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Notes -
To what extent is anti-data center pushing big tech into further GOP alignment?
BTW why so much hate for data centers specifically? Is it just "those folks make tons of money and don't give any to us, we must hate them" or is there more to it? I mean yes, they consume electricity/water/space/whatever, so do many industrial sites and nobody (excepting hippie Gaia lovers which are entirely different crowd) cares. Is it just a new fashionable thing to hate or is there anything deeper here? As big industry projects go, they seem to be far from the worst - they don't smell, barely pollute, don't look egregiously bad (in fact, if we ever manage to get away from endless brutalism, they can look as good as one wants) and can be, as I understand, located on the shittiest terrain ever without a problem. Why are they the devil exactly?
This depends heavily on the localtion. Here in Finland electricity currently a big issue. Not because people hate AI (honestly not that many do in the real world) but because it will likely lead to real and significant electricity price increases while providing very limited economic benefits (due to data centers requiring minimal long term workforce and 90% of the cost being GPUs bought from abroad). This isn't helped by the utterly braindead increase of wind power without requiring similar investment in base or adjustable electricity generation (with many coal plants having even been mothballed due to being uneconomic when spare capacity is ignored by the market and regulations).
OTOH nobody sane considers water or space any sort of problems here given we have both in abundance and data centers don't even have any mechanisms that could pollute local waters.
I dont think space is a concern in any large scale area like a country or a state (by anyone non-retarded anyway), but it can be a local concern.
Imagine if you will that data centers have been built in some old industrial area that regular industry has left. There was land prepared away from residential areas, there is power, grid and all sorts of appropriate infrastructure excess that is ready to go.
The data center operators now want to massively expand to meet the demands of AI and they obviously would prefer to do so in close proximity to their original development. Only they have used up the old industrial space so now expansion will start encroaching on areas dedicated to other things or get closer to residential areas where things like noise will be a concern.
In these sorts of cases space can very much be a concern even if it in the context of the larger stage/country wouldn't be. It is appropriate local space that can be scarce, not space in general.
"Replace shuttered Rust Belt factories with new data centers" has IMO a bit of a nice-sounding vibe to it. Less clear if the infrastructure would be what you want -- less a railyard and more a substation. The telecom connections are probably the easy part. But I don't live in the Rust Belt, so it's not me you'd need to sell on the idea. The "and you have to clean up the Superfund site" is probably a sticking point, too.
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