Who Controls AI? Data Centers, Agent Errors and Shared Meaning

So in addition to what you talked about, I guess the big moment over the weekend, it crystallizes what's going on is that Trump was speaking in Ohio and he was defending data centers and he wants to double down on them because this is a big manufacturing push.

Right.

He says,

there's

so much money to be made from

them.

You can't turn them off.

They'll go to China if you do.

And he's kind of frameworking this as a national security imperative.

Meanwhile, there's a Wall Street Journal poll, white spirit sentiment to slow down AI development because of the anti-data center movement, among other things.

There's also indications that The anti-data center backlash is picking up steam in Europe and Asia where the energy costs are much higher and the public population centers are much more dense.

You mentioned that Goldman Sachs sees It's like relatively steady expansion through next year.

They kind of fudged a little bit beyond that.

In a sense, there's just a large degree of skepticism about data centers, about AI development in general, given all the security breaches and incidents that have been happening the last several weeks.

And also because of what the companies have told us about how they want to dial back.

In fact, when you look into this, it's like looking at a kaleidoscope.

There's so many different angles.

There's the advantage that companies are using for this.

Meta's using R&D tax credits.

in classifying data centers as experimental to dodge some taxes.

We've got Sam Altman out there mentioning that data center development should slow down.

I mean, they're all trying to take advantage.

And if it's confusing, maybe it's by design, but I also think there are so many voices saying so many disparate things that the takeaway is that companies are trying to present themselves as kind of measured and responsible.

On the flip side, we've got a lot of politicalization, a lot of folks telling us that this is just reckless expansion of data centers which are going to impact our affordability issues, our environment, etc.

And I think it's going to only accelerate.