Thoughts on…Everything - Part III
“You say want a revolution, well you know,
We all want to change the world.
You tell me that it’s evolution, well you know,
We all want to change the world.
But when you talk about destruction,
Don’t you know that you can count me out.
You say you’ll change the constitution, well you know.
We all want to change your head.
You tell me it’s the institution, well you know.
You better free your mind instead.
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao,
You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.
Don’t you know it’s gonna be,
Alright.
Alright,
Alright.”
I used Roman numerals this week for our third chapter in this series. Just because. And how perfect is this week’s song? It’s like they were talking about the Democratic Socialists of America. Bad ideas and ideologies never die. They just go into remission for a bit.
Now on to this week’s topic:
Artificial Intelligence and Data Centers: There is one aspect of this that is certain. AI is a transformative technology that will revolutionize and change many society and economics. Of course, not everyone believes this. But I remember when then Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told us in the Republican Conference in DC that polling shows 12% of people believe Elvis is alive. As much as I wish Elvis were still alive, his point was that if you have 85% of the public with you on something, that is effectively 100% of the sentient and rational humans.
Although not everyone believes AI will be transformative, it will be. Just like the railroads and the automobile and the telephone and computers and the internet were transformative. And just like those technologies, jobs will be displaced. If you ran carriages or sent cable grams or made buggy whips or adding machines, your business was displaced.
But in each case also, jobs were created that had not existed before either made possible by the new technology or created because the new technology freed up time and resources to do something else. The same will be true of AI.
In order for AI to have this transformative impact, we need data centers to run the AI agents. Elon Musk believes that these data centers will one day be in space, where cooling is not an issue and energy can be obtained from the sun without an atmosphere to interfere. He may be right. But that cannot be ramped up as fast as the demand for AI is growing.
So for now at least, we need data centers on the ground. The money to build these things is being provided entirely by the private sector. You would think that this would not be controversial except for the typical NIMBYism that occurs with almost any development.
Surprisingly, the left has now turned not just against data centers, but against AI in general. I frankly did not expect this. Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, three of the biggest hyperscalers, are run by and generally populated by SanFrancisco Bay Area leftists. I presumed that they would give the left reasons to be in favor of what they are developing and happy that they would put lots of left-leaning stuff in their models. Apparently, that wasn’t enough.
Senator Bernie Sanders just introduced a bill to ban any AI that exceeds human capabilities. Since my iPhone exceeds many human capabilities, that will ban AI. I surmise that the leftists worry that the jobs displaced by AI are more likely to be their college indoctrinated supporters rather than blue collar workers who generally vote Republican these days.
Additionally however, we now know for a fact that the Chinese Communists are supporting and funding the left’s opposition to data centers. Why? Because if we don’t build them, the Chinese will and then we will be dependent on them for AI as we are dependent on them for rare earth minerals, solar panels, drones and so many other pieces of hardware. The evidence for this is indisputable. These lefty protesters mostly like communism anyway. But even if they don’t, they are happy to accept laundered money to oppose a technology that they believe threatens the political future they envision.
Many of you know that the Captivating Mrs. Campbell and I have a family farm and ranch in rural Kansas that was started by my maternal grandfather 110 years ago. Fifteen miles up the road, a 1000 acre data center has been proposed. If there were ever a more perfect place for one of these, I don’t know where it would be. The land is inexpensive. Power and water are readily available. And the community recently had a major meat packing plant shut down, which eliminated a huge number of jobs. They could use new jobs and the revenue and the tax base.
Kansas passed a smart bipartisan bill a couple of years ago that says that water and power rates for existing customers cannot be raised to pay for the additional infrastructure necessary for the data center. So, the data center must pay 100% of the load. But, they get a sales tax holiday on all the equipment they put in there. This was Kansas’ way of saying, we want you and the jobs and the income and the tax base.
It was bipartisan in the legislature and signed into law by Kansas’ Democratic governor. But now virtually all of those Democrats say they regret the vote and they now call for a statewide ban on data centers.
That is insane. Rural America has been in economic decline for decades and anything we can do to get it back on the front foot should be welcome. But nothing the left does makes any sense anymore.
As far as this data center on the outskirts of Emporia, Kansas (a town of 25,000 people), the protests have been loud and funded by Chinese and encouraged by Chinese bots on social media spreading lies. But the city council to their credit, has been unanimous in support. A mayor from another small town in Oklahoma testified on how a Google data center in their town brought jobs and prosperity and new homes and the money to build schools and roads and parks.
The mayor of that small town in Mayes County Oklahoma had an interesting thing to say that I did not expect. He said that the data center is helping them retain youth in the county. In the past, kids would go off to college and be trained for jobs that didn’t exist back home. But now, there are many technician jobs in and around the data center that pay more than your average Columbia Grad makes these days and they get to stay where they grew up in an area with a low cost of living.
Rural areas are perfect for most data centers. Some will need to be in populated areas because of what is called “latency.” If you are using AI for high frequency trading or a military use, the delay, even at the speed of light of getting data from thousands of miles away can be troubling. But most can be out in the country. As a part-time Kansan, who truly loves the place, I say bring them on! We have plenty of land, water and inexpensive abundant power and we want those jobs and that investment.
Of course there are issues with AI like privacy and hallucinations and like any new technology, it can be used for evil as well as good. But AI is going to happen. We can either control it here and prosper with it here or let the Chinese Communists do it instead and let us become slaves to them.
The next topic in this series will be:
The Oligarchy That Runs California
Until next time, I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free
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