How Data Centers Became the Central Issue
“Clinton, Iowa, is topographically flat and economically declining. The sawmills that made the city rich in the late 19th century have been repurposed as a museum. One of the Victorian mansions long since abandoned by the old lumber barons is open for tours, but tourists are scarce. Clinton has shrunk to about 24,000 people, and the town center, along the Mississippi River, feels nearly empty. On the west side, miles of deep-green corn and soy fields are crisscrossed with transmission wires and zoned for heavy industrial use. The city’s economic activity includes corn processing, pet-food production, and methamphetamines. With available land and a dire need for investment, Clinton seems like the perfect place for a gigantic data center.” Well, it seemed perfect to everyone except Clintonians. Instead, the town of Clinton is the latest site where one of the most quickly formed and widely supported partyline-crossing political movements is taking place. “The meteoric emergence of the data-center rebellion is a response to the speed and scale of construction, which in turn reflect the sudden ubiquity of generative and agentic AI. President Trump’s policy has been to turn everything about the technology, including data-center construction, over to private industry … But on this issue, most of Trump’s base remains angry and opposed to him.” A local newspaper editor described the way the issue has formed unlikely partnerships. “Outside of this, there’s no way in hell these people are talking to each other.” George Packer in The Atlantic (Gift Article) on what happened in Clinton and what it has to do with what’s happening across America. The Great Data-Center Rebellion. So what gives? Why is the opposition to data centers (whether it actually works or not) such a potent and often uniting force in America? It’s about a lot more than water use and who gets access to power. It’s about a feeling of powerlessness. “Opposition to data centers comes from a deeper concern than NIMBYism, resource misuse, or environmental harm. Over and over, Clintonians expressed a feeling of being misled, ignored, disrespected, betrayed—of having no say over basic matters in their own lives. The data center seemed to be a deal made among secretive insiders—huge, far-off entities in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and in Washington, as well as the local leaders of their own city. To the tech giants, QTS, Blackstone, and the Trump administration’s AI boosters, Clinton is an empty space on the Mississippi that looks like an opportunity. That the industry seeking to buy 1,100 acres on the west side of town is in the business of replacing human beings with machines—and perhaps, according to some AI experts, even rendering them extinct—only intensifies a sense of powerlessness.” Again, it’s unlikely that any political movement will ultimately stop big tech from building out the data centers it needs. But this isn’t just a story about a data center; it’s the story about America’s political center. And this is the first time in a long time that an issue has made it look like the center may hold. For Silicon Valley execs, all of this may not compute. But it’s not a machine story, it’s a human one.
+ NYT (Gift Article): How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes. “Under a tax credit created in the 1980s to spur innovation, companies can get a rebate for supplies, but only if they are being tested in an experimental effort, not standard business operations. Meta is claiming that the costly A.I. computer chips it buys from companies, including Nvidia, are entitled to a taxpayer-provided discount as part of the experiment.”
+ Given all this and the upcoming midterms, yesterday seemed like an odd political moment to gather AI execs at the White House to praise data centers and announce that big tech will be left in charge of their own regulation. (But don’t worry, it’s not just any self-regulation. It’s tremendous self-regulation.) Trump, who is now calling AI “super intelligence,” signed a new accord. Sadly, the document had a notable misspelling: The name of our country. (Maybe the new ballroom plan should be replaced by a data center focused on spell check.)
Air Passenger Heroics
“One pilot stabbed another at the controls of an Emirati flight to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, causing it to suddenly plunge thousands of feet until passengers and the crew won a fight to regain control of the plane. Passengers described a terrifying fall during the attack, which ended when some of them stepped into the melee and managed to subdue the aggressive pilot. Overhead bins swung open, parents clung to their children, and videos from inside the plane showed at least one wounded man and others on board covered in blood.” Plane to Israel Narrowly Averts Disaster After Pilot Stabbing.
+ “Three of us jumped on him forcefully, and we tied him up with his own zip ties and with the multimedia headphones. That is how we neutralized him.” Passenger describes grabbing attacker and taking plane controls after pilot stabbed on Israel flight.
Another DC Schmitt Show
“It was meant to be a dramatic confrontation, a public accusation of perjury against Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump. Instead, Senator Eric Schmitt’s amateur sleuthing into basketball led him to the wrong game, league and state.” (And that lede doesn’t begin to do justice to how historically humiliating and offensive Eric Schmitt’s now viral self-own played out.) As Jack Smith Testifies, a Senator’s Accusation of Perjury Falls Apart.
+ If you’ve somehow missed it, you can see the whole exchange here. While the self-own was funny, the broader hearings were anything but, as Trump’s enablers soiled their office and the nation by attacking a good American and great prosecutor in the name of gaslighting the American people. Thankfully, Cory Booker summed things up. His angry comments are on the mark and worth your time. This hearing is a farce. “What do the Republicans in control of Congress do with their closing statement before an election? They carry out the big lie. They persecute prosecutors. They do Trump’s bidding. They choose Trump over truth, corruption and crimes over the Constitution.” (As I’ve said, it takes a village to raise a tyrant. Consider that, until yesterday, Eric Schmitt was considered a strong contender to be JD Vance’s running mate in ’28.)
Dropped Like a Bought Potato
“The Wing Hummingbird 7000W-B delivery drone weighs less than 15 pounds. It has 16 propellers — four for horizontal movement and 12 for vertical — a top speed of 60 miles per hour, a carrying capacity of up to 2.7 pounds, and a delivery radius of about six miles. It is authorized by the FAA for beyond-line-of-sight piloting. As a feat of engineering, it is impressive. So far I’ve mostly used it to send people potatoes.” Nathan Edwards in The Verge (Gift Article): The day the dads in my neighborhood discovered drone delivery. (This used to be about as controversial as tech stories got…)
Extra, Extra
Trump Pulls Out: “It’s been a long time with very bad decision making that got us involved in this quagmire in the first place. It was a quagmire. For many, many years it lasted. But soon that part of history will be over.” So said Donald Trump as the US military exits Iraq after 12 years. The withdrawal agreement was actually negotiated by the Biden administration. And it’s been a long time coming. But one wonders about this specific timing, given our ongoing negotiations with Iran (whose leaders are happy to see the pullout). Allisa J. Rubin in the NYT (Gift Article): What I Saw as the U.S. Debacle in Iraq Unfurled. “From the beginning, the United States did not understand the country it was storming into. Twenty-three years later, as it pulls the last of its forces out, it probably still does not.” (Allisa, we don’t even understand Canada.)
+ Deport into a Storm: U.S. Supreme Court sides with Trump administration in third-country deportations. “The court’s brief order granting the petition did not outline a reason for staying a lower-court order that blocked the third-country deportations. But it asked both sides to argue whether lower courts had the jurisdiction to rule on the issue and order nationwide relief, as well as whether the Trump policy is legal or whether it violated the due process clause or conventions against torture.” Seems like you’d want to halt an action that might violate due process (it does) or conventions against torture (we’ve all read the CECOT stories, etc). But SCOTUS is allowing the deportations to continue for now.
+ Brought to Account: WSJ (Gift Article): Treasury Will Auto-Enroll 60 Million Children in Trump Accounts. “The Treasury Department will automatically enroll tens of millions of children in the government’s new Trump Accounts as soon as this week, replacing the previous structure that required parents or guardians to sign up.” (This makes it more likely the accounts get to the kids who need them.)
+ Enjoy Your Stay: “There are men who cook for him and men who clean for him. There are men who make his bed and men who do his laundry. There is even a man who gives him Chinese-style massages. This is how Sean “Diddy” Combs has been living in prison.”
+ Riding Roughshod: Six Flags Magic Mountain said Tuesday that it is retiring its famous X2 roller coaster amid lawsuits alleging serious brain injury caused by the ride.
Bottom of the News
NYT (Gift Article): For Japan’s Young Singles, Romance Gets a Corporate Middleman. “For hundreds of years, through the post-World War II era, Japanese marriages were brokered through ‘omiai,’ a practice in which matchmakers — usually relatives, family friends or bosses — linked singles in their orbit. But the custom fell out of fashion, giving way to organic dating and, eventually, a wave of casual-dating apps. Now, young adults are enrolling at record rates in marriage agencies, where counselors serve as professional matchmakers. Across Tokyo, advertisements line metro cars, urging commuters to ‘leave life’s fateful encounters to the pros.'” (OK, maybe that translation doesn’t accurately capture the spirit of the offer…)
+ Backpack edges past Dancing Queen to win Alaska’s Fat Bear Week title.
