices are plummeting? Why are they buying up farmland instead?
Gemini (obviously Google's) notes: "A traditional data center rack uses 10 to 15 kilowatts (kW) of power. A brand-new AI rack packed with next-generation chips (like NVIDIA's Blackwell GB200 NVL72) requires 100 kW to 120 kW per single rack."
When people say, dismissively, "put it in a rural area" they ignore the fact that people live, farm, and ranch there. It's not garbage land and you don't get to fill it up with one story, windowless concrete buildings.
I agree and after reading Alex’s article I feel bad that I have sometimes suggested that. I grew up in the country so I have immense respect for it, but disrupting lives in subdivisions didn’t seem to be the answer either. After all, in this situation the homeowners can’t solve their problem by learning to code. I do like the idea of spreading them out in the cities in commercial properties that may no longer be needed. To those saying that the scale of what can be provided by installing them a little here and a little there won’t be sufficient to meet the demand, I suggest that pissing off most of America so that you get moratoriums everywhere won’t get you that scale either.
Gemini suggests something about jamming them all together that I hadn’t thought of: the speed of light. If one server is 10 miles away from the one it wants to talk to, that’s a significant handicap.
Substack won’t allow me to link to my Gemini conversation here.
In any case: I think that we’re dealing with the first generation of Big AI. Companies who pour trillions into big data centers are going to feel foolish when the second and third generations come along.
Downtown Commercial Office Real Estate is dying all across major US cities. Plenty of perfectly good large buildings with existing power, water, and backbone IP network access that are being liquidated for 10% of the "Extend and Pretend" REIT book valuations. AI can't afford gigantic data centers at current construction costs long term. Investors are going to stop subsidizing AI data centers at some point. The average ChatGPT Plus customer won't / can't afford to pay 10X - 100X fully loaded token-based recurring revenue billing rates. AI and legacy CRE data centers will find an equilibrium that provides an actual positive NPV. The math of forever spending 100 to get 10 has never worked.
I suspect that data centers located far from suburban and rural residential areas would draw less criticism. Locating data centers in old refurbished buildings in city downtowns would be much less intrusive.
But from what I understand, that is not what is being done. It is not hard to find videos with residents of rural areas discussing how their quality of life has been significantly reduced by a big new data center.
I also wonder - What are all of the proposed new data centers for? Do we need them to keep track of Flock camera data since surveillance cameras are being installed in many places? Would data centers be helpful in keeping track of our fellow citizens 24/7? How about more centralized surveillance of our financial transactions, cellphone locations, vaccine history, political affiliation, . . .?
Insurrectionists against America’s moving forward technologically use fear, fear, and more fear to confuse the people. Alexander Muse has written a careful analysis based on research and backed by empirical evidence! And, yes, large Data Centers have been among us since the early years of Silicon Valley and living amongst them never made anyone afraid—in fact, they were surrounded by some upscale shopping and eateries!!! Also, there were jobs galore!!!
Facts, facts, facts. You present them better than most subject matter experts on this topic. And yet, the “manufactured panic” seems to be having the upper hand; new data centers proposals throughout the country are basically DOA in a growing number of communities, counties, and now entire states (see NY). A figurative firewall of resistance against data centers seems to be gaining traction.
Question: Who up top do you suspect is spearheading the obvious campaign to sabotage practically ALL new data center builds? Somewhere out there lurks an enemy of US interests. Who is it?
I notice all your examples are in the middle of cities. The data centers now want to locate on rural farmland or suburbs or anywhere but in cities and their abandoned commercial centers/buildings. Not the same.
As many commenters here noted, the objections to AI data centers tend to be around new construction of very large buildings, in some (or many?) cases, on prime farmland or in suburban neighborhoods. And the acreage quoted for some is enormous and generally cited with no context so it appears that data centers buildings will consume literally multiple square miles of land when in fact, the acreage is for an entire campus that will include a lot of open space as well - unlike industrial scale solar complexes that do consume multiple square miles of land. Frankly, I doubt there would be much objection to the continued repurposing of existing buildings - like AT&T or Verizon Central Office buildings that likely have a lot of available space freed up from the retirement of a lot of legacy voice networking gear that took up a lot of space.
There is a lot of misinformation along with valid concerns. Tech companies along with power companies are not doing themselves any favors by ignoring or dismissing the concerns.
Surely you realize that virtually all the complaints about data centers are coming from suburban and rural areas. Your article fails spectacularly to address their issues. Data centers have and will cause grave damage to rural communities. Rural communities overwhelmingly *do not* want data centers, but you and the rest of the technocrat elite are completely tone-deaf on this issue. What a tragedy for America the (soon-to-be Formerly) Beautiful.
I always find it interesting when people conflate yesterday's data centers with the hyperscale AI campuses being proposed today. They're fundamentally different in terms of power demand, water use, footprint, and infrastructure. Pretending there's no distinction doesn't make for an honest discussion.
You may be correct but that doesn’t mean that all the relevant issues can’t be addressed and mitigated. It might be that national standards are required, so that local authorities who are already busy, are well-informed and armed. We cannot turn our backs on new data centers, large or small, anymore than we can turn our backs on citizens who may be asked to live next to improperly built ones.
At least you didn't say “I always find it funny how…” The valid point being there are data centers everywhere, perhaps not at scale, but let's not pretend most people arguing against them know this already.
Good analysis. I was at Google in 2006 when The Dalles (in Oregon) was being constructed, at the time one of the biggest in the world. This was long before the term "AI Data Center" became a redundancy. These were not the Nvidia GPU-heavy servers we see now.
We can ask then, why AREN'T tech companies buying up all that commercial urban real estate, whose prices are plummeting? Why are they buying up farmland instead?
Gemini (obviously Google's) notes: "A traditional data center rack uses 10 to 15 kilowatts (kW) of power. A brand-new AI rack packed with next-generation chips (like NVIDIA's Blackwell GB200 NVL72) requires 100 kW to 120 kW per single rack."
When people say, dismissively, "put it in a rural area" they ignore the fact that people live, farm, and ranch there. It's not garbage land and you don't get to fill it up with one story, windowless concrete buildings.
I agree and after reading Alex’s article I feel bad that I have sometimes suggested that. I grew up in the country so I have immense respect for it, but disrupting lives in subdivisions didn’t seem to be the answer either. After all, in this situation the homeowners can’t solve their problem by learning to code. I do like the idea of spreading them out in the cities in commercial properties that may no longer be needed. To those saying that the scale of what can be provided by installing them a little here and a little there won’t be sufficient to meet the demand, I suggest that pissing off most of America so that you get moratoriums everywhere won’t get you that scale either.
Gemini suggests something about jamming them all together that I hadn’t thought of: the speed of light. If one server is 10 miles away from the one it wants to talk to, that’s a significant handicap.
Substack won’t allow me to link to my Gemini conversation here.
In any case: I think that we’re dealing with the first generation of Big AI. Companies who pour trillions into big data centers are going to feel foolish when the second and third generations come along.
Downtown Commercial Office Real Estate is dying all across major US cities. Plenty of perfectly good large buildings with existing power, water, and backbone IP network access that are being liquidated for 10% of the "Extend and Pretend" REIT book valuations. AI can't afford gigantic data centers at current construction costs long term. Investors are going to stop subsidizing AI data centers at some point. The average ChatGPT Plus customer won't / can't afford to pay 10X - 100X fully loaded token-based recurring revenue billing rates. AI and legacy CRE data centers will find an equilibrium that provides an actual positive NPV. The math of forever spending 100 to get 10 has never worked.
There's literally miles of empty warehouse and distribution centers south of Dallas on I45,
but they just bulldozed 1800 acres of good grazing land here in Hill County. The land will never be the same.
I suspect that data centers located far from suburban and rural residential areas would draw less criticism. Locating data centers in old refurbished buildings in city downtowns would be much less intrusive.
But from what I understand, that is not what is being done. It is not hard to find videos with residents of rural areas discussing how their quality of life has been significantly reduced by a big new data center.
I also wonder - What are all of the proposed new data centers for? Do we need them to keep track of Flock camera data since surveillance cameras are being installed in many places? Would data centers be helpful in keeping track of our fellow citizens 24/7? How about more centralized surveillance of our financial transactions, cellphone locations, vaccine history, political affiliation, . . .?
That's what they already do in China.
Insurrectionists against America’s moving forward technologically use fear, fear, and more fear to confuse the people. Alexander Muse has written a careful analysis based on research and backed by empirical evidence! And, yes, large Data Centers have been among us since the early years of Silicon Valley and living amongst them never made anyone afraid—in fact, they were surrounded by some upscale shopping and eateries!!! Also, there were jobs galore!!!
Facts, facts, facts. You present them better than most subject matter experts on this topic. And yet, the “manufactured panic” seems to be having the upper hand; new data centers proposals throughout the country are basically DOA in a growing number of communities, counties, and now entire states (see NY). A figurative firewall of resistance against data centers seems to be gaining traction.
Question: Who up top do you suspect is spearheading the obvious campaign to sabotage practically ALL new data center builds? Somewhere out there lurks an enemy of US interests. Who is it?
China would top the list.
New York State just succumbed to manufactured panic, as you correctly call it. The CCP is cheering, and pressing for more.
And possibly instrumental in the ban.
I notice all your examples are in the middle of cities. The data centers now want to locate on rural farmland or suburbs or anywhere but in cities and their abandoned commercial centers/buildings. Not the same.
As many commenters here noted, the objections to AI data centers tend to be around new construction of very large buildings, in some (or many?) cases, on prime farmland or in suburban neighborhoods. And the acreage quoted for some is enormous and generally cited with no context so it appears that data centers buildings will consume literally multiple square miles of land when in fact, the acreage is for an entire campus that will include a lot of open space as well - unlike industrial scale solar complexes that do consume multiple square miles of land. Frankly, I doubt there would be much objection to the continued repurposing of existing buildings - like AT&T or Verizon Central Office buildings that likely have a lot of available space freed up from the retirement of a lot of legacy voice networking gear that took up a lot of space.
And, part of the problem is PR which is harmed by actions like the one described in this article. https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/georgia-homeowners-forced-power-ai-150527590.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9zZWFyY2gubm9ydG9uYnJvd3Nlci5jb20vc2VycD9xPWdlb3JnaWErcG93ZXIrZW1pbmVudCtkb21haW4mc2VnbWVudD1ub3J0b24wMCZzdWJpZD0yOTQxOCZzb3VyY2U9Y2hyb21lLm9i&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABdsg13tV5M6MIKPAkTFRAIWb-tMnME2e9fJYHFfa-ImMI-Q4lGA56QUF14RO2whoZrkpUIW45roj61rTpo-f6bXLXTyjjMkN7yezdN23f-6XGjh6dQg1NQCb2MnvAC9V9CVUVnBSU5wYMd2XtaB-vSVe3rP0qS3Gb7hLZNb6WtL
There is a lot of misinformation along with valid concerns. Tech companies along with power companies are not doing themselves any favors by ignoring or dismissing the concerns.
💯👆
Surely you realize that virtually all the complaints about data centers are coming from suburban and rural areas. Your article fails spectacularly to address their issues. Data centers have and will cause grave damage to rural communities. Rural communities overwhelmingly *do not* want data centers, but you and the rest of the technocrat elite are completely tone-deaf on this issue. What a tragedy for America the (soon-to-be Formerly) Beautiful.
People feared steam locomotives at first... and that turned out OK
Excellent, well written and an honest assessment of what has been done and can and must be done. Thank you.
Hyperscale?
This article dovetails with this article by taking on the electricity costs: https://cityjournal.substack.com/p/data-centers-arent-raising-your-power?r=tfmfm&utm_medium=ios
How many hyper scale data centers have you seen in downtown areas?