No to data center corporate welfare.
Data centers don’t need to be subsidized as businesses that need them and will build them either way.
There is zero justification for giving taxpayer giveaways to big tech companies and cryptocurrency tycoons to build their data centers.
Boondoggle - Big Tech's AI Blackmail State and local data center extortion is going national. Pat Garofalo Dec 18, 2024 If they don’t get it, the tech titans are threatening to move new data center construction to the Middle East. And if Biden doesn’t deliver, I imagine they’ll ask the incoming Trump administration for the same thing. This is government policy by extortion, plain and simple, and done in the name of accelerating the construction of facilities that provide few jobs, no surrounding economic development, and that, perhaps most importantly, are vital and necessary infrastructure for the corporations in question, negating the need for public subsidies or other regulatory shortcuts to bolster their construction. One added wrinkle is that the tech corporations are arguing an executive order on data centers is necessary to protect America’s advantages in the artificial intelligence industry. They claim that failure to ease data center construction will hinder the development of AI in ways that are detrimental to America’s national interest, and at least imply that standing in the way of new construction is unpatriotic. This is something important to watch out for. As Big Tech firms search for more subsidies and regulatory shortcuts, they are going to slap AI onto anything and everything they do as a way to make it seem fancy and indispensable, when most of it will be useless or unrelated to artificial intelligence under any normal definition of the term.
They say that AI is supposed to replace human jobs, so there’s no logical assertion they could make that this would “create jobs” in that case. It’s an irreconcilable contradiction.
The woke-washing of scammy tech is used to promote, or at least silence opposition to, a lot of otherwise obviously undesirable stuff that’s later shut down by reasonable regulators.
NextGov FCW - Biden orders federal land to be leased for AI data center development - The executive action will leverage federally protected lands to develop data centers capable of supporting AI software, with a priority on incorporating clean energy sources. By Alexandra Kelley, Staff Correspondent, Nextgov/FCW January 14, 2025 Marrying ambitions for leadership in AI innovation with clean energy goals, the EO will ask the Departments of Defense and Energy to lease federal land sites to private sector entities to construct frontier AI data centers “at speed and scale,” supported by renewable energy.
The Verge - OpenAI and Softbank are starting a $500 billion AI data center company / ‘The Stargate Project’ is starting its buildout in Texas, with participation from Oracle, MGX, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Arm. By Richard Lawler, a senior editor following news across tech, culture, policy, and entertainment. He joined The Verge in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget. Jan 21, 2025, 5:45 PM EST A plan to build a system of data centers for artificial intelligence has been revealed in a White House press conference, with Masayoshi Son, Sam Altman, and Larry Ellison joining Donald Trump to announce The Stargate Project. Their companies, Softbank, OpenAI, and Oracle (respectively), along with MGX are listed as “initial equity funders” for $500 billion in investments over the next four years, “building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States.”
The New York Times - Trump Wants to Unleash Energy, as Long as It’s Not Wind or Solar - Legal experts said the president was testing the boundaries of executive power with aggressive orders designed to stop the country from transitioning to renewable energy. Brad Plumer By Lisa Friedman Coral Davenport and Brad Plumer Jan. 21, 2025 Updated 7:04 p.m. ET The orders that Mr. Trump signed on Monday would make it easier and cheaper for companies to produce oil and gas and for the government to stop clean energy projects that have been approved. While some actions lie within his purview, others may violate federal law or run counter to judicial decisions. Among other things, Mr. Trump raised the possibility of reversing the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, which has been confirmed by the Supreme Court, and proposed to halt funding for electric vehicle charging stations that Congress has already authorized.
My letter to reps:
I’m against corporate welfare government subsidies for data centers. Tech companies need to be regulated and reigned in to ensure public health for the communities where they are located. Data centers don’t need to be subsidized as businesses that need them and will build them either way. Tech firms need to comply with data privacy laws so they can’t threaten to position them overseas anyhow. There’s no justification for giving our taxes to big companies for bogus claims of economic development that do not materialize from these projects, which just wind up in conflict with communities where the politicians sold out the citizenry with the trick of trickle down economics.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose the contents of my letter for your own letters to reps.
MIT Technology Review - How Bitcoin mining devastated this New York town Between rising electricity rates and soaring climate costs, cryptomining is taking its toll on communities. By Lois Parshley April 18, 2022 As the long winter began to thaw, neighbors noticed a new disturbance: mining servers generate an extreme amount of heat, requiring extensive ventilation to avert shutoffs. Those fans generated a constant, high-frequency whine, McMahon says, “like a small-engine plane getting ready to take off.” It wasn’t just the decibels, but the pitch: “It registers at this weird level, like a toothache that won’t go away.” Carla Brancato lives across the river from Zafra, a crypto-mining and hosting company owned by Plattsburgh resident Ryan Brienza. She says that for several years her condo vibrated from its noise, as if someone were constantly running a vacuum upstairs. Meanwhile, the automated nature of these servers meant that the new mines provided few local jobs. “I’m pro–economic development,” Read says, “but the biggest mine operation has fewer jobs than a new McDonald’s.” Plattsburgh doesn’t have a city income tax, and most miners lease their buildings, meaning they aren’t paying property taxes. (...) Economist Matteo Benetton, a coauthor of the paper and a professor at the Hass School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, says that crypto mining can depress local economies. In places with fixed electricity supplies, operations suck up grid capacity, potentially leading to supply shortages, rationing, and blackouts. Even in places with ample access to power, like upstate New York, mining can crowd out other potential industries that might have employed more people. “While there are private benefits, through the electricity market, there are social costs,” Benetton says. These impacts are now being felt across the country.
DC News Now - Prince William Co. supervisors sued over data center proposal - by: Max Marcilla Posted: Dec 2, 2022 “This is a bad project,” Plaintiff Roger Yackel, who lives near the proposed site, told DC News Now. “As we learn more, and more and more citizens learn more and more, there will be more pressure put on the supervisors.” It’s a legal battle, but also a battle against homeowners and supervisors who voiced support for the plan, saying the data center would be an economic boom and create jobs in the county. “I think the Board of Supervisors did a great thing to help pivot and transform Prince William County so we can get some good quality jobs here,” said one supporter after the public hearing.
WUSA9 - What’s all the data center noise about? Neighbors say Northern Virginia data centers emit a noise they just can't tune out. We took to the streets and dove in to the science to figure out why. Author: Abby Llorico, Bryce Robinson Published: 7:21 AM EDT April 7, 2023 Updated: 4:20 PM EDT April 7, 2023 Along with an audible hum, the Amazon Web Services Data Center in Manassas and others nearby have also been generating rumbles of complaints from the nearby community. “These data centers are loud, noisy beasts and they are being built too close to residential areas,” said Roger Yackel, who’s been active in the community’s pushback on data centers that they say are being approved without consideration of the nearby homes and schools. “That's not something that we should have to live with.” John Lyver, a retired NASA analyst, has taken to tracking the noise from the data centers in his neighborhoods. “I’m finding that the noise is far worse than anybody ever figured it was going to be,” he said.
Daily Mail - Residents of small Pennsylvania town are being driven mad by huge BITCOIN MINE whose two large cooling towers vibrate and hum more loudly than a waterfall By Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com Published: 14:40 EDT, 13 December 2023 'I have a little pond in front of my house where I used to sit and have my coffee at,' he added. 'I can't even enjoy that because I can't even hear the water over the Bitcoin. It is louder than the waterfall.' Talen Energy won over locals with promises of hundreds of news jobs and an economic boom in the township of 6,000 when they announced plans for the operation last year. 'Amazon, Google, all those cloud computing applications, those are the potential clients, customers that we will have in the data center buildings,' said Dustin Wertheimer, VP and Division CFO Talen Cumulus and Susquehanna Data Center. 'On the coin mining side, there will be computers again located in those buildings and those computers will run computations that will trigger and generate the issuance of coins.' The controversial cryptocurrency has been in the news again after a wild ride since the start of December. A rally last week saw it rise above $44,000 to reach its highest level in almost two years - then on Sunday it lost 6.5 percent of its value in just 20 minutes and dipped below $41,000. Global bank Standard Chartered thinks bitcoin could surpass $100,000 before the end of 2024 - yet well-known JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon said last week that US lawmakers should 'close it down'. The first 1,500 Bitcoins out of Salem Township were sold for $37.6 million after the 180 megawatt mine was plugged in this summer, but that was little consolation to residents at an angry town hall meeting on Tuesday.
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