Utah Data Center

to put that in perspective, Flaming Gorge is letting out 1 million acre feet of water to feed the Green River which is the main feeder for Lake Powell and Mead.  

I am convinced these data centers will be used to spy on us and ultimately control us.  The new rules for auto manufacturers, digital currency, Flock cameras, etc.   This has all been planned for decades.  The tech is finally advanced enough to implement all of the draconian measures.

Someone said the new ballroom at the White House will have a data center in the basement. Strategically placed there for immunity from spying because it is at the White House. I don’t know if there is any truth to this, but it sounds believable. 

They been spy’n on us for decades. The difference is, now we have been conditioned to accept it as normal with advertising . Say anything out loud in your home about anything and see if you don’t start getting emails or text messages about it. This system is coming to an end though.

Should ‘the people’ own the utilities and energy generation, or is this something that capitalism handles fantastically and everything always works near equilibrium?  

This is a situation that is going to become more and more common…..

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/energy-supplier-abandons-lake-tahoe-residents-to-serve-data-centers/

They’re building several more in adjacent states as well. Most appear to be heavily subsidized by tax payers who will be on the hook for utility hikes if they don’t source their own power and water.  The end result is AI slashing jobs. I’m all for progress, and capitalism but we could be subsidizing job loss assuming the jobs gained don’t outweigh the jobs that are lost. Then again if we don’t build them, China will. I wish more and more I could go back to the 80’s. 

I can't see an upside period lol

We’ve had Data Centers for quite a while…but, NOW…now…it’s “AI Data Centers”…as in added capacity for the new needs of AI…

And, NOW, now…we’re seeing AI providers willing to buy up existing power and potentially putting a pinch on civilian energy needs…see APL’s Tahoe Story…

Here’s the thing: Tax Credits at OUR EXPENSE make NO SENSE AT ALL. 

You voted for it. 

Central Washington had a similar situation, on a smaller scale but definitely huge locally, when everyone became bitcoin miners. 

Companies came into empty warehouses and filled them with computing power. People started filling their basements with dozens if not hundreds of computers working around the clock, especially with the cheap residential power costs. It led to a lot of issues that hadn’t been foreseen in the decades before. 

There were big debates on whether the publicly generated electricity should be used for these businesses and private endeavors at such a low cost, and what sort of issues might the PUDs be liable for if they ended the cheap power to sites that had spent millions to set up shop just because of that. 

Eventually that petered out, but I don’t think that the demand for computing power driven by AI will quite ebb like that did. If anything that demand will be increasing rapidly for the rest of my lifetime and perhaps the lives of my children as well. 

Local residents in Central Washington were fortunate that they owned the Public Utility Districts. If they were in areas with a higher level of deregulation, things could have been much different for them and they could have faced a situation similar to the one that Lake Tahoe is facing. 

Capitalism is wonderful, except for the times it isn’t. This is one of those exceptions. 

There's still no real solid explanation for their purpose. The shear amount and scope of the new data centers does not compute in my eyes. I'm starting to see a lot of insider investments into Palantir, and other Big Data as well. Not good, bros.

This has been going on for years in Eastern Washington. The builds have put a lot of people to work. But that’s about the only positive thing I see about all this. None of this technology is necessary.

The ones in Quincy have resulted in quite a few more jobs than originally thought, though a lot of those are not directly for the data center owners/operators.  Not sure how the big Microsoft ones in East Wenatchee and Malaga will pan out in job growth, but Microsoft paid the entire cost to upgrade the water supply for the entire 'town' of Malaga, I think.  If not the whole town, then the vast majority of it.  They also aren't getting the cheap power from the Chelan County PUD for the big compound in Malaga, but they are getting to piggyback on the transmission lines (at a pretty good rate for both parties).  It sounded like the redundancy of transmission lines was the big reason for that location.  I've got a nephew who had just become a journeyman electrician and Microsoft hired him to coordinate with the vendors in their East Wenatchee and Malaga sites.  They are paying him incredibly well for it, too.  

I travel to Dulles a lot for work, and the number of data centers there is incomprehensible! As for employment at these places, just look at the size of the parking lot. I can't imagine it takes more than a few people to actually run the place, and with the economy of scale, most of the actual facilities maintenance work can be easily outsourced and shared between facilities.

Surely the leopards will never eat YOUR face 

How are these things going up so easily everywhere? My Facebook is full of people bitching about opposing them with city council just going ahead and signing off on them anyway. There’s all kinds of shady shit going on. We’ve went from climate change is going to kill us all to yes we absolutely need these massive data centers and we will give them tax breaks and deals on land. It’s bananas. And for what? I don’t want an easy automated life. The tech needs a cap put on it. WiFi and Bluetooth is as advanced as I need. No need for my pickup to be connected to the cloud or my business books for that matter. Quickbooks is trying like hell to force everyone to qbo and the platform blows ass. 

It's as if public opinion and voting almost no longer matter in this country. The billionaire class can and are doing as they please. If someone is a threat to their vision, the person is removed, sometimes literally, sometimes from political position. They can buy any decision they have to currently. In a few more years that likely won't even be necessary.

China - Advancing AI, pairs nicely with their steadfast effort in renewable energy infrastructure (nuclear, solar, wind) over the past couple of decades. Passing laws that companies can't legally fire employees simply to replace them with AI or automation strictly for cost cutting measures.

USA - Advancing AI, paired with 4-year flip flop on policy, aggressively rolling back federal support for renewable energy initiatives (we will reallocate our already antiquated and strained grid to power this shit, citizens be damned). AI is a nuclear arms race to us. The race to develop AI and automation to eliminate the need for human employees (labor), who cares what happens to them. Layoffs to reduce operating costs, even in record profit years. We will hide in our bunkers why the surface dwellers sort it amongst themselves if we can make our vision reality.

We loved slaves here originally before we couldn't get away with it, then labor got too expensive so we shipped most jobs oversees to lower cost countries. Now we have AI, automation, and robots. Modern day slaves and tools that we think we can maintain ultimate power and control over instead of pesky humans who want rights, freedoms, medical coverage, living wages, vacation time, etc.

Digital prison is coming if something doesn't change quickly. We have more power than we realize if we can organize ourselves. There are plenty of examples of protests forcing needed change.

Long winded response. What I'm trying to say is thanks dangerous illegal immigrants, you guys really messed things up around here. We had a good thing going.

EDIT - Today, most people voluntarily and ignorantly participate in the digital prison environment. It'll be interesting when all of our data is weaponized against us as a means to maintain power and control, especially when we are of increasingly lesser value to the capitalist machine. We become a strain on resources, excess load on "the machine".

The government cannot be hated enough. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said “the only minority destroying the country is the billionaires.” Sure seems that way…

When the department of education posts this shit you know AI is gonna have this country cooked in no time.

These plants are Gigantic. They will need  lots of tradesmen for change upgrades and maintenance. 

What sort of tool is the woman holding?

Looks like pipe wrench, to torch, to hose bib.

The tiny town of Quincy WA has what appears to be 27 data centers in it, although some are part of a larger 'campus'.  For intstance, the cluster of 10 on the far left (west) of town are the Microsoft Quincy campus.  The group of 6 just a little bit east of that are the Microsoft Columbia campus.  I think that Yahoo built the first one, but it sold it to an independent 'colocation' company if I am not mistaken.  

Municipal property levels dropped over 70% for local residents.  The data center owners weren't given big property tax breaks, but if I remember correctly they get sales tax emptions on the first few generations of servers they purchase for the server farms.  Something like no sales tax until the 3rd or 4th generation, or something like that.  

That's the positive side of things.  As always, there are negatives.  I think it's extremely difficult to objectively balance the positives and negatives for a given area, but for this little town I think it was an overall net positive.  

The data center map wouldn't show in satellite view but the picture underneath it should give a good representation of how small the town really is.  

Till they don’t need them. Thats the promise of Ai and your billionaires.   But the good news is the Republicans and MAGA have your back.

Storey County in NV, just east of Reno, has its buttocks wide open, no lube required, for any large-scale data centers that want to build (local news article). 

Two companies, Fleet and Tract, broke ground on a 2 million square foot data center with Gov. Joe Lombardo offering his support for the multi-billion dollar project.

The skeleton of this $4.6 billion data center located along USA Parkway, near the Reno-Tahoe Industrial Center has an area equal to 38 football fields.

I would invite those with Trump living rent-free in their heads trying to score cheap political points to take a good hard look at who big tech donated to in the last election. And the election before that. And every election dating back to the Clinton administration. And probably the next election. Hint- the donkey isn't your freind either.

There are problems in both parties yes but it’s not the entire party

Yep. Meta just laid off 10% of their workforce. When asked at their town hall about how heavily employees were being tracked and monitored, Zuck's response was because they have some of the smartest/highest IQ individuals in the world on their team, and they were the best people to train AI models on. Collected what they needed to, and now they are out the door.

You see factory workers wearing headsets so they can track and monitor human movement when doing a lot of dynamic movements and assembly tasks, to help train replacements.

I find it fascinating in a sense. Most humans live on autopilot these days, very disconnected on a human level, but very plugged in on a programmed/conditioned level. It's really easy to guess what people are thinking and going to say anymore as human agency continues to erode. Where humans are more robotic like than ever, robots are more human like than ever. Interesting times we are living in.

I see all the people in their cars during the morning rush hour to get to work and go be productive. Much like current passes through traces on a circuit board to destination components to complete a task.

Cities are like OG computers/datacenters. Lots of people in a confined space doing lots of tasks to make the greater societal machine tick. Facebook/Meta campus and the like were the evolution of that (more confined, less distractions, work more hours and give perks to keep people at work producing). And now the next step is simply massive warehouses where all the computing takes place, no need for humans and the things they needed to include to accommodate them.

I like trying to throw my algorithms curveballs as much as I can, keep that shit on its toes and confuse it. I say weird shit or shit I don't believe in to my phone often to confuse it. I am a weird dude, but find it entertaining. I was given the nickname 'spacebrain' in college, and the older I get the more I understand why many around me felt that was appropriate. 

Imagine if everyone's search history was available in the public domain 😂. Big brother has it.

We can, and did make this shit up. Smart folks amongst us just figured out how to channel it and recreate it in a much smaller, more powerful package.

Either way I am gonna do my best to enjoy the ride.