First they say data centers should pay their own way on power infrastructure, then when they start springing up entirely off-grid and fully self-funded power infrastructure, suddenly there's a new problem.
The problem was never power or water (water being a known Chinese spy op after Karen Hao was caught exaggerating water usage by 1,000x in her book).
Correct. The problem isn't just data centers or power or water, it's that left unchecked these greedy people will risk the power grid, drain rivers/reservoirs/aquifers, and destroy our natural environment (and cities) with pollution because it's more profitable than doing things the right way. I think more than anything we want responsible, friendly neighbors who are mindful of the impact they have in the areas where they operate.
They're callous, reckless, have no concern for anything but their money. And "self-funded" isn't even true, the tax breaks and negative externalities of these data centers will be paid by the people (see: xAI and Memphis.)
inb4 i'm a chinese operative because I mentioned water. Get bent, I think grass farmers in the desert should be forced to get real jobs instead of exporting our water to China/Saudi Arabia as cattle feed. And people who farm real crops should be forced to convert to less water-intensive methods or shut down.
>And people who farm real crops should be forced to convert to less water-intensive methods or shut down.
Taking this to its logical conclusion, you want to export the negative externalities of a theoretical water shortage to poor countries who will move to replace the food gap caused by farmers shutting down.
I'm trying to build a torment nexus and these negative ninnies complained that it used up all the electricity, so I made a machine that turns breathable air into toxic smoke to power the nexus and they don't like that ether!
Andy Masley, who's more responsible than anyone else for debunking the idea that data centers abuse water resources, has been a broken record for the past month on Twitter saying that he doesn't buy into this "Chinese spy op" stuff at all. It doesn't even make sense as an operation. It's not like the data centers aren't going to get built; they'll just get built in different parts of the country. Why would China care?
It is not a new problem. Look at Musk's Tennessee data centers to see the problems with off-grid data centers that don't have good pollution controls.
Second, in many places power is a problem with AI data centers that do want grid power. I don't think you realize just how many new AI data center projects there are and how much more power they use than a normal data center. Combined with the short timeline these projects want they need grid expansion far beyond what anyone had in their long term grid planning.
The trouble I have with this argument is that you can look at almost anything Musk does and make an argument like this. He's discredited AI, data centers, cars, space exploration, biotechnology, you name it.
Yes, Musk's data centers are apparently abominable. I'll show up to rally for a statute preventing Musk from building more data centers. But I don't think the evidence is good that most data centers are like this, and I do think that rapid grid expansion --- which is going to happen one way or the other, the only question is where --- is an opportunity blue-staters like us should be seizing to modernize the grid and impose some controls.
The environmental impacts of how that power is generated is not a sudden or new concern, it was a concern even if the power was delivered via the grid or not and the fact that the power is generated on site or whatever does not alleviate that concern
You're saying multiple wrong ways to do a thing is evidence that the thing is undesirable?
Why don't you want an auto repair shop in the house next door, and why won't you let them pour old engine oil on your lawn? Are you anti-car-repair? All your "noise and pollution" complaints sound like psy ops to me, paid for by the Chinese EV industry.
People are very quick to make kneejerk reactions to tariffs while assuming the other guys have different opinions.
The Biden admin went after Canada repeatedly for unfair trade practices, and issued a blanket 10% tariff on Chinese goods.
The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung.
The one thing the current admin does have a point on is non-tariff meddling. Numerous countries make it almost impossible to sell goods in their countries while the same is not true in reverse, or they levy a high price in garbage regulatory fees (see the EU's new packaging identification directive that completely destroys small business), or in completely made-up fines for vague behaviors not even they can define (see the EU's DSA which is exclusively used against monopolizing American companies while completely ignoring monopolist and predatory EU ones like Booking.com).
I don't really have any idea if tariffs are good or bad. What I do know is that just announcing that they will go into effect with very little notice and then they won't go into effect and then they do but then they are decalared illegal because they weren't passed through the official methods isn't good.
It was _great_ for the companies that collected billions in tariffs and got refunds when the obviously illegal tariffs were declared illegal while training their customers to accept higher prices... that certainly won't go back to pre-tariff levels.
> I don't really have any idea if tariffs are good or bad.
tariffs are objectively* bad from a "big picture" perspective.
There are some situations where they create winners and losers so that some people in some countries will win, but they always do more damage than good "overall"(or in aggregate across all parties).
*in almost all cases... For certain goods where you actually want to lower consumption such as cigarettes, then maybe arguably they are good? Same argument as for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax
The “big picture” perspective is missing a bunch of reasons beyond just lowering consumption in the short term. For example even if you can buy cheaper food elsewhere it is still important to have a domestic food production industry.
> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung.
Which is a huge difference. Targetted tariffs can induce compliance with desired trade practices and influence purchasing towards more desirable sources.
Global blanket tariffs on products without domestic sources of substitute goods is effective for increasing domestic prices and encouraging foreign producers to enhance their ex-US trade networks.
If you wanted to encouage local manufacturing, you would add tariffs on finished goods, but leave raw materials untariffed. You might consider tariffing raw materials with ample local capacity. You might carefully consider tariffs for machine tools and other finshed goods which are necessary for manufacturing where there's not current local production capacity.
You might consider reciprocal tarrifs that were actually reciprocal tariffs... you tarrif me, I tariff you. Not tarrifs on countries that have an export surplus because they can't afford to import goods from the US.
> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung.
You are ignoring a massive difference. Trump wants balanced trade with each individual country. Pretty much everyone else who wants the US to reduce or eliminate its trade deficit just wants that to apply to total trade, not to each individual country.
The main reason money was invented was so you don't have to have balanced trade with each individual trading partner.
It's also not the only European company to be designated as VLOP, as you'll find some EU-based adult content sites on that page as well, but if you really want a European company that is inexplicably missing from this list, I'd go with Spotify.
> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung.
I mean that's the point, no? Swing the hammer carefully at a nail or with maximum force at your own leg?
Or to drop the metaphor - much of the difference between good and bad policy is a difference in degree. So your counterargument here is valid against "all tariffs are bad" but I believe the point most are making is "the current admin's use of tariffs is bad" which makes your counter appear as a bad-faith mischaracterization.
The other difference is the legality of it. Trump is trying to do all this at his personal order, without Congress. And he's trying to jump through all kinds of shenanigans to do so.
For example, he declared a state of emergency about fentanyl, and used that as cover to create tariffs toward every country on earth. That, obviously, has nothing to do with fentanyl; it's just a smoke screen.
He wants to rule by decree. Biden didn't do that. (OK, didn't do it to anything like the same degree. I'm sure someone can find an example where he did. It still wasn't like this.)
There was a big discussion of this recently here, which will give you more information, but yes, it is in fact destroying a large number of EU small businesses.
The EU has recognized this and they are scrambling to fix it in legislation due later this year.
This regulation forces very small businesses to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to comply and register in EACH EU country (what the hell's the point of the union, exactly?). Even if they sell only 10 widgets to Belgian buyers, they need to register in Belgium and pay the fee. Insane.
So a small business selling 5-10k of widgets in EU now has to pay 2-5k in business destroying regulatory compliance fees, putting them out of business. Incredible incompetence from the people who brought you ineffective cookie nag screens.
It's not possible to exist as a small business in the EU because they create regulations to destroy you.
Try creating a business in Germany. You need 25,000 euros to create a GmbH! In the US you can walk into the office in New York City and have an LLC for $9 per 2 years.
The EU is a nightmare hellscape of over-regulation. This is why there are essentially zero EU unicorns. EU bureaucrats support ONLY large and entrenched businesses.
Why does the restaurant across the street from my house need to register in Belgium?
Sounds like you've identified an opportunity to make a company that helps EU startups navigate bureaucracy. You could do all the packaging registration on their behalf.
96.6% of new energy capacity in the US came from green sources from 2024 to 2026 (nuclear, batteries, wind, hydro, solar). In China, in that time period, they built 52 brand new coal plants.
Sure. But again, compare our current GHG emissions per capita.
Or set aside new electrical energy capacity, and instead look at other GHG sources: automobiles, agriculture, concrete. Are we doing well there? Mostly, no, not great, and we should be much further along in decarbonizing than we are.
For the most part, the US has not taken ACC seriously.
> US emissions has declined in real terms since 2000, and has plummeted rapidly on a per capita basis.
And yet we still have some of the highest per capita emissions in the world. Nearly tied with Russia for "highest per capita emissions of major economies", see [1].
Since the IPCC was formed in 1988 and ACC widely recognized as a problem, US per capita GHG co2-equivalent emissions have dropped from 25.2 t/capita/year to 17.5, for a cumulative decrease of 30% [2]. This is a rate of -0.95%/year, which is not what I would call "rapid".
And dropping to only 70% of a really high mark still leaves us at a really high mark. But really, I just don't understand your argument.
Are you saying that a 30% drop over 40 years is a lot, when we should have been aiming for dropping by 70-100% in that time frame?
Are you saying that our emissions dropped significantly, even though we all know there was major political obstruction to plans to cut fossil fuel use?
Are you saying that what we've done is enough, even though the US is still one of the highest emitters per capita and the Earth is on track to greatly overshoot the +1.5C goal? Current best estimate is +2.7C by 2100.
I can't make the general direction of your argument make sense. Seems like you're overplaying what we've done and downplaying how far there is left to go.
A spy overstating water usage by 1,000x to influence opinion is not relevant to a discussion on the very thing they overstated and started the debate on? How do you figure that?
Democrats built the blueprint for ICE's deportation program and architected the law that enabled it.
Clinton's IIRAIRA bill literally introduced expedited removal procedures and created the concept of 'administrative warrants', routinely used by CBP/ICE today.
Without the IIRAIRA, removal would be substantially harder.
IIRIRA was not a 'Clinton' bill. It was initially drafted by Lamar Smith (r) of Texas (HR 2202) and subsequently attached to an appropriations bill (HR 2610), and passed with a bipartisan veto-proof majority.
Huh? He signed it and evangelized it heavily, speaking about his strong support for the bill.
He said the IIRAIRA "ratifies my administration's comprehensive immigration strategy". In the 1996 State of the Union he strongly condemned illegal immigration and touted a 50% increase in border controls, while pledging to use federal government contract steering power to punish businesses hiring them.
How exactly is this not a Clinton bill? That's like saying the Affordable Care Act was not an Obama bill because he did not draft it. Just complete revisionism.
Some notable Democrats voted for the bill, too. Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden.
Huh yourself. I'm sure you understand what it means that it was introduced and cosponsored by >100 Republicans, and what a veto-proof majority means. It was passed just a couple months before an election, it was pretty natural that Clinton would go along with it to avoid being attacked as 'soft on crime'.
How exactly is this not a Clinton bill? That's like saying the Affordable Care Act was not an Obama bill because he did not draft it. Just complete revisionism.
Sure...if you believe it's common for American presidents' signature legislation to be introduced by the opposition party and get 5-10x more support from them than his own party. It passed with 370 R to 37 D votes in the House and 84 to 15 in the Senate.
How does saying the IIRAIRA "ratifies my administration's comprehensive immigration strategy" mean he had nothing to do with the bill and it was not his bill, despite evangelizing it repeatedly and signing the bill into law along with hundreds of Democrats?
Biden's broadband bill was designed to connect those rural areas for $50bn but nobody was connected because it was a scam designed to enrich ISPs and driven by ISP lobbyists.
I like how people pretend that history never happened. We're supposed to forget that this happened merely 4 years ago and taxpayer money was not shoveled into the fire pit.
We'll definitely trust you to do another $100bn plan next time you're in power and NOT shovel cash into the fire pit this time.
This scam was covered extensively. 2021 it was law and nothing done by 2024. Absolutely embarrassing. [1]
I remember this happening during the Bush Jr. years too. The ISPs keep getting away with not being held accountable by government of both parties.
All I know is the current administration prefers satellite, ever since I heard about that Starlink terminal installed to help DOGE exfiltrate information on Americans without going through established secure infrastructure.
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