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Chapter 1: What is the significance of the newly approved data center in Utah?
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79% kokee, ettei tule nähdyksi hakiessaan apua terveydenhuollosta. Hello, it's Anthony, and you're about to hear AmeriCast.
We're delighted to have you with us. And if you enjoy what you hear, please do consider subscribing to the podcast. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Now, on with today. Stan in Brighton in the UK has been in touch. I was wondering, says Stan, whether you could cover the recently approved Stratos data centre in Utah.
Chapter 2: What are the bipartisan concerns regarding data centers in rural America?
As a UK listener, I find it equal parts fascinating and concerning that such a project has been approved. It would be great to hear your thoughts on it and the wider implications for the politics of the AI revolution in the US. Well, Stan, we're going to do exactly what you tell us to do, as we always do. And you are, of course, dead right. It is a massive, massive American story.
and it's not actually much covered, or maybe not covered as much as it should be. And it's not just in Utah, where that campus is apparently going to be 62 square miles, but it's also all around the US. So opposition is growing to these huge data centres right around the country, including New York, where a one-year moratorium on large data centres has just been passed.
So is the AI revolution changing the landscape of rural America? And if it is... Can people stop it? Do they, in large numbers, want to? Welcome to AmeriCast. I have four words for you.
Turn the volume up.
Chapter 3: How does the construction of data centers impact local resources?
Hello, it's Anthony in Washington, D.C. And it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And we're going to be joined later on, aren't we, Anthony, by Robert Bryce, the energy journalist, friend of the pod, who's written very extensively about data centres and AI and indeed studied them in extraordinary detail.
But, Anthony, there is no doubt at all, is there, that they are worthy of being studied at the moment because again and again in state after state, they matter. They do.
And his local opposition, it's not just local opposition from the usual suspects, environmentalists, not in my backyard activists, but from conservatives from a broad spectrum of American politics at the local level who are objecting to these massive buildings that house computers and servers and various equipment to process A.I., computing for these big AI companies.
And it's the local people who say it's taking too much resources, it's taking up too much space, their eyes sores, and they also view possibly them having adverse health consequences for those who live by them. So it's a big issue here in the United States. Is it that big in the UK? No, weirdly, it's not yet because we don't have them yet of anything like the scale.
But of course, we are also, as is the entire Western world, we're all looking along these lines that AI not only brings with it all sorts of threats and benefits to daily life, but also has to be kept going. And, you know, the business of keeping it going does require huge amounts of energy. But, of course, it's not just energy, is it, Anthony?
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Chapter 4: What are the environmental implications of large-scale data centers?
And this is why it's such a big deal in the States. Yes, it's electricity and it affects electricity prices, etc. And some people think it keeps them artificially high and they want politicians to intervene. But it's also things like water, isn't it? I mean, it's a pretty basic... threat, as a lot of local people see it, to their way of life. Right.
It sucks up a lot of water to keep all of this equipment cool. But AI is the hot thing right now, right? I mean, there have been people who have said that AI investment is keeping the U.S. economy and the U.S.
stock market afloat, that all this money pouring in in hopes of having big payoffs is the reason why the American economy has been able to push through some of these headwinds it's been facing. Companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, OpenAI. They're building these data centers to power their AI computing projects.
Chapter 5: How does public perception of AI influence opposition to data centers?
And here's Sam Altman. He's the CEO of OpenAI talking in Michigan about the construction of a data center there.
We know how complex of a project this is. We know what the current attitude towards data centers in the world is. And I'll come back to this. But I think we can make this a great example for the future. This could very well turn into the site where cancer gets cured. This could turn into the site where hundreds of millions of students around the world learn and get private tutoring.
This could turn into the site where millions of small businesses can run their business with AI in the cloud.
Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because that's the push. And that's the promise that's dangled in front of people. And as you say, Anthony, it's also the promise of wealth more widely, because I think it is actually literally true that the growth in America at the moment mainly comes from AI and AI related growth and AI and AI related optimism about the future.
Chapter 6: What role does energy consumption play in the debate over data centers?
And it's huge and it really does matter. But in rural America, in bits of Texas, in North Virginia and in kind of in parts of America where those things feel very remote.
And it's what is fascinating to me, Anthony, is not only do those things feel remote, but actually the politics of it is quite complex because the messages that are coming across are about the threat of something that is not necessarily a left right issue. And that's that's important. Right. People care about their local environment.
Even conservatives who may not consider themselves environmentalists care about whether the water in their homes is clean, whether the noise that these big data centers create, the buzzing sound that some people say, They create because of all the energy being used, whether that disturbs their everyday life. They are concerned about the electricity prices being driven up.
They're concerned about falling property prices. If one of these big things drops right next to your house, your property value is probably going to go down because of all of these other things that we've been talking about. And so you have heard conservatives talk about this, particularly at the grassroots level, and Democrats, liberals talk about this.
Here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive left wing New York congressman. We've talked about her plenty of times in the past. She visited a town that had a data center in Georgia a few weeks ago, came back here to Washington, D.C., and spoke at a congressional hearing holding up a sample of the local water, she said.
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Chapter 7: How are local communities responding to the expansion of data centers?
FAMILIES IN THE AREA ARE STARTING TO SEE NOT ONLY THEIR WATER PRESSURE DECREASE, TO YOUR POINT ABOUT WATER AVAILABILITY, BUT THEIR APPLIANCES HAVE ALL STOPPED WORKING BECAUSE IT IS DECIMATING THEIR WATER QUALITY. THEY NOW RELY ON BOTTLED WATER TO DRINK AND PREPARE MEALS AND NEARBY RESIDENTS WATER BILLS ARE EXPECTED TO INCREASE BY 33%. IN FACT, I HAVE A JAR RIGHT HERE.
This is the current drinking water in Morgan County, Georgia, right after a data center was constructed. The only difference between the clean water and this was that data center. I have another one as well. So this wasn't just one well. This wasn't just one family's situation. This is what the drinking water now looks like next to that data center.
And that's Georgia. The big one, though, Anthony, is Utah, isn't it? Which is so big that it boggles the mind. 62 square miles. We always measure things in Britain, Anthony, in the size of a football pitch or how many football pitches a thing is. I don't know what 62 miles is in football pitches, but it's a lot of football pitches.
Chapter 8: What future challenges do data centers face in light of public backlash?
is a lot is more than twice the size of manhattan island in new york if that puts it in perspective obviously things there's a lot of open space out west but that is a massive construction project and it will include dozens of data centers research facilities uh probably some some housing uh this project was approved by county commissioners, but there was local backlash to it.
People were complaining about, as we talked about, the stress it could put on the local resources, what all this construction would mean for the environment. And it was more than double Utah's current electricity usage. The entire state of Utah. That is insane. That is amazing, isn't it?
Also that it's going to use a lot of water and they don't have a lot of water in Utah and quite regularly have droughts, don't they? It's a hyperscale data center, isn't it, Anthony? And that word is important, isn't it? Because it's the hyperscale. It's to go back to the economics of all of this.
If you're looking for organizations, companies that have done really well on the stock market and powering, actually not in a way, not just the U.S. economy, but to an extent the world's at least stock market buzz, it comes from hyperscalers, these companies that are pushing out huge investments in the hope that eventually there'll be a return. So if...
for instance, in Utah, it doesn't happen because people object, is not just, oh, well, we just go and do something else. I mean, this is a real challenge, isn't it, to an entire kind of industry model that is massively, massively funded at the moment, but you could see the funds just going away. Right.
And AI, beyond just the impact of these data centers, there is a pushback against the whole idea of AI, of what it is doing to global societies, what it could do to the job market for people who are being replaced by this technology. And so all of this is part and parcel of this kind of objection to it.
The data centers on the ground, but also if the data centers were doing something great that people believed in, like curing cancer the way Sam Altman promised, then maybe people would be willing to make those sacrifices. But when these data centers are being used to advance something that is generally unpopular and not trusted by the American public, that makes it all the much harder.
Let's listen to this a town hall meeting in Utah where they tried to explain what this data center was doing and the level of public concern that came up because of it. Right, well, it's not going entirely smoothly, is it? It's worth pointing out, Anthony, that the three commissioners actually had to leave the meeting, didn't they? They had to carry on online.
And I suppose it's this classic thing, isn't it? There's always the case with planning disputes, but my goodness is the case massively now and all around America. If the person... who benefits from the cure for cancer that Sam Altman was talking about, is at the moment a notional person. It's at some point in the future. The people who are the losers are not at all notional.
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