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...

Findings by academic researchers suggest that hyperscalers' AI data centers contribute to local warming, but not everyone agrees. Findings of a new study conducted by a group of academics from around the globe have revealed that land surface temperature (LST) increases by 2°C (3.6°F) on average after the start of operations of an AI data center, an effect detectable up to an estimated 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away. The study, The data heat island effect: quantifying the impact of AI data centers in a warming world, was conducted by a dozen experts from leading universities in the UK, Singapore, France,...

Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful@kevinolearytvWe 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...

(Image Matthew G Eddy / Shutterstock) AI uses a lot of power, and it needs massive data centers to support it. That's why, despite data centers having existed for decades, people are suddenly running for the hills. But do they have a reason to be afraid? You be the judge. Here are the scariest facts about data centers: Data centers are the ugliest buildings on earth: Ancient Greeks never built utilitarian buildings. They're almost as bad as nuclear power plants: And 100 times more deadly. They drink up one whole ocean per ChatGPT query: We might need the oceans...

INTRODUCTION On April 29, 2026, Sen. Bernie Sanders convened a 75-minute panel in the US Capitol on “the existential threat of AI.” Two of the four panelists were Chinese government affiliates: Zeng Yi, Dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor who chairs China’s national AI governance expert committee and serves as a Counsellor of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. From a US Senate platform, Xue called the US-China AI race “an inaccurate narrative” and argued for “safe zones” of cooperation on AI safety. The event was...

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...

Lake Tahoe doesn’t know where its power will come from after next ski season—and it’s a major problem for the 49,000 residents who call the region home. The Sierra Nevada tourist hub—home to ski resorts, lakeside casinos, and roughly 25 to 28 million annual visitors—is facing an energy crisis with a familiar culprit: the data centers powering the AI boom. NV Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied the bulk of Lake Tahoe’s electricity for decades, told Liberty Utilities—the small California company that services the region—that it will stop providing power after May 2027. The reason? NV Energy needs the...

We have seen the future of AI via Large Language Models. And it's smaller than you think. That much was clear in 2025, when we first saw China's DeepSeek — a slimmer, lighter LLM that required way less data center energy to do its job and performed surprisingly well on benchmark tests against heftier American AI models. (Ironically, it was built atop an open source U.S. model, Meta's Llama). DeepSeek may have foundered on privacy concerns, but the trend towards smaller and smarter AI isn't going away. The evolution is on display again in TurboQuant, a compression algorithm that Google...

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...

The major technology companies will meet President Donald Trump at the White House next week to sign a pledge that they will supply their own power for artificial intelligence data centers. Amazon , Google , Meta , Microsoft , xAI, Oracle and OpenAI will sign the agreement at the March 4 meeting, a White House official confirmed to CNBC Wednesday. “Under this bold initiative, these massive companies will build, bring, or buy their own power supply for new AI data centers, ensuring that Americans’ electricity bills will not increase as demand grows,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told CNBC. Fox...

Data centers power everything from streaming and cloud storage to the AI systems reshaping industries. When it comes to scale, one country stands far ahead.The U.S. has 3,960 data centers in this dataset - more than the next 14 countries combined.The map below, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, based on data from Data Center Map, counts operational facilities by country, from small cloud hubs to sprawling colocation campuses. While totals vary by methodology, the concentration of infrastructure in a few major economies is unmistakable.U.S. Leads by a Wide MarginWith nearly four thousand data centers in this dataset, the U.S. is...

Why 95% of enterprise AI projects fail to deliver ROI: A data analysis American enterprises spent an estimated $40 billion on artificial intelligence systems in 2024, according to MIT research. Yet the same study found that 95% of companies are seeing zero measurable bottom-line impact from their AI investments. The pattern is remarkably consistent across industries. Companies invest millions in AI infrastructure, train models on internal data, deploy systems to assist sales teams or automate marketing workflows—and then watch as adoption stalls or results disappoint. The technology works in demos but fails in daily operations. MIT's Project NANDA calls it...

In the last week SpaceX has acquired XAI and presumably related to that they submitted plans to the FCC exploring the construction of a compute cluster in Earth orbit with one million spacecraft. So, I try to use Universe Sandbox to visualize this.... and it's not easy. For technical reasons this is a limited version visualizing the kind of orbits we expect, but you can play with it yourself if you own Universe Sandbox. What Would SpaceX's Space Datacenter Plans Look Like? | 11:31 Scott Manley | 1.83M subscribers | 50,409 views | February 10, 2026

Artemis II Wet Dress Rehearsal Delayed, SpaceX to Merge with xAI!? | 4:42 Ellie in Space | 216K subscribers | 4,773 views | January 30, 2026

BREAKING: SpaceX wants to turn Space into the World’s Biggest AI Data Center. • SpaceX is seeking approval to launch and operate up to one million satellites designed to function as orbital data centers. • These satellites would provide massive computing power to support advanced artificial intelligence and data processing. • The system would rely on near constant solar energy in space, reducing operating costs and environmental impact compared to Earth based data centers. • Satellites would operate between 500 km and 2,000 km in altitude, across multiple orbital shells, to handle global demand. • High speed laser links would...

A suspected arson attack has caused a widespread power cut in Berlin since Saturday. Authorities said on Sunday that it was a result of a politically motivated attack by “left-wing extremists". Around 45,000 households were left without electricity in southwest Berlin after high-voltage power lines were damaged by a fire, which authorities have described as a politically motivated attack by far-left extremists. Though power has been restored in some areas, thousands could be left without power until Thursday after what authorities say was a politically motivated attack by “left-wing extremists”. The blaze erupted on a cable bridge over the Teltow...

https://x.com/PatrickByrne/status/2005713162750791962 Patrick Byrne@PatrickByrne·4hInside the Data Center Plot I Discussed with @EmeraldRobinsonI talked this through with Emerald: allegations link former CIA Director John Brennan (Obama era) to a Serbian Huawei-linked businessman tied to data centers in Belgrade that reportedly hosted Dominion servers. With Huawei’s CCP ties, the claim is that elections could be manipulated remotely—and that a shutdown of this site allegedly disrupted attempts to interfere in 2024.December 29, 2025

Global data centers dealmaking surged to hit another record high this year, driven by a rush to build out the infrastructure required for energy-intensive AI workloads. That surge came even as investors grew increasingly wary of inflated artificial intelligence valuations and the financing underpinning the rapid expansion of data centers. Global stocks sold off in November as worries of an AI-fueled bubble persisted. But S&P Global reported that more than $61 billion has flowed into the data center market this year, up slightly from $60.8 billion last year, amid what it called a “global construction frenzy.” A surge in debt...

Korea Zinc announced on Monday a $7.4 billion smelter project in Tennessee that will be backed by the U.S. government and which will lessen our reliance on China for critical minerals used in defense systems, electronics, and so much more that powers our modern world. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took to X to laud the news: The tweet continues: Today, we announced a major investment with Korea Zinc to build a state-of-the-art critical minerals smelter and processing facility in Tennessee that will produce 540,000 tons per year of essential materials right here in America. He continued, listing a range of...

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration is fast-tracking approvals for a massive AI datacenter in Saline Township. Locals oppose the project, but few are more excited about it than Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s husband, Ryan Friedrichs. Friedrichs, vice president for billionaire Stephen Ross’ Related Companies, celebrated the project on LinkedIn. “Thank you again to all our community, state, regional, and national partners who worked tirelessly with us this year, and will into the future,” Friedrichs wrote in the post, which linked to another from Related Companies CEO Jeff Blau.