Just saw this article about a community that attracted data centers.

costs of data centers to the community

"Most every company you deal with has spent millions if not billions of dollars implementing software systems...AI or otherwise.... that run their businesses.... from payroll to inventory management to logistics.."

It seems to me that this Is just another small step in the software world. It should have never been labeled " AI " because I don't believe it is " AI " and it just scares everybody.

IBM What is a data center!

Sometimes I wonder? The last printer I bought ( an HP) did not come with a USB cord to plug into the computer. It wanted me to set up the connection through the internut. Which is completely inconvenient / near impossible. I don't need to send my print commands to the world just to send a print to the printer. I think the human dependence on the the internut has drawbacks. I still wonder how modern people will navigate from point A to B , if Alexa doesn't tell them where to drive and turn?

Pretty good article, Dirt. Sadly most on here complaining about data centers probably won't bother to read it.

They should be complaining about the subsidies. Wait, these guys may be farmers.

It seems to me that the USA has gone through two industrial revolutions up to now. First with steam power or just the kinetic energy of moving water. Next came the internal combustion engine and the generation of electricity. This was our "great leap forward".....to quote Mao.

I think data centers represent the next big phase in that ongoing revolution. I think it is an opportunity to see our productivity rate increase again as it did in the 90's along with a rise in GDP.

Of course there will be dislocations of existing infrastructure and landscapes. That always happens. The idea is to plan it in a rational manner rather than acting like a bunch of Luddites and killing the baby in its crib.

Opposition to data centers is generally being promoted by the "usual suspects".....the greens and other far-left political groups with an innate dislike of capitalism, and the goal of subverting it, in the hope imposing a different economic system on Western Civilization.

It is not like we are inventing the transistor, just appear to be outsourcing what used to be insourced?

How the Humble Transistor changed the world

I think it is a way to reduce the costs of increasing productivity and GDP.

Number of Data centers June 2025 Source: Brookings

United States 5,426
Germany 529
United Kingdom 523
China 449
France 322
Australia 314
Netherlands 298
Russia 251
Japan 222
Brazil 196
Mexico 173
Italy 168
Poland 144
Spain 143

Funny thing is the internut gives different totals depending on source. They all agree the U.S. has a vast majority of them.

The people complaining about the data centers would probably be howling in outrage if these huge multinational companies chose to build the data centers in foreign countries. I thought everyone wanted more job creation at home instead of overseas?

Kinda interesting that we have just heard all the real complaining the last few years and there are already thousands up and running. There is good, bad and ugly with almost all aspects of life and learning how to deal with change is an important aspect of enjoying the life we have been granted.

Bryce

1984
Y'all just can't see it yet
Think ahead 5-8 years when the political pendulum swings back the other way and the DSA takes control

1984 is never going to happen. Don't need cameras when people willingly carry their tracking and listening devices with them every where they go.

I haven’t read many of the responses to the original poster. However, most communities here have wastewater processing that makes the discharge water drinking water or near drinking water quality. With some engineering on the part of the developers, that water could be harnessed for equipment cooling.

As far as electricity goes, make them install their own sources instead of sucking off the grid. Bloombox uses fuel cell technology using natural gas as a base material. Or cover the center roof tops with solar panels to provide at least some of the electricity needed.

Our provincial government just turned one down a little while ago. The AI data centres use a lot more juice, and they were excited about the transmission lines on the property and a substation nearby. Mb Hydro put out a memorandum about a decade ago reguarding connecting data centres to the grid. I don’t now of one station that’s either at or over capacity. We just can’t keep up. Then they were going to skirt Manitoba Hydro by producing their own power with gas turbines as there’s several transmission pipelines near by. They had no problem eating the “carbon tax”.
Cooling was going to utilize our winter weather, and deep water during summer. That turned a lot of folks off.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/winnipeg/art...in-manitoba-for-large-scale-data-centre/

Sounds like we may have found new US partners to build a new dam that’s been in the early planning stage since I was an “A” trainee 25 years ago. Problem is, it won’t be ready by the time we need it. Our low residential hydro rates is the only thing bringing in and keeping people here……. Some always complain about our high rates when the get disconnected for billing issues, but soon realize that they don’t got a leg to stand on when you tell them to do some googling and find a cheap province to live…….lol.

NbrCatMan…….what will happen to these centres in say 30-50 years? With advancing technology, they might be a thing of the past before long.
I’d say you’re probably the most educated one on here regarding this stuff. Thanks for your input.

I think the problem may be with the new huge data centers that use more than a gigawatt of power. The entire State of Alaska generation is 2.8 gigawatts.

"1GW Data Center: What the Numbers Actually Look Like

Before any infrastructure planning begins, the scale must be made concrete. Here is what a 1GW facility actually requires:

Metric 1GW Benchmark (2026)
Power Capacity 1,000 MW continuous draw
Annual Consumption ~8.76 TWh
GPU Capacity 450,000–500,000 Blackwell GPUs
Rack Density 120–150 kW per rack
Cooling Requirement 100% liquid cooling
Land Footprint 500–800 acres
Estimated CAPEX $10B–$15B
Water Usage (DLC) 500M–1B gallons/year
To put the power numbers into perspective: 1GW equals the output of a large nuclear reactor, the electricity consumption of approximately 800,000 US homes, and roughly 10× the scale of traditional hyperscale facilities built before 2022."

The water usage seems kind of minor compared to the electric usage. Average house uses around 100,000 gallons per year. What's that 5,000 to 10,000 households?

The real problem is when these Data centers have government contracts and have government secrets
What is the mechanism in place to stop Nationalization of those Data centers?
I'm just looking down the road a couple of years because AI has a 10 year do as you will clause in that Big beautiful bill.
Some think we're heading for a utopia
But we're heading into our own demise

Conspiracy 101

I don't think the Federal Government has to nationalize data centers. It would appear they own about half the ones currently in the U.S.

We can like what is coming or not. Frankly I hate the idea of it and I dislike where we are now. I'd like to go back 40 years in technology and stay there.

With that said we aren't stopping this train.

In my research the last couple months I did read about a proposed data center that brought up the possibility of using wastewater from a local municipality for cooling. This was in a state in the desert SW somewhere. Never made a note where. I worked at a local waste water treatment here in Se Nebr and we discharged about 1.3 MGD of what I considered pretty clean water. I once won a bet when someone challenged me to drink a cup of it. I did... after I ran it thru my MSN water filter (a half micron or less filter I used when hunting and hiking in the mountains, I cleaned up some pretty milky water out there) and then had my anti-virus anti bacteria drops you put in the water and let it work for awhile before you drink it. I lived and never got sick and won the bet. Point is the wastewater we discharge can be cleaned up and used for a lot of things. Data plants included. They will figure out a way to cool them without huge MEGA GALLONS of water being wasted. Technology changes every day... always has. If mankind can somehow figure out how to be around in this world in 1000 or 2000 years... George Jetson Cars or the way people were "BEAMED UP" on STARTREK may actually be a reality!