80% of your data is dead: lessons from 35 years behind the data

So it's really interesting, but I've got a local issue.

So I live in rural Virginia.

And that means I only got a cable connection to the internet in April of this year.

This is 2026.

And at the same time, as much as I love data and have lived my life in it, I'm really opposed to some of the economics around the data centers that they're putting in place.

and think it's not a good idea for a federal government or a local government to be investing in this kind of stuff when there's so much volatility in the market in there.

But as far as geeking out, it gets lots of data.

So we've got, for example, in Virginia, we have one third of the entire data centers in the world here in Virginia.

So what are we doing that's so special about this? Let's look at this and see if we can figure it out and maybe put some of these things on the moon or in space or in Texas or in Aberdeen, depending on where they want to be.

But don't put it where they don't want it.

One third in Virginia.

That's an astonishing statistic.

Astonishing statistic.

No wonder you're enthusiastic for people listening and not watching.

He just held up a badge saying grow tomatoes, tomatoes, not data centers.

And I can see if they're very thick on the ground where you live, that could be a big issue.

So do you think putting them in space is the answer?

Well, it would certainly answer some things in the sense that it needs to be cooled and all that.

But there's a lot of bad chemicals that we'd be putting out in space as well.

And of course, the real challenge with the data centers, this is where it gets to the economics, is that we just don't know how long we're going to need them.

The devices are so good in today's environment that the new Apple chips that they're putting out and Intel is working as hard as they can to catch up on this are going to be able to run the LLMs on your device.

You won't need to send them to a data center.

And that, from a privacy perspective, is going to be much more appealing to the consumers.

It's astonishing.

I did some calculations the other day, right back of the envelope, sort of.