Free Republic

We are often best defined not by the company we keep, but by our enemies. Having the right—left—enemies tends to be a very good thing indeed, as it’s a reliable indicator we’re doing the right things with the right people and for the right reasons. It’s not always easy, however, to know the motives of people, or nations, when we’re dealing with issues of technology and/or public policy. One such issue is the proliferation of data centers, necessary for the burgeoning AI revolution, but controversial for that and other reasons. Among them is the amount of water and power they...

We uncovered something far bigger than I ever expected. After seeing coordinated false attacks against the Utah data center project, we brought in an advanced data science team to trace where the content was coming from and the results were shocking. What we found led back to organized networks, political activist groups, and funding trails tied to massive international entities. We dug through IRS 990 filings, tracked IP data from around the world, and uncovered what appears to be a coordinated campaign targeting energy and data center projects across multiple regions. I shared 90 pages of evidence with federal law...

BOX ELDER COUNTY, Utah — Kevin O’Leary, an investor in the proposed 40,000- acre Stratos data centre campus in Box Elder County, accused two Utah groups opposing the project of being funded by the Chinese government. O’Leary made the accusation on Fox News, targeting Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies. “Who would want us to stop building our electrical grid? Who would want to stop us from having compute capacity to develop AI? Which adversary would want that? There’s only one. It’s China.” O’Leary said. In a social media exchange, Gabi Finlayson of Elevate Strategies pushed back on...

An artificial intelligence data center was running up a water bill for the ages, and local residents were the ones to point out the problem. In November, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Microsoft had a new “superfactory” named Fairwater spanning over 1 million square feet outside of Atlanta. Chief Technical Officer Mark Russinovich explained why the site is so massive. “To make improvements in the capabilities of the AI, you need to have larger and larger infrastructure to train it,” he said in a statement. The site developer, Quality Technology Services, purchased the plot in 2022 for $154 million. Ironically, Microsoft...

Last December, in a piece called “The Data Center Backlash Is Global,” I reported that residents around the world were rising up against Big Tech just as they have risen up against Big Wind and Big Solar, rejecting applications to use land.Sure, AI may be a world-changing technology, but the rush to build massive new data centers has resulted in dozens of rejections or restrictions on projects from Indianapolis to Dublin, Ireland. People are worried about property values, water usage, electricity costs and what it means for the neighborhood: “quality-of-life impacts,” as a member of the Indianapolis council, who led...

Georgia residents were left outraged when they discovered a massive data center had been guzzling up nearly 30 million gallons of water without paying for it. The issue began last year when residents in the affluent subdivision of Annelise Park in Fayetteville noticed their water pressure was unusually low, Politico reports. When the county utility then investigated the problem, officials discovered that developer Quality Technology Services (QTS) had installed two industrial-scale water hookups to the approximately 6.2 million square foot data center campus - located about 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One of the water connections appeared to have...

In the town of Festus, Missouri, a community of 14,000 people near St. Louis, residents have ousted four city council members who backed plans for a massive AI data center, replacing them with candidates who openly opposed the project. At a packed City Hall meeting following the election, newly sworn-in officials were greeted with cheers - while the city's mayor Sam Richards, who still supports the development, was met with boos and jeers from the crowd. 'You're next!' one resident shouted, underscoring how heated the fight has become. At the center of the dispute is a proposed $6 billion data...

A massive hyperscale data centre project tied to investor Kevin O’Leary is moving forward in Box Elder County, Utah after receiving approvals from a state military development authority, with final local authorization now the only remaining hurdle, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The Military Installation Development Authority, known as MIDA, approved multiple steps on Friday to advance the multibillion-dollar development project, which is being pitched as a major economic engine for rural northern Utah. The project is expected to include 2,000 permanent jobs and large-scale infrastructure tied to military installations in the state. It is expected to consume more...

The growing anger over the AI industry’s obsession with building massive and resource-intensive data centers across the country is as palpable than ever. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center highlighted widespread public concern over the facilities’ environmental harms, effects on home energy costs, and the quality of life of nearby residents. These concerns do seem justified. Experts have found that data centers can spike local electricity prices, generate copious amounts of greenhouse gases, and place a major strain on freshwater resources. Now, a self-described content creator and digital artist named Will Hollingsworth who spoke up during a city...

Big Tech faces a number of challenges with the expansion of data centers, including getting the energy to power them. But if the impacts of renewable energy opposition are any indication, the local opposition to data centers is going to become a formidable opponent to the expansion of artificial intelligence. Renewable energy requires large amounts of land, and unlike other energy sources, it requires a lot of new acreage in rural areas. Local opposition has been identified as the biggest impediment by Big Wind and Big Solar to the buildout of renewable energy. Become fanatical, even violent The opposition to...

A terrifying attack on an Indianapolis city councilman’s home has ignited fears that mounting opposition to the data centers that power artificial intelligence is taking an increasingly violent turn. Ron Gibson, who is serving his third term on the Indianapolis City-County Council, said someone fired 13 shots into his front door early Monday – and left a handwritten note that said “NO DATA CENTERS”. That was just days after Gibson attended a Metropolitan Development Commission meeting to support a data center project, one the developer said would be used at least in part for AI, in a local neighborhood —...

Shares in the financial technology company Block soared more than 20% in premarket trading Friday after its CEO announced it was laying off more than 4,000 of its 10,000 plus employees, reconfiguring to capitalize on its use of artificial intelligence. “The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Jack Dorsey said in a letter to shareholders in Block, the parent company to online payment platforms such as Square and Cash App. “A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better,” he said. Dorsey’s...

Industry boosters argue the U.S. is in a race with China for technological supremacy, and thus the sprint has existential stakes. But many Americans view AI through the lens of issues much closer to home: skyrocketing electricity bills, looming job displacement, teenage chatbot addiction. Last October, after 134,000 people signed a statement calling for a halt to the development of superintelligence, “I was thinking, why are we getting military people, faith leaders, and everyone signing?” says Max Tegmark, a physicist whose nonprofit organization, The Future of Life Institute, issued the statement. “And then it hit me: they’re all rooting for...

AI-driven power demand is surging far faster than expected, but a shortage of heavy-duty gas turbines is creating a bottleneck.Turbine makers like Siemens, GE Vernova, and Mitsubishi are ramping up production, but expansion projects could take up to 5 years.Without enough gas capacity, AI growth could slow or grids may turn back to coal, potentially delaying coal plant retirements.The surge in electricity demand in the world’s AI hotspots has prompted a comparable surge in demand for reliable supply. That surge was not expected. There are not enough gas turbines to secure that supply. This means the AI revolution would either...

CLAREMORE, Okla. - Things got heated Tuesday night during a meeting about a proposed data center for the city’s industrial park, and one person was taken into custody. Claremore police arrested Darren Blanchard for trespassing during the meeting after officers said he refused to follow the rules after going over his allotted time to speak. Police escorted the man out of the meeting and booked him into the Rogers County Jail. What Happened An embed of the City Council’s stream is below. Blanchard begins speaking at the 1 hour and 54 minute mark. In the video, Blanchard can be seen...

Families won’t see relief from rising electricity prices anytime soon, as demand from artificial intelligence data centers soars while power supply grows slowly, according to Goldman Sachs. Electricity prices jumped 6.9% in year over year 2025, more than double the headline inflation rate of 2.9%, Goldman analysts told clients in a research note published Wednesday. Prices will continue to rise through the end of the decade as data centers make up 40% of electricity demand growth, the analysts said. This will lower disposable income, drag down consumer spending and slightly slow economic growth in the coming years, they said. Households...

As 2025 comes to a close, Donald Trump’s favorable approach to cryptocurrency has not proven to be enough to sustain the industry’s gains, once the source of market-wide optimism and enthusiasm. The last few months of the year have seen $1tn in value wiped from the digital asset market, despite bitcoin hitting an all-time-high price of $126,000 on 6 October.The October price peak was short-lived. Bitcoin’s price tumbled just days later after Trump’s announcement of 100% tariffs on China sent shockwaves across the market on 12 October. The crypto market saw $19bn liquidated in 24 hours – the largest liquidation...

‘We are building these things so damn fast that by the time they are online and activated, the problems are already built in.’Since returning to office, President Trump has made the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) a key focal point of his second administration. Just last week, the president signed an executive order launching the “Genesis Mission,” a new “national effort” that seeks to utilize AI to “transform how scientific research is conducted and accelerate the speed of scientific discovery.”“With the Genesis Mission, the Trump Administration intends to dramatically expand the productivity and impact of Federal research and development within...

While giant tech companies like Google and Amazon tout the billions they’re pouring into AI infrastructure, IBM’s CEO doubts their bets will pay off like they think. Arvind Krishna, who has been at the helm of the legacy tech company since 2020, said even a simple calculation reveals there is “no way” tech companies’ massive data center investments make sense. This is in part because data centers require huge amounts of energy and investment, Krishna said on the Decoder podcast.Goldman Sachs estimated earlier this year that the total power usage by the global data center market stood at around 55...

ME is the biggest exchange operator by market value and says it offers the widest range of benchmark products, spanning rates, equities, metals, energy, cryptocurrencies and agriculture. It first posted about outages at 0240 GMT on its website. Futures prices for West Texas Intermediate crude , 10-year U.S. Treasuries , the S&P 500 , Nasdaq 100 , Nikkei , palm oil and gold were among those not updated by 1100 GMT on Friday, according to LSEG Data. Prices were also not updated on the EBS foreign exchange platform, which traded an average of almost $60 billion daily in October, in...