Ep. 902: The Pros, Cons, and Complications of Data Centers
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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this is the meat eater podcast coming at you shirtless severely bug bitten and in my case underwearless you can't predict anything brought to you by first light when i'm hunting i need gear that won't quit first light builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer no shortcuts just gear that works Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Okay, folks, here by popular demand is our show where we dive into data centers from a natural resources perspective. People are always writing in asking about why don't we cover this more? We should do it. Part of the problem is I was trying to find the perfect person to do it. So I just want someone that can look at this at the data center debate.
from an informed perspective, from an even perspective, someone that's not trying to drive a particular narrative or that's in the pocket of a certain set of interests, like someone to take a journalistic look at what is going on with data centers. And she's here and Davis Vaughn and, uh, was a long time wall street journal energy and finance reporter. Then she became an investment analyst, which is basically where you like do investigative reporting on companies.
That's right. I was like an investigative reporter for portfolio managers.
Got it. So if they wanted to make an investment, you'd go dig up the dirt or the good stuff.
You'd dig up the best version of the truth you can find.
Best version of the truth you can find. And now Anne has reentered journalism and is writing a book, which likely will be called Gigawatt. And it is about the AI industrial boom. how it is reshaping the energy industry, the industrial landscape, and the American heartland. She currently writes, this is where I found Ann, she currently writes a column for the information. So it's information.com, theinformation.com?
Theinformation.com.
Friends would send me your columns, and she writes a column on AI infrastructure for the information.com. That's a publication based out of Silicon Valley. What I liked about it, about your writing when I would read it, is it was very refreshing to hear someone looking at the issue that I felt hadn't already arrived at all the answers, but was just asking questions and also taking, as we're going to get into, taking a lot of measurements, measurements of water, measurements of energy, measurements of footprint, and putting those measurements sort of into context and comparing them to things that people might understand. So rather than hearing about some kind of wattage, comparing that to other industrial applications, other things that we're all familiar with, so you start to form a relative picture.
So thank you for coming on, and thank you for sharing a bunch of your reporting, especially because you're doing this before your book comes out, which is good of you.
Yeah, well, thank you. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited about your podcast and having come from the Blue Ridge Mountains and love the outdoors. It's a big part of sorting through what's happening today.
Got it, great. Can you start out by... This is kind of a dumb question, but I want to do it. Can you start out by... telling people in 2026 when they see data center in a headline in the newspaper okay what exactly are they talking about but it's a dumb question to say like what is a data center today well i'll tell you what it is not it is not clouds in the sky the data center is referred to as the cloud it's like the uh i think it's one of the best
marketing decisions tech has ever made for itself is to call data centers a cloud. Yeah, yeah.
But it's in the cloud.
It's in the cloud. And this cloud is really an industrial complex. And so it's an industrial scale facility that kind of pre-AI when we just thought of it as the cloud that holds our entire digital lives. And that means everything that, you know, we waste our time on and everything that is vital to our society. So, you know, how you save your pictures, how you stream your movies, how you listen to your podcasts, how you get money out of the ATM, you know, how your payroll gets paid, how, you know, life-saving machines stay on and scan your body and track data.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–19:42
2
What exactly is a data center and how has AI changed their scale and function?
19:42–52:33
3
When did public concern about data centers’ environmental impact spike and why?
52:33–1:55:24
4
How much water do data centers use compared to agriculture and power plants?
1:55:24–1:56:55
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The MeatEater Podcast
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