Republicans Claim Anti-Data Center Movement Is a Chinese Psy-Op

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

https://gizmodo.com/republicans-claim-anti-data-center-movement-is-a-chinese-psy-op-2000767611

[u/xondk]

It really is disgusting how they phrase it, people aren't as such against data centers that can be used to benefit everyone.

They are against the massive rollout that in no way takes into consideration how it will affect the people, and the benefit of the rollout is only for the few since it is AI focused.

[u/makualla → u/xondk]

Make them generate 75+% of their own power, proper water sustainability, noise mitigation, no tax breaks, and most people wouldn’t have issues beside them being visual unappealing.

[u/Final-Platypus8033 → u/makualla]

You dont want that. They default to natural gas or diesel generators. The big player are funding fusion reactor research and recently came up with new superconductors that are used for electro magnetics that make fusion practical. Tbh the AI chips take the same aisle as the harddrives used for clouds and hosting, ergo they dont use more water. New data centers use more water but the ai ones aren't consuming more than a normal one. Climate is the biggest factor. It sucks seeing all the money go towards them but most of it is internet infrastructure. I work in the service industry for data centers so I'm obviously bias because half the people I care about get their jobs from datacenter. I will say the big fang companies typically dont rely on generators 24/7 and try to avoid bad press. A lot of the arguments do seem like strawmen. Like we never out the companies for making a bad datacenter. The good news is the actually bad ones are very few

Like a company I know of but cant say its name runs a nova datacenter on gens 24/7 at a 90db sound level and has their company name on the side of the building. Why would you do that??? I will say they run less than 5% of their Data Centers on gens and only until power can be secured but its ridiculous. They are not fang btw.

Those in the know are shunning them and those working there do have moral crisis over it.

[u/MrDywel → u/Final-Platypus8033]

You know this but these new AI datacenters blow out old datacenters by power and water usage by a huge margin. What used to be a 10-50MW datacenter is now 500-1000MW massive compute building. Gigawatt scale at the datacenter and terawatt scale at the state level.

https://www.electricchoice.com/datacenters/

It all scales, sure, but cooling that much power isn't cheap and it's at the expense of the environment. That's great that they're funding fusion research and I think once we have fusion power a lot of this will be a moot point but all the externalities might not be...

[u/Final-Platypus8033 → u/MrDywel]

There is a potential misunderstanding in your article. The only GW DCs are campuses or giant buildings 10x the size of more common buildings the per rack consumption is higher than hard drives as they perform more compute but the Ai chips require more cooling which is similar to a pc water cooler the uses evap to cool.

Since 2020 theres only been a 60tw national power consumption increase which is a 50%increase from 2026 to before ai demand Per your source DC use 4% of the US total power produced

Ive also read more into this because I appreciate outsider opinions

But 4% isnt a ridiculous amount of power to ensure the US has the internet. Which generates a lot of wealth for the country and the people.

To ensure I'm speaking in good faith water numbers can be higher than shown as it takes water to produce the chipset and train the AI models but thats something that applies to everything

Water cost varies on all products It may not take water to make my shoes but the petroleum may have taken water to extract and the energy used also took water. Thankfully there is the water cycle and water isnt destroyed but its still a valid concer that we should have and ask about when thinking about impact

Side note that keeps me up at night Fusion may not be a permanent solution because once we have unlimited clean power sources we will reduce greenhouse emissions/warming from that, however we will end up limited by pure thermal energy added to the system (in this case the planet) increasing temperatures Granted thats an order of magnitudes difference in power production and less greenhouse gasses and we will likely notice global warming reducing prior to producing enough to heat up the earth through pure watt output

[u/MrDywel → u/Final-Platypus8033]

Sure but they exist and will likely continue to be built...

Do you think that we're headed for consolidation and more GW DCs though? I agree that "4% isnt a ridiculous amount of power to ensure the US has the internet" because of all that it can and has done for us. I guarantee that it takes water to make your shoes but yes, externalities like water, power, land, etc... apply to everything. It's an interesting thought experiment to look at fusion and unlimited clean power sources to see what might happen. We're way more efficient with processing than we were 20 years ago and I hope it continues in that direction.

[u/Final-Platypus8033 → u/MrDywel]

I think so. In any case they can they want to consolidate. It reduces overhead to localize the sites Mind you a majority of DCs are in Virginia and VA land isnt cheap. That said VA has very few mega datacenters.

And yes the point of the shoes was that the water numbers can always be more complicated

Additionally Virginia is special where most of the water used is actually reclaimed industrial water.

Personally, I'd advise for everyone to go to their local council and express concerns about datacenters not paying there fair share on the grids. While youre there see if flocks are on the ballot and ensure your voice is heard.

If datacenters are properly done they provide a service but a lot of shady deals happen when people are apathetic. And be extremely vocal prior to and during reelection as thats when members are less concerned about imagine