➡ The text discusses the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on society, with some people expressing anger and concern. It mentions how AI is becoming a part of everyday life and work, even if people aren’t interested in science. The text also brings up concerns about potential threats, such as drone warfare and foreign interference, specifically from China. Lastly, it mentions an incident where a person attacked the home of an AI company CEO, highlighting the growing tension and fear surrounding AI.
➡ The article discusses the Dune book series by Frank Herbert and its sequels by his son. It questions why Herbert chose the name Butler for his Butlerian Jihad, suggesting it might be a reference to English novelist Samuel Butler, who wrote about the dangers of machines taking over human life. The article also mentions the Luddite movement, which resisted the rise of machines, and a book about the rebellion against Big Tech, drawing parallels between these historical movements and the themes in the Dune series.
➡ The article discusses the history and misconceptions about the Luddites, a social movement known for opposing technology. It highlights how the term ‘Luddite’ is often used as an insult to dismiss those who question technological advancements, particularly in the workplace. The article also explores the growing backlash against AI and big tech, likening it to a modern-day Luddite movement. It suggests that understanding the history of the Luddites can help us navigate the current technological landscape and its challenges.
➡ The article discusses the environmental impact of large data centers, particularly their high energy consumption and water usage. It highlights the work of Tony Heller, a climate realist, who has been critiquing the environmental effects of these data centers. The article also mentions a resource, aidatacentermap.org, which provides detailed information about data centers and their environmental impact. Lastly, it emphasizes the need for public awareness and action against the potential environmental harm caused by these data centers.
➡ Data centers, which are crucial for AI operations, are posing a threat to our environment by consuming large amounts of water and power. A map has been created to show the locations of these centers in the U.S., along with their estimated daily water usage. However, the data is limited and likely underestimates the true impact. The creator of the map hopes to make it an open-source project, allowing others to contribute and update information, to better understand and address the environmental implications of these data centers.
➡ A data center developer tried to change a residential area into an industrial zone in the city, but faced opposition from the local community. Despite being denied twice, the developer persisted. The local community, including organizations like the Data Center Action Coalition and the San Marcos River Association, rallied against the change, leading to a public hearing. The hearing resulted in the denial of the developer’s request, showing the power of community action.

Now I’m just going based on what I’ve seen out there, but it seems like people are getting a bit angry about this whole AI thing. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish? Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives. Hey, all right. Apparently Gen Z hates this stuff, which is so shocking to me. Rise. And I thought, like you would think. You guys are all into like instant gratification. Like the world conforms to your interest in real time. And here you can make a song in seconds and you hate it.

If you don’t care about science, that’s okay because AI is going to touch everything else as well. Whatever path you choose, AI will become part of how work is done. And this is the first example, the first big example of just an energy company that 50,000 people rely on to live. Just hitting that Harry Houdini vibe and vanishing on them saying, eh, don’t really care about you plebeians. Flesh and blood is cringe. AI is the future. We gotta go take care of AI. I mean, good luck out there though. Maybe you’ll find other power suppliers, but it won’t be us.

Bye bye each and every one of you again. And we say a big fuck you to big tech. We say a big fuck you to private equity. And it’s time to build communities, not data centers. Typical. Uncouth, ungrateful rabble rousers one and all. And I have it on good authority from some friendly local neighborhood billionaires that these aren’t just a bunch of dirty hippies, they’re actually terrorists. But even here in the United States, if we’re going to be building, let’s see, these 1 gigawatt data centers, how do we make sure we’re not protecting those $50 billion $75 billion investments? We have to relook at everything because of the role of drone warfare.

Right now we’re looking at it internationally. But you know, one of concerns is could it be a domestic terrorism using a $3,000 drone? Yeah, because at the end of the day, 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. Elevate Strategies. Also a cell operating inside of Utah. Gabby Finlayson. Gabby, what are you doing? And why? Who’s paying you? So these are proxies for the Chinese government is my argument. And if they’re not, because I want them to be able to Defend their name.

Taylor, Josh and Gabby. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Let’s audit your books, and let’s show the people of Utah you actually care about them. Yeah, come out, come out, wherever you are. Gabby Finlayson. Or should that be Nihau Ching Chong Son? Why don’t you show us your face? Show us who you really are. Show us who’s really funding your little Utah data center. Opposition party, huh? Elevate strategies. Also, a cell operating inside of Utah. Gabby Finlayson. Gabby, what are you doing? And why? Who’s paying you? Well, hi. Hello. It’s me, Gabby Finlayson. What am I doing? Apparently, we’ve reached the part of the Stratos Data center journey where Kevin o’ Leary goes on national Fox News to accuse us of being cells for the Chinese Communist Party.

You know, it’s not every day you get called out by first and last name on Fox News by a Canadian billionaire trying to ruin my state. But here we are. Kevin, are you okay? But after sitting with this for moment, we decided to take it as a compliment, because first of all, how are these men scared of us? Have. Have you met us? Hi. What are we talking about? Oh, okay, maybe that wasn’t the best example, but. Well, how about this example? There are AI terrorists out there, I tell you. Breaking news in San Francisco right now, where one person is under arrest, accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Yeah, this happened on Lombard street there, Russian Hill. OpenAI also says the person made threats at their San Francisco headquarters. According to court documents, prosecutors alleged Daniel Moreno Gama first targeted two homes owned by Sam Altman, the AI Company CEO. He threw a Molotov cocktail at each. The fires caused only minor damage, but investigators recovered multiple incendiary devices, a jug of kerosene and a lighter. See, I knew it. Terrorists. Terrorists 1. And all the billionaires were right once again. All right, so, yes, as you may have heard, there was an interesting incident involving a Molotov cocktail being thrown at Sam Altman’s residence.

Sam Altman, of course, Trump’s best buddy, one of the Project Stargate co conspirators, and of course, the man at the helm of OpenAI. But this is an interesting part of that story that you may not have heard about. And I saw this in this article on the AI industry is discovering that the public hates it. Wow. Who knew? And this article notes that on April 10th, the House of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was attacked with a Molotov cocktail. By 20 year old Daniel Moreno Gama. The suspect who was arrested the same day, had written a manifesto warning of the existential threat of artificial intelligence.

In his missive, he advocated for killing the CEOs of AI companies. And he referred to himself as but Larian Jihadist on Instagram. But Larry and Jihad. But Larry and Jihad. Where have I heard that phrase before? When humans rose up against the thinking machines that had enslaved them, History says it was an Atreides who led them to victory, While my great grandfather deserted the fight. When war ended and all thinking machine technology was banned, history branded my family as cowards. And so we were banished to a desolate world. Oh, that’s right. Dune. Dune by Frank Herbert.

And well, for the non Dune nerds in the audience who have not dipped their toes into the duniverse, maybe you don’t know about the Butler Valerian Jihad, but very, very long story. Shortish, of course, the Dune novels, the original Dune novels written by Frank Herbert were set something like 20,000 years in the future. And in the Dune universe, something like 10,000 years in their past was something called the Butlerian Jihad, which was a time in which humans rose up against the thinking machines that had enslaved them. And this is referred to cryptically within the Dune books themselves.

And of course, the famous pronouncements that you shall not make machines in the likeness of man is part of the the religion, as it were, of the Dune universe and is alluded to in those books. But the idea of the Butlerian Jihad is just referenced. It was never really fleshed out in those books themselves. But then towards the end of Frank Herbert’s life in 1984, the Dune Encyclopedia was published. It was complet compiled by Dr. Willis E. McNelly, but with the blessing of Frank Herbert. So if you really want to get into the Dune lore and nerdiness, you can delve into that.

And from that point of publishing that book, I understand that Willis McNelly and Frank Herbert were talking about writing a book, a prequel, as it were, to Dune, on the Butlerian Jihad, specifically on the time when the humans rose up against the thinking machines. And they, according to McNelly, they had agreed on the general plot outline and in fact McNally had even written an opening chapter that Herbert apparently approved of. And you can read that online. I’ll throw the link in the show notes if you’re really that interested. But I guess if there is a canonical telling of this time in which the humans rose up against the machines, it would be the work produced by his son, as people may or may not know, Frank Herbert’s son, with a co writer Kevin Anderson, have been engaged in churning out dozens of Dune sequels and prequels and Dune related books for a number of years now.

One of them that came out a couple of decades ago was specifically on the Butlerian Jihad. Iblis stole forward and grabbed the scrap of scribed metal. He broke the seal, unrolled the thin sheet and read with increasing astonishment. We represent an organized movement of dissatisfied humans. We are waiting for the right moment and the right leader to begin an open revolt against the oppressive machines. You must determine if you wish to join our worthy cause. We will contact you again. As Iblis stared in disbelief at the unsigned message, the lettering faded and disappeared, corroding into blobs of rust that ate through the metal itself and flaked away.

Was it authentic? Or some sort of a psymech trap designed to lure him? Most humans hated their machine masters, but took pains to conceal it. What if there really is such a group? And if so, they would need talented leaders. Yes, that is the exciting passage in the Butlerian Jihad where one of the characters discovers that there is a. A movement afoot to overthrow the thinking machines. What could it be? Yes, an exciting story. Well, anyway, for what it’s worth, literarily speaking, this is a 600 page novel that I read in preparation for this edition of Solutions.

Watch. You’re welcome very much. And although it is often remarked that the Dune, the original Dune book by Frank Herbert, is an incredibly interesting and philosophically rich book that really should be read, I think, widely. But it is often remarked that these, the many, many, many sequels and prequels that his son has pumped out under the Dune name are not worthy of the Dune title. But having read this book, I would say it’s a perfectly serviceable book. It’s fine. It’s not as deep or as dense as Herbert’s writing, perhaps. But at any rate it is an interesting story.

And it that story of the rise of a movement of people to overthrow the thinking machines. But here’s the question. Butler. Why. Why did Herbert, Frank Herbert, why did he choose the name Butler for his Butlerian Jihad? Was it just some name that he came up with? Oh, there was someone in the past named Butler that started this uprising. Or was it supposed to be a reference to an actual historical figure? Well, different people have different versions of this. For example, this man, the Willis McNelly, the aforementioned Willis McNelly, who is compiler of the Dune Encyclopedia, who we saw started a collaboration with Frank Herbert on writing a potential Butlerian jihad novel that did not come to fruition as Frank Herbert died in 1986.

But he, for what it’s worth, says that I am not sure that Frank Herbert meant any particular Butler. Well, other people beg to differ. If there is an historical precursor for the name Butler with in this regard, it might come from Samuel Butler, who is an English novelist best known for Erewhan, which is nowhere spelled backwards. It’s a utopia dystopia that Samuel Butler is famous for. But in the 1860s he penned a letter that was published in the press, which was a New Zealand newspaper, and you can see the actual edition here preserved in on the.

On the web. But if you want an actual readable version, well, of course it’s over@archive.org along with pretty much everything else that’s ever been written in the history of humanity. And it’s an interesting little letter essay, as it were, about the core concept of what if we took mechanical life and examined it in the same way that we examined the animal kingdom or plants and other life forms? What if we looked at mechanical life as a form of life and the way that it’s developing and has been developing over the many generations of recorded human history? And we would start from, of course, the very basic sorts of levers and wedges and pulleys and planes and screws and very basic types of tools.

But we rather rapidly arrive at some very, very advanced tools and machines, right down to the watch that you wear on your wrist. Etc. This is obviously an incredible, incredibly rapid evolution of this particular life form. And he goes on and makes much about this. And he goes on to say that in the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race if this development of the mechanical life continues, that is inferior in power, inferior in that moral quality of self control. We shall look up to them, the machines, as the acme of all that the best and wisest man can ever dare to aim at.

It has these machines have no evil passions, no jealousy, no avarice, no impure desires, will disturb the senses, the serene might of these glorious creatures, etc. Etc. If they want feeding, by the the use of which very word we betray our recognition of them as a living organism, they will be attended by patient slaves whose business and interest it will be to see that they shall want for nothing. If they are out of order, they will be promptly attended to by physicians who are thoroughly acquainted with their constitution if they die. For even these glorious animals will not be exempt from that necessary and universal consummation they will immediately enter into a new phase of existence.

For what machine dies entirely in every part, at one and the same instant? And he goes on to, to talk about this problem, because problem it is that these machines are in fact developing, evolving more quickly than the mere human life which has spawned them. Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us. Day by day we are becoming more subservient to them. More men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them. More men are daily devot the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time.

But that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question. Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown. Let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present conditions of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy, and that we are not only enslaved, but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.

Wow. Some powerful and stirring words. And every machine of every sort should be destroyed. War to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Perhaps, maybe, just perhaps, this is the Butler who is the real historical illusion that underpins the fictional Butler character. The Butlerian jihad in Herbert’s universe. What do you think? Anyway, as Willis McNelly says, at any rate, regardless of whether it’s based on any particular Butler, it’s undoubtedly referring to the Luddite movement. Because yes, I mean, sure, we have Samuel Butler and this kind of fanciful essay about looking at machine life, evolution and deciding that we need to wage a war to the death.

And however much tongue in cheek that may have been written in the 1860s. And then we have crazies who take this up first, of course, Frank Herbert embedding it in the Dune universe mythology. But then people, the, the random crazies who go and take that, and take it as some actual call to arms, and start hurling flaming bottles at Sam Altman’s house, injuring no one, hurting nothing, damaging nothing but, and ultimately accomplishing nothing. But that’s about as far as it goes, right? I mean, you could never have an actual organized social movement, a resistance movement to the machines.

Could you? The oath of the fraternity, as it was known, was used to bind new Luddites to the cause across England. George Mellor stepped forward to administer it. He took Booth’s hand. What is your name? Mellor asked. John Booth. Are you willing to become a member of our society and submit without demur or question to the commands of General Ludden? I am. Then say after I, John Booth, of my own voluntary will do declare and solemnly swear that I never will reveal to any person or persons under the canopy of heaven the names of the persons who comprise this secret committee, their proceedings, meetings, places of abode, dress, features, complexion, or anything else that might lead to a discovery of the same, either by word, deed or sign, under the penalty of being sent out of the world by the first brother who shall meet me and my name and character blotted out of existence, and never to be remembered but with contempt and abhorrence.

And I further do swear that I will use my best endeavours to punish by death any traitor or traitors, should any rise up among us, wherever I can find him or them. And though he should fly to the verge of nature, I will pursue him with unceasing vengeance. So help me God and bless me to keep this, my oath inviolate. Mellor held out a Bible to Booth and the young man kissed it. That was that. He gave Booth a printed copy of the oath and told him to commit it to memory in case he came to a position where he might administer it to another conscript.

Punish by death any traitors name and character blotted out of existence, unceasing vengeance. Booth was officially twisted in. He was a Luddite. Now that was a short clip of the audiobook version of Blood in the Machine, the Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech by author Brian Merchant. And this is another example, yet another book that I read in preparation for today’s solutions. Watch Episode and another book that I would recommend, if you are interested in in this topic, the growing backlash against Big Tech. I would suggest this is a great book for you to get informed on the historical precedent for this movement, namely the Luddite movement of the early 19th century, specifically in England.

And Merchant does a great job of painting that historical picture and fleshing out that movement in a way that you probably haven’t heard before, because as he makes the point in the book, Ludatism is the idea of the Luddites is something that is out there and people generally know some sort of vague story about this quasi mythical fictitious general Ned Ludd that people organized under and went to go smash machines. Something like that. But that’s about as far as most people’s historical understanding of Luddism really goes to. But there is actually a really fascinating history of a social movement that is hiding there underneath the surface that often gets neglected.

And that’s one of the points that he makes in the book. For example, particularly relevant chapter on the invention of the Luddites notes Theodore Roszak’s early 1990s statement, if the Luddites had never existed, their critics would have to invent them because they make a great piece of propaganda essentially for the big tech oligarchs of today to dismiss any and all opposition with a simple word. Oh, you’re just a Luddite. And as Merchant writes, Luddite has been shoehorned into history as shorthand for someone who blindly opposes technology and importance, importantly is doomed and at least a little dumb.

If you knew the word Luddite before reading this book, you likely knew it as an insult. But the Luddites are as as most of us know them. The moronic machine smashers are in fact inventions. They’re the myth invented by their critics, not the well organized, strategic and morally empowered force that contested the rise of the factory and the entrepreneurial manager in the 1810s. Look no further than the easiest way to discover new information in the 2000 and twenties. Google’s online search explains that a Luddite is a derogatory term for a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.

For example, a small minded Luddite resisting progress. Yes, how convenient. But consider do you find it disagreeable that the only job you can seem to find is a part time gig works part time gig work arranged through an app and that the company that cuts your paycheck does so according to a complex and opaque algorithm that seems to change the way you get paid every other week? You are mistaken. This app is the flexible future of work. You’re a Luddite. The CEOs, business consultants and corporate scribes that have championed this mode of work say so themselves.

And that is an interesting propaganda technique. Again, there’s a lot more information in this book, but I think another relevant section is towards the later part of the book where he talks about these articles that are increasingly cropping up. Talking about the a certain narrative that’s being implanted. Smart robots could soon steal your jobs. As CNN says white collar robots are coming for jobs. As Wall Street Journal says, yes, the robots are coming. Jobs in the era of human humans and machines, says Wired, are robots coming for your job? Eventually, yes, as the New York Times the robots are coming and they want your job, says Vice.

He notes all this type of rhetoric, but he notes, well, actually, no. There is a, a greater social and economic structure that is built on top of this narrative. And the narrative is not that the robots are taking your job. It is that there has been a certain organized method of employment and the idea of what people are doing as productive labor that has been ensconced and written into the fabric and woven into the fabric of our society that is now being completely rewritten. And yes, lots of people are going to just kind of die on the wayside.

But guys, the future will be glorious for whoever is left. And why, why would you ever complain about that? Is of course the rhetorical strategy that is used anyway. I think people probably know some degree of how that narrative strategy works. But there’s a lot more to this that is contained in this book and about the Neo Luddite movement that is coming into view right now as a result of this inevitable, or so we are told, progress, or so we are told, towards the technological utopia, or so it is dubbed by the people who are set to profit from that so called utopia.

And it’s a shame, I guess, that in one way Brian Merchant was very much incredibly good timing with this book because clearly the big tech backlash has begun in earnest and I think more people will be interested in reading about the origins of it. But if he had written it today instead of a couple of years ago when he started, I’m sure, right, putting pen to paper with this book, obviously he’d be concentrating more on the issue of today the AI data center backlash, which we are already obviously starting to see manifest in The Butlerian Jihad 2.0 or whatever is happening right now.

But luckily Merchant is able to address that topic in particular in some of the interviews that he’s given about this book. A recent much discussed NBC poll found that, like Gen Z pretty much just hated AI. Like with 44, it was 44 net negative points for people who are aged, I think like 18 to 34. And you understand why, right? Like all these executives and pundits and say, well, all the jobs are going to be gone. AI is going to do it. And it’s the same time that, you know, young people are trying to enter the workforce and think about the future.

And it’s like the story they’re being told is AI is taking over that future, whether they like it or not. And so, yes, it’s creating this combustible situation that we’ve seen throughout history through different industrial and technical revolutions. But this time the difference is, is that industry itself has created this, like, story where they’re basically the villains. The CEOs are the villains. So they’re saying, like, we’re going to do all this stuff. We’re going to get rich doing it. We’re going to, you know, go on every talk show and say, like, your jobs are dead and, you know, you need to let us build data centers in your backyard.

And investors are rewarding them for it, saying, here’s an unprecedented amount of capital that you can invest in building all this stuff out again, whether anybody wants it or not. So, yes, you’re just building this building to this conflict that I do kind of feel like historically. Again, we’re just explaining the conditions here. I think we’re talking about the conditions and why this is happening and why I’m not surprised any of this is happening. As somebody who spent three or four years researching and thinking about and writing about the Luddites, and it absolutely rhymes with this moment right now.

And I just wonder if this moment’s going to have an exclamation point on it or not. Yes, a backlash against the AI data center behemoth phenomenon and everything associated with the new AI agenda is underway. We have already seen that from the opening clips of today’s episode. And here is Brian Merchant putting it in its historical context. Once again. I would recommend Blood in the Machine as a very interesting book that fills in some of those gaps that have been deliberately occluded in your understanding of the Luddite movement, what it was, how it functioned, and why it arose in the way that it did at the time that it did.

And the better the. The more forearmed we are with knowledge about history, the better we will be able to not repeat the mistakes of the past, but hopefully, well, accomplish something productive in our own time with our own resources. And on that note, I guess the question is, yes, there is a backlash underway, but will it be a neo Luddite movement of people smashing machines and tearing apart factories with the popular support of the public? Will it be a Leonard Neoluddite movement that engages in assassination as the Luddites of old did, at least at one point in a famous case that really brought down the hammer of the state upon the heads of the movement and its leaders and really galvanized the.

The counter reaction against that movement in the ruling oligarchy of the day? Or will it be a different thing altogether? Will it be a Butlerian jihad and take that tack? Well, I guess it’s yet to be determined exactly how this AI backlash is going to unfold and we are history’s actors writing that history of the future. But whatever form it takes, there is a backlash that is growing and it is going to. Well, it’s going to take some form whether whether completely organic or whether steered in certain directions. Well, you will find out once again, if you are interested.

Of course. Of course the corporate report does not and would not ever advocate for illegal acts of violent wanton property damage of any sort. But if you’re interested in that subject. Well, I have talked about it before here on Solutions Watch, so you might want to re familiarize yourself with my Solutions Watch episode on simple sabotage, which seems highly relevant to this topic and the types of things that people could do if they were so inclined. Also starving the data center beast, which is a Solutions Watch episode that I did earlier this year, again on this phenomenon of the growing data center backlash.

But again, as I say, for our forewarned is forearmed and you have to be forewarned with actual knowledge of what is going on so that you can better respond and more fruitfully challenge your destructive energies in whatever form they take. So how does one go about doing that? Well, there’s there are a lot of articles and things that are being written on this subject right now. I will point you, for example, in the direction of real climate science. Tony Heller writing this one atomic bomb per hour article. And it’s particularly interesting because for people who don’t know, Tony Heller has been a climate realist who has been raging against the climate alarmist doomism nonsense and the terrible shoddy science that’s been shoved down the public’s throat as the settled science around the climate issue for years and years and years.

And people know that and people have undoubtedly seen his work on the subject or the people who’ve been influenced by his work on the subject over the years. And yet here we are with one atomic bomb per hour where he’s talking about a 10 gigawatt data center that is being planned in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which for people who don’t understand that is that’s a pretty large data center. 10 gigawatts is the equivalent of 100 million 100 watt light bulbs. So he finds various ways to put those numbers into something that people can understand and try to put a measure on and start to see the various effects of creating such a large data center requiring such an amount of energy and the.

The heat island effect of such a facility alone, let alone all of its implications for water usage and electricity usage etc and ending with our community and environment are being destro by these data centers. But big money seems to get whatever they want. Consent of the governed no longer seems to be a valid concept in America. So again, this is backlash that truly is. All sides, both sides of the fake phony political aisle. All people from all walks of life except for that tiny sliver of people in the big tech brawligarchy who happen to be the billionaires or trillionaires or potential trillionaires benefiting directly from the construction of these data centers.

Pretty much the vast mass of humanity is against it, no matter your divisions on any other political issue. But again, what, what kind of, what kind of information can we get about this? Well, how about this AI versus Affordability and Rates, which is a zero hedge article that has just appeared which again provides some indication of what we’re dealing with. And this, this seems particularly instructive. A chart that shows the, the relative stock success of companies that are providing actual real consumer goods for the consumers themselves versus people who are providing chips, basically microprocessors for the data centers.

So if you’re, if you’re in the semiconductor business, boy are you booming. But if you’re in, you know, the regular productive economy for, you know, the rest of humanity, too bad for you. Well, how about another resource? There’s one other resource that I would like to bring to your attention and one that I think might be extremely handy. It is called aidatacentermap.org the link will be in the show note in case you can’t spell. And it has the truth about data centers in which you will be able to sign up to receive an 80 plus page report on this subject.

A detailed report. I have seen the draft of this report. It is still being written but. But you will be able to receive that when it is. When it is available. And there’s also this map that has been provided as part of this. And it is mostly concentrated on the US Although there are some data centers and some other information from outside the U.S. but here is a map of the data centers that are known and which there is some degree of information about in various locales. You can click into this map and get more information about for example water stress in various areas and how these data centers, how much water these data centers are using.

But there’s, there’s much more information. Interannual variability, major US aquifers, 2030, water withdrawal, current water depletion, et cetera, et cetera. All the information you could ask for and more about these various data center projects. Now, with the caveat that this is only what is publicly available at the moment that we know about, that we can point our finger at. And there is. So there is. This is undoubtedly an underestimation of various things like water usage. But anyway, it is a way of starting to get a handle on this incredibly difficult subject. Who is this? Who is compiling this information? Where is it from? It is from Hakeem Anwar of Above Phone.

You will know him because he has been a multiple time guest on Solutions Watch in the past. You will know about Above Phone, the above agency, the various services they provide to help you try to take some of this tech back under your control. You’ll also know about Take Back Our tech, the, the, the new Service News compiler and Solutions oriented information service that Hakim runs that talks about various ways that you can take back control of your various devices and your online life. He has put this together, this AI data center map as a resource for people who are obviously part of this growing backlash and looking for what they can do about the problem in their own backyard.

Well, you better know something about the problem in your own backyard and you can start to get more information about that and how it ties into the broader question of these data centers@aidatacentermap.org so I had the chance to talk to Hakim about this idea and about the various things that this map can show and what the report, once it is completed, will be able to tell you about the ways that people can fruitfully resist these data centers. So people were asking us to build a private AI service in addition to all the other things we’re doing, like email and calendar.

And I was like, okay, I seriously considered it, but I wanted to understand the risks. Like what is even an AI service? How much power and water do they use? I was starting to hear about data centers. So I basically started and realized that data center developers were being extremely secretive and then my spidey sense went off. So I just kind of followed myself down the rabbit hole. Half a year later I’m wrapping up this 80 page report on data centers. I’ve. I’ve gathered intelligence on 40500 data centers in the US and 600 of these are hyperscalers we should all be concerned about.

So yeah, it kind of just pulled me in and it was very transformative doing this work because I was taking a Lot of things for granted. Like, for instance, how, like where our water even comes from. I had no idea how an aquifer works. Worked, and now I do. It’s this amazing technology from God himself, water that’s thousands of years old under the surface of the ground coming up to us. And these data centers are putting at risk us at, you know, at all at risk. So it’s a reminder that we need to be good stewards of the planet.

All right. Yeah. Again, people kind of generally vaguely know about some of the risks and problems associated with these data centers, but drill down on that. What kinds of things have you identified as environmental factors and other factors that people should be aware of when they’re finding out about these data center projects in their backyard? Okay, I’ll be, I’ll be very concise here. So there are aquifers all over the United States. And actually, let me use the map as a visual resource here. This is aidatacentermap.org these are the major US aquifers. And so these are areas spanning thousands of miles where water is underneath the ground.

And if a data center is sitting on top of it, it’s using municipal water, which is being pulled from the aquifer. And some states, like Texas, they fully outright own the water under the land. And this is also the case in other states like Indiana and different parts of the US and they can pull up as much water as they want. So that doesn’t just impact them and the local neighborhoods, it will literally impact people within thousands of miles or anyone sharing that data center. It’ll impact Canadians as these aquifers doesn’t proclaim itself American or Canadian.

It’s just an aquifer. So there’s all these wide ranging impacts when we have groundwater decline. And the U.S. geological Service has done a lot of studies on this. US groundwater has been declining since the 80s, causing things like literally the ground caving in. Because having that support under the ground of the water and not having it anymore is causing sinkholes and the ground to fall down. And it’s also causing declining water levels in our streams, lakes and rivers, which is normally it’s being fed by the aquifer and vice versa. And these areas are really important. They’re called the riparian zone.

And they are normally filtering the water of toxins. They’re building new soils, they’re preventing erosions, they’re creating a habitat for, a habitat for all animals. And so it’s really scary as a lot of these data centers come into full power and full Operations that our environment will be at risk. So if you are on a homestead, you have a well. If the water table, the surface of the water goes below your well, your well is going to run dry. Think about what that means for farming in this country. For people who can’t afford to dig a deeper well, that’s a major problem.

And then again, you’re going to get to see things get less green and more dry. If these data centers take up all the water, use the data center heat to evaporate the water, send it up into, through the, into the atmosphere using a cooling tower. Hey, guess what? This water is not going to get back to the aquifer in a reasonable amount of time. And these aquifers take hundreds of years to recharge. So that is the danger here in a nutshell. Absolutely crazy. And all for what? Also that people can prompt AI to, you know, summarize emails for them or something along those lines.

Absolute nonsense. Well, all right, show us that map again. That again, is an incredible resource. You’re showing us aquifers. But that’s not the only thing on this map. What else can people see on this map? Yep. So this map has a list of all the data centers in the United States. And there are, just to distinguish them, there are these black triangles which are the hyperscalers. Let’s zoom into this data center Infor Fort Worth. And this map is one of the only maps that tries to estimate the water that these data centers use per day. I’m going off of the best academic sources and also generally accepted information from academics who are studying this and trying to get more information.

They also can’t get information from the data center developers. And I found in the sustainability reports that the data center developers, like Google, aren’t even measuring it themselves. There’s. There’s literally not a water meter on some of these data centers. So I’m going off of the power capacity, and you can see I’m just kind of taking how much power they would use normally, multiplying it by how often it’s used, the proportion of power, the full power that it’s going to be used, and using information from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, which tries to gives an average estimate of how much, much water per kilowatt hour these data centers should be using.

So you can see that if you click anywhere on the empty space on the map, it’ll actually aggregate how many data centers and combine the water usage and you get these ridiculous amounts like 5 and a half million gallons a day. Also, we’re also operating with limited data. So this is, maybe this is, I don’t, I only have numbers on a third of these sites in this particular region. Right. So this is a gross an underestimate. The same thing for power displacement. I tried to calculate it based on the average amount of power a US home uses.

And so yeah, these are all these things that you can do once you dig into the map. Absolutely incredible. I mean there’s such an amount of information here. How long has it taken you to compile this and how are you getting this information? It’s taken months and I’ve gotten the information on the data centers from public sources scraped, keeping the Internet from other maps that had the data centers and collating different sources together in one map and standardizing the data. And then I do have sources for where I get the overlays. There is information on water stress.

One really well known source is the World Resources Institute and they, this is not real world measured data, but it’s a hydrological model of the areas of the United States and really the world. This map expands out to the world, I just limited it to the US here where things, where there is water stress, there’s more demand than there is supply, where there is water depletion. And wouldn’t you know it, in places like Phoenix there is, there is a ton of data centers. So you know, they’re, they’re not being conscious, they’re not being ecological about this in any way.

There’s also, there’s also ways to visualize high voltage power lines which are extremely important if you want to predict when a data center is coming to your area. Well, guess what, you know, this is the lifeblood of a data center, is to be able to use all this power. So a data center is really only able to come if there’s a high voltage power line in the area. You can kind of use this to understand if there’s, if it’s likely new data centers are going to move to the area. So, so there’s a bunch of cool visualizations you can use and hopefully that helps you know what’s going on in your area.

Or maybe if you’re looking to move somewhere it’ll help you plan a little bit better. Well, absolutely incredible. I mean that is the beauty of open source intelligence and so much data. So useful for people who are interested in finding out more and, but as you say, still a gross underestimation of these because you’re only working with the data that you can scrape and that you have been able to find, but there is undoubtedly more data out there that you are do not have access to. I understand that in the future this map will actually be an open source project in which other people will be able to add information as they come across it.

What’s the timeline for that and how’s that going to work? I’m hoping in the next month I’ll have this feature rolled out. And then, by the way, this map is live, the data is available. You can actually go in and pull it off from, from, from within the browser. And so I hope in the next month I’m going to have a way for you to be able to click each of these individual points and actually edit the data that’s on there. Because as you can see, many of these. Here’s an Amarillo, Texas, this is another hot spot.

This is where Project Matador and the Fermi campuses are. There’s a lot of hyperscalers in this area. So I have information for a lot of the big ones, but for the small ones, no idea. Right. This is, I don’t have any estimates of this. So that’s where you come in. I’m going to need your help. We’re going to need people researching this and finding information that they can hopefully from Freedom of Information act requests, getting information from their local counties and trying to populate it as best as we can on the map. Coordinating information between local activist movements on the ground is kind of the hardest thing right now because as you can see, this is not limited to any part of the U.S.

it’s happening everywhere and not just the U.S. but that’s, you know, that’s just another part of all of this. So, Hakeem, let’s, let’s expand this conversation. All right? This is an incredible data tool. I hope people will check it out again. It is live right now. Aidatacentermap.org and I hope people will check that out and use it as a resource to find out more, at the very least, about what’s going on in your locale. Locale. Because clearly there is something that’s going to be affecting you no matter where you’re living in the US or probably other parts of the world.

But the question, of course, as always, is what do we do with that information and what can people do with that information? And so I wanted to look at a specific example and you do have one in the report. You talk about the AI Data Center Project Life cycle, and you highlight that by looking at a very specific example in San Marcos, Texas. Tell us about The San Marcos example and what it shows us about, about the project life cycle of an AI data center. Yeah, San Marcos is a special area I’ve had the pleasure of visiting.

It’s home to really important water features in the Texas area. One, the Edwards Trinity Aquifer, which spans several hundred miles in Texas and was actually threatened, I think it was in the 80s or something. It was threatened in the 80s and it got a special conservation status. So it’s very protective. There’s also a few different rivers that run through the area and New Bratz Falls and the Guadalupe. So it’s this area where people really care about their water. And guess what? This data center came to town that actually wanted to pull from the Guadalupe river and it was planning to use more power than the entire city of San Marcos two times over.

So this, this, this data center called 904 Francis Harris Lane was converted from a failed neighborhood development. And the developer, who is not from San Marcos, found that, hey, we’re really close to a power plant. So we have this aspect of redundant power and also high voltage transmission lines. Why don’t we do a data center? So the data center started to move through this process of. Because it was in the city limits. And this is where understanding how jurisdiction works in the United States, States, and however it works in your country, it becomes important. In this case, this was land that was in the county, but the developer requested it for it to be zoned into the city.

And so they had to switch it from residential zoning into industrial zoning. Now industrial zoning, once you have it, it means you have the buy right to build any sort of infrastructure that you want. It’s much easier to bring in gas turbines, larger water mains and large building footprints because we know these buildings are millions of square feet. So this whole saga lasted about two years where the status center developer was trying to get the zoning request approved. And if you read the report, you can go in through all the juicy details of learning how local government works at the local level.

But surprisingly enough, they got denied the first time after a large local pushback. So the first hearing was got it approved to bring it within the city limits. But the map fail changed. And so the first time it got rejected, they had to wait for another six months. Instead of waiting the six months, they just submitted a brand new application. Very sneaky. So then in the next three months they were going through this process again. And the second time the Planning and Zoning commission approved them, which meant that there was one city council remaining from this data center going Live being fully operational and having nothing to stop it.

So in San Marcos, a lot of awesome local organizations who I’ve spoken with, like the Data Center Action Coalition and also the San Marcos river association, they really rallied everyone around this issue and got them out to this final city council meeting where and again this is important, the rezoning change is one of the only parts where people can comment publicly and on the record. The other meetings after this, like other, other events, don’t need that to happen. So they everyone came out to the public hearing. It was something like 130 different people commenting, farmers in the area talking about how this would impact their land, concerned citizens.

And so it drove this public hearing all the way to 1am which ended at 3am and it got denied. So it’s not going to be able to apply again until August. But it just goes to show they have to deny this thing two separate times. These data center developers are so persistent and San Marcos is lucky to have such a dedicated community around it. Other places like Abilene have no one looking out for this stuff and that’s why data centers get passed so quickly. Once again, that is Hakeem Anwar of abovephone.com and now of aidatacentermap.org Again please just go and check out the website and have a play around and see what information you can find about what is in your area.

And as, as we talked about there in the conversation, soon, hopefully in the near future there will be the ability for you to add information to this map and so that people can bring their own local knowledge to bear and start in the grand open source intelligence sharing that will be part of any actual movement that will have any actual real effect on the real world. And the build out of this data center infrastructure or the stopping of the data center infrastructure, it will be a massive undertaking and it will require the efforts of many, many, many people united in action.

Not because they are paid paid cells of the Chinese Communist Party as the Kevin o’ Leary’s of the world would have us believe, or because they’re drone wielding maniacs as the Larry Finks would have us believe, or the Butlerian Jihadists as certain members of the public are starting to take matters into their own hands, but because people are concerned about this and they, they can at least for the moment, start to organize true resistance to this and hopefully historically informed resistance, using something like Blood in the Machine to understand the Luddite movement of the past, what it was, how it functioned and how and why it came to fail.

Which of course, again is an instructive part of that story. So as you can imagine, there are a metric ton of resources for you to avail yourself of in this edition of Solutions Watch. So please go to corporatereport.com right now and you will be able to find this post with all of the associated show notes, with all of the various things that I’ve mentioned and referenced today. There’s a lot of material to go through, so have fun with that and report back to headquarters. As always, I’m always eager to hear what Corporate Report members have in mind with regards to your own efforts, what is happening in your locale, wherever you happen to live on the planet, and what what what movements do or do not exist, and what are you doing about that? I’d love to hear that type of feedback.

So Corporate Report members, Please log into corporatereport.com and leave your comments in the show notes for today’s episode. Obviously this is a very, very, very large subject and it is only just starting to take off, so I’m sure there will be more explorations of this topic and associated topics of the Big Tech Backlash movement as it continues in the future. But we’ll leave this exploration here for today. Thank you very much for investing your time in this incredibly important subject. I’m looking forward to hearing your feedback and I’m looking forward to talking to you again in the near future.

Then the robot dropped the baby. Unconcerned with consequences, Iblis rushed across the plaza in a desperate but fruitless attempt to catch the child. Seeing the trustees brave reaction, many of the slaves also surged forward. Standing over the broken, bloodied child on the pavement, Iblis knew he could not help in any way. Even after all the atrocities he had seen psimechs and thinking machines commit, this one outrage seemed inconceivable. He gathered the broken little body in his arms and looked up. Now, remarkably, Serena was fighting her masters. The workers gasped and drew back as she pushed a sentinel robot off the balcony.

In a flash of metal, the thinking machine plummeted four stories to slam into the hard flagstones not far from the bloodstain left by the dead child. With a sound like a sledge hitting an anvil, the sentinel robot smashed, bent and crumpled. It lay in a motionless heap on the ground, its fibrous and metallic components broken, gel circuitry fluid oozing out into the cracks. Mortified and appalled, the slaves stared at what had happened. Like tinder ready for a spark, Iblis thought a human, one captive, had fought the machines. She had destroyed a robot with her own hands.

Amazed, they called out her name. Above, on the balcony, a defiant Serena continued to shriek at Erasmus while he shoved her back with his superior strength. The woman’s passionate courage astounded all of them. Could the message be any clearer? An ugly shout of anger rose from the captive workers. They had already been primed by months of Iblis’s instructions and subtle manipulations. Now it was time. With a smile of grim satisfaction, he bellowed his call, and the rebels surged forward in an act that would be remembered for 10,000 years. They canceled it. Say what? They canceled it.

This is what it looks like when people stand up.
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