Those opposed to data centers I want your views please

opposed unless they are water neutral and have additional electrical capacity grouped with the development.

Primary concern is how they are being shoved down everyone's throat, generally in direct opposition to the communities affected or worse negotiated in the dark of night with details hidden behind NDAs.

At least the claim of "creating jobs" has been given up... once construction is complete there are no permanent jobs.

Came across this podcast the other day. It was an interesting listen. They do talk about how the concern over water contamination or over use is a myth / FUD as most modern data centers recycle the water they use for cooling in a closed loop system.

quote:

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Gemini summary:

This episode of The Ezra Klein Show features journalist Jasmine Sun discussing the growing bipartisan backlash against AI data centers across the United States.

Key Takeaways:

- The Nature of the Backlash: The opposition is driven by three main factors: process (frustration with secretive non-disclosure agreements), direct impact (concerns over land use, aesthetics, noise, and massive energy/water consumption), and broader skepticism of AI as an elite political project (0:05:55-0:06:30, 0:23:14-0:23:25).

- Local vs. Tech Interests: Many communities fear these projects are "bubbles" that could leave them with stranded industrial assets if the AI industry shifts, citing past negative experiences like the Foxconn project in Wisconsin (0:14:16-0:15:51).

- The "Pro-AI" Absence: Unlike other industrial developments (like solar farms or auto plants), there is a lack of a clear, compelling "pro-constituency" among the public for these facilities, making them easier targets for local resistance (0:21:49-0:22:15).

- Silicon Valley's Realization: Sun notes that the tech industry is finally beginning to recognize that they face "relational" and political hurdles that cannot be solved by simply outspending opponents or relying on technological optimism (1:12:52-1:14:40).

- Sun argues that this conflict imposes a necessary realism on the tech sector, forcing them to engage with the messy, democratic realities of the physical world rather than just their own digital narratives (1:12:52-1:13:33).

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I've worked in data centers, and have a friend that does construction management for them. Any article or conversation that mentions AI in relation to data centers is a guaranteed emotion play. Meta can build a data center, but how much of it is dedicated to caching IG stories, or doing facial matching on pictures that people post to suggest who to tag vs Meta AI can depend upon the day or the hour, as an example.

I like data centers. I'm probably using resources out of eight different companies' DCs as we speak, based on dumb daily shite I'm doing on my desktop.

What I *don't* like is the moron politicians that keep falling for the "thousands of jobs" bullshite when giving tax incentives. Once it's built, there may be 10k physical servers in there, but you maybe need 10-50 people to rack and stack and do other physical stuff, everything else will be maintained from somewhere else (Seattle, CA, India, etc.) The electricians and HVAC folks will be contractors that may visit every 30-90 days.

We're also far enough along now that any municipality should be bright enough to ask about how the DC is requisitioning power, but most of them don't seem to. In El Paso, Meta is building their own gas fired plant to generate electricity. Great, no problem. Closed loop systems only really lose water that evaporates during cooling, but every building with A/C does that. Nobody complained about chip fabs in Arizona, which actually use a ton more water than DCs, but that's because it's an important swing state.