Data center

I haven't watched your show lately.

I don't know where you're at with data centers.

I think a lot of the negative push on data centers is the race, the weapons race.

Imagine if the Manhattan Project was public.

Imagine we had social media and we were developing the nuclear bomb.

Like, you know what I'm saying? Los Alamos should be shut down.

Like, we'd have all these other countries that are trying to compete with us in the arms race, just trying to slow it down.

And I think that's what's going on largely with the data centers.

And maybe let's just dive in a little bit deeper to the China side.

I'll add a bit of data just to ground us in terms of the starting point, because I think here in the US, the question around how much data centers actually comprise of China's electricity demand is often misunderstood or sort of, you know, there's little discussion around it, given how dominant that conversation is in the US.

So according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, between 2024 and 2030, about 38% of growth and electricity demand in the US will come from data centers.

But in China, that figure is just around 6%.

And then leading to total power demand in 2030, data centers in the US will be about 7% compared to 2% in China.

So, Gong, maybe just sort of following up in terms of all of this in the China context, what does this mean for China's renewable energy goals? And in particular, you mentioned the story around coal decreasing as a total share of power consumption.

But, you know, are renewables actually being utilized as much as they're being built? What does it mean for all the new coal power plants that are being proposed and potentially coming online over the next few years?

I think China has demonstrated that it can expand renewables at extraordinary speed and scale.

50% of the people voted for Donald Trump, the MAGA.

8.5% of the general election, of the general registered voters are saying, I'm going to vote Democrat just because of data centers.

Now, we don't know what that is, but it does seem like there's a lot of data centers in these swing states.

Texas has 314, with 240 more to come.

If you remember, it was about two and a half months ago, Greg Abbott, who was in a life-or-death struggle against Gina Hanosa—go Gina— for the governorship in Texas announced there was going to be a moratorium on all future build-outs.

One year ago, he was saying, data centers come to Texas, Texas is your friend.

Now, because the political winds have turned, because our electricity is going to go up, water becomes more scarce, environmental damage to the community, and they don't hire anybody, it doesn't seem like the communities are embracing data centers.

Good for us.

Well, I guess nowadays there's a little

subject that's occupying a little bit of your time, and that would be data centers.

Correct.

Tell me about it.

Well, I think the data centers represent a significant disruptive impact on power markets.

The microprocessing needs for a data center are extraordinarily energy intensive to run millions and millions of microprocessors to generate and store, particularly artificial intelligence platforms and agents.

requires enormous amounts of electric power.

And the grid and our systems to sort of build out infrastructure were not really designed for this type of disruptive impact.

The U.S. votes in midterm elections on Tuesday, and it's no secret that for the first time, AI is playing a big part.

The issue at the heart of this election is the giant data centers that power it.

France 24's Charlotte Lam is in the studio to break that down for us.

Charlotte, over to you.

We're concerned about the long-term health effects of this data center because of the diesel generators, because of the chemicals that are used in the cooling water.

We're concerned about energy prices.

We're also taking historic action to ensure that big tech data centers benefit local communities.

We want them, look, There's so much money to be made for Ohio, you can't just turn them off, they'll go to China.

Oh, yes.

Let's look at how she does this with the track twerking in the data center, because this song is wild.

It is truly something else.

She is rapping about a dystopian future where artificial intelligence has taken everyone's jobs.

I need every fan in the county for coolin' while I shake it in these pants.

And the context notes in our sources are crucial here.

Twerking in a data center is a sarcastic parody.

She isn't literally doing this.