Places Everyone

Politics isn’t the only thing that is simultaneously local and global. AI is driving our economy from the public markets to the public square. WSJ (Gift Article): What Happened When Small-Town America Became Data Center, USA. “Yesenia Leon-Tejeda, like many people on the frontier of America’s tech boom, is basking in newfound prosperity. Her hometown in northeast Oregon was not long ago known for a former chemical-weapons depot nearby, a state prison on the city’s outskirts and the strip clubs once dotting its main drag. But a growing fleet of Amazon data centers has turned the region around Umatilla into an unlikely nerve center for one of the most expensive infrastructure build-outs in U.S. history. The tech giant has pumped jobs, people and money into the community of roughly 8,000, doubling many home prices and enticing builders to etch new neighborhoods into surrounding hillsides.”

+ “In the 2020s, AI is already transforming America in a similar fashion, driving overall economic growth and powering the stock market to all-time highs. As a share of US GDP, the AI build-out is on track to exceed every major technology since—you guessed it—the railroads.” Derek Thompson: AI Could Be the Railroad of the 21st Century. Brace Yourself.