Possibly an even bigger issue than electricity is going to be WATER! Especially in centers built in areas where they need WELL water for homes and/or agriculture. Like the panhandle of Texas.
Keyword "new" data centers. They already started building these massive centers that are going to double electric bills and take up all clean water ai knows there isn't going to be a second Gen of ai centers after this on this scale.
I guarantee this "promise" does not cover the centers they already spend billions on currently in progress.
Dont be fooled .. this is all part of a plan. Small Modular Reactors are coming to a warehouse near you. The Trump administration has already trashed previously established codes and requirements for nuclear power installations
Random YouTuber makes a video about a very specific architecture that hasn't panned out. So must be physically impossible. Let's all ignore that we've had fleets of nuclear powered warships and submarines for the last 70 years
I'm not watching it again because you're too lazy.
The answer is that they use uranium refined to weapons grade that only a few countries can make and whose sale and export is highly regulated AND they have no concern for costs or economics.
None of the points youre making aid you're argument that it's a physics issue.
The video doesn't say that either.
You don't need to drive a turbine. Do you think that those button cell batteries have mini turbines it?? Obviously not. U place a radioactive rock next to a radiosensitive diode you get electricity.
The cost of those batteries are not a physics issue either.
You need the turbine for Efficient operation.
Which again wouldn't be an issue if not for artificial scarcity.
Nowhere did I say that it would be a good idea to let people have access to nuclear material. You're arguing against ghosts on that one and has nothing to do with physics.
Ill just leave the conversation with this as clearly you you wont take the time.
Prompt: "is scaling down nuclear reactor a physics issue or supply chain issue?"
Gemini: "Scaling down nuclear reactors—often referred to as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) or microreactors—is primarily a supply chain and economic issue, compounded by significant engineering challenges rather than fundamental physical impossibility."
ChatGPT: "Short answer: mostly an engineering/economics and supply-chain issue, not a fundamental physics limit.
From a physics standpoint, nothing prevents small reactors.
They wouldn’t actually be paying for it. A lot of it would be subsidized and then the power companies like they’ve been doing, jack up the rates for everyone in the area to make the data center power costs lower. I don’t think anything real will come of this because it’s Trump, but ultimately no the ai companies wouldn’t really be paying for it
Utility companies charge rates based on total usage. For areas like loudoun county in Virginia the extra power usage from the data centers also gets passed to regular residents. In some cases tripling an average home owners electricity bill after a data center gets put in. What trump is saying here, is data centers have to pay the entire bill themselves for what they use, instead of being able to have the surrounding neighbor hood pay for it.
Tl;dr Trump wants to reduce electricity costs for the regular home owner in areas with data centers.
Exactly and building a power plant requires license and you actually need time. It is easily 3 to 5 years before another new power plant pop up based on the current building schedule. Next they start buying all the concrete, is trump going to say go find your own material and stop buying from the same source as house builder. ???
They don't want them buying only from existing power sources, they want them to build their owner power plants. If they don't it would drive up cost because they would be using all the supply.
Surprised this is the first time. Surely telecommunications centers have been targeted before. These are far more resilient than a phone switchboard (interestingly specifically with war in mind, since the invention of the internet thanks to DARPA and others), but are a bit analogous and even evolved from the same place.
The difference with modern computing datacenters, vs old-school telecom switching centers, is how carefully, and fragilely balanced a modern datacenter is between power consumption, heat generation, and heat dissipation (e.g. air conditioning/cooling).
Disrupt any of that, and the glass house shatters, and it's surprisingly easy to disrupt that careful balance.
Without resorting to missiles, bombs, or drones.
You add in the kaboom quotient, and it's really, really, really easy. None of this stuff is designed to resist this.
The real solution is to not poke the hornets nest with the broomstick, and start wars that result in drones blowing up datacenters.
I don’t think militarizing DCs should be the next step. Having to park an Avenger ADA battery onto Amazon’s sites would probably attract more attention.
I've thought about this for years specifically when visiting an colo that is dead north of Dulles runway 1C/19C (not sure if I can say which?). Whether accidental or on purpose, a plane into that building where numerous gov agencies are housed would cripple the country for a few days at the minimum. Yes, most have backup colos on the west or south, but failover is rarely perfect.
israel has attacked banks, fuel depots, electrical infrastructure, and civilian buildings that may have soldiers in them because they support the military in some way. that's a much lower threshold than the ai explicitly used for operations
i could word it like that, but i'm capable of independent thought.
amazon's aws is directly used by israel's unit 8200. the datacentres in uae and qatar are part of the "pax silica" initiative with the u.s., which is advertised as a commercial partnership but has dual-use implications, like all the commercial ai software being used by the military (like anthrooic's claude or openai's chatgpt. google and microsoft also has exclusive contracts with the idf for use of its infrastructure to power israel's military ai services).
dual use objects are valid targets when used for military purposes, but again, we're at the countervalue stage of warfare where you don't need legal justification to attack an object so long as it furthers your strategic goals.
Valid point on Israel, it was 6am and I was really only thinking of the US, and the context of the article in my comment. But I would personally argue UNCLOS violations of non-party nations are the legally speaking low bar of the war. And yeah, would agree on the stage of warfare.
That’s a little different. Striking data centers wouldn’t impact algorithmic training on a closed system inside the aircraft. F-35s aren’t flying around connecting to Amazon servers lol
Amazon (and Google) collaborates with the Israeli government on crunching data with their cloud servers for Project Nimbus. Defence contractors like Palantir on a partnership with Anthropic worked on hosting AIs on AWS servers. https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2024/Anthropic-and-Palantir-Partner-to-Bring-Claude-AI-Models-to-AWS-for-U.S.-Government-Intelligence-and-Defense-Operations/
Amazon literally has technical execs in DoD/DoW outfits working on mission critical architecture in the autonomous space. F35s connecting to AWS isn't remotely far-fetched, highly probably even. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/shield-ai-and-aws-collaborate-to-deliver-mission-autonomy-at-fleet-scale/#:~:text=Conclusion,team%20or%20Shield%20AI%20representative.
The AI they’re describing in that article is pattern recognition. Models are trained, validated, and then implemented in closed systems. The F-35 would be connected via datalink to closed military systems not pinging random cell towers for information as it flies around
Ok but let's look at the bigger picture - Removing local servers mitigate further data collection used for data processing and pattern recognition. The existing systems would be inhibited to working with they currently have.
It'd be like bombing a missile factory, which wouldn't stop missiles already mounted on launchers/TELs from engaging their designated targets but it'll halt or reduce the chances of future attacks.
I’m not disagreeing with you on anything other than pointing out that what you’re describing would not impact the F-35. Targeting a data center would not impact the ability of a previously trained AI pattern recognition model. Once it’s done it’s done. Maybe it could impact future training, but those datasets aren’t being housed in Amazon servers in the Middle East. They’re offline, compartmented data sets.
That fails to account for the fact that the datacenters the F-35’s AI is being trained on are all US based, and the mainland US is safe as houses so your point doesn’t really make sense their either
So this is a specialized application AI model, not LLM? I think that will depend on whether it's Edge( completely run on F35 itself) or F35 sensor just collect data then send to data center to analyze then return back to the plane. I guess it's depends on the complexity of the model, computational and energy need, the durable requirements we usually see in military hardware chip, so it can range from run on a closed system using embedded chips like Jetson/Orin or have to send to data center.
The idea of recruiting tech workers through the United States Tech Force sounds smart, but I’m skeptical that 1,000 hires can really modernize the entire federal tech stack.
AI infrastructure is clearly the new geopolitical battleground — whoever controls the biggest data centers and compute power will dominate the next decade
Making tech companies pay the electricity costs for AI data centers seems fair. Otherwise regular consumers might end up subsidizing Big Tech’s AI boom.
AI policy announcements always sound exciting, but the real question is whether the America’s AI Action Plan is still on schedule or quietly slipping behind.
Possibly an even bigger issue than electricity is going to be WATER! Especially in centers built in areas where they need WELL water for homes and/or agriculture. Like the panhandle of Texas.
ReplyDeleteA pledge = marketing. A law = serious.
ReplyDeleteif only someone had a tanker full of extra oil ….
ReplyDeleteThe devil is always in the details.
ReplyDeleteThis is a huge propaganda push for "ai" that actually changes nothing.
If they have to bring, build or buy, they will buy......
Like they do now........
That is driving electricity rates up........
Because it's bought on contracts on an open bidding market like oil.
This changes nothing.
Exactly it just so he can say "I alone solved it!", when in fact he did nothing. But his base will believe it.
DeleteKeyword "new" data centers. They already started building these massive centers that are going to double electric bills and take up all clean water ai knows there isn't going to be a second Gen of ai centers after this on this scale.
ReplyDeleteI guarantee this "promise" does not cover the centers they already spend billions on currently in progress.
Dont be fooled .. this is all part of a plan. Small Modular Reactors are coming to a warehouse near you. The Trump administration has already trashed previously established codes and requirements for nuclear power installations
ReplyDeleteThe technology just doesn't scale down for reasons that can't really be overcome (ie physics)
Deletehttps://youtu.be/6c_H69pj26s
Random YouTuber makes a video about a very specific architecture that hasn't panned out. So must be physically impossible. Let's all ignore that we've had fleets of nuclear powered warships and submarines for the last 70 years
DeleteYouTuber isn't some random, and you obviously didn't watch the video or you'd know that your points were clearly addressed.
DeleteHe literally didn't address it.
DeleteWhats the timestamp.
I'm not watching it again because you're too lazy.
DeleteThe answer is that they use uranium refined to weapons grade that only a few countries can make and whose sale and export is highly regulated AND they have no concern for costs or economics.
Yep I totally agree. So why did you claim it was a physics issue before? It's very demonstrably not. Its a procurement problem.
DeleteNo, physics guarantees that you cannot run these economically.
DeleteIt doesn't matter if it's physically possible if it ends up being 10 times the cost of any other energy source.
Radioactive material would be nearly free if it weren't guarded. Its literally just a rock.
DeleteEfficiency is only an issue because of the artificial scarcity.
They make button cell sized nuclear batteries for pace makers. Take a couple hundred of those u can run a house.
Not a physics issue. It's a procurement issue.
"Radioactive material would be nearly free if it weren't guarded. Its literally just a rock."
DeleteYeah, just a teeny tiny itty bitty issue of nuclear weapons. No big deal.
"Efficiency is only an issue because of the artificial scarcity."
No, efficiency is an issue because of what the video describes.
"They make button cell sized nuclear batteries for pace makers."
And how much does each one cost?
"Not a physics issue. It's a procurement issue."
You still have to drive the same old turbine, which you would know if you had watched the video.
None of the points youre making aid you're argument that it's a physics issue.
DeleteThe video doesn't say that either.
You don't need to drive a turbine. Do you think that those button cell batteries have mini turbines it?? Obviously not. U place a radioactive rock next to a radiosensitive diode you get electricity.
The cost of those batteries are not a physics issue either.
You need the turbine for Efficient operation.
Which again wouldn't be an issue if not for artificial scarcity.
Nowhere did I say that it would be a good idea to let people have access to nuclear material. You're arguing against ghosts on that one and has nothing to do with physics.
Jesus Christ dude. 🤦🏻♂️
DeleteI never said these technologies were impossible due to physics.
I said they were not economically viable due to physics.
If the end goal is to get them out onto the market then the distinction between these two things is irrelevant.
You're just tilting at windmills at this point.
Nuclear is a viable option when it's going in your pacemaker and your health insurance company is paying for it.
Nuclear is a viable option for submarines and aircraft carriers when you have an unlimited and unaccountable military budget.
SMRs are not economically viable due to physics. The video explains that point very clearly.
They are not economically viable due to artificial supply chain constraints.
DeleteThat's the only thing making it not economically viable.
Supply chain constraints are not a physics issue
You're simply wrong.
DeleteOK. You win. Supply chain constraints are a physics issue. I'll go read the supply chain section in my physics text book
DeleteIll just leave the conversation with this as clearly you you wont take the time.
DeletePrompt: "is scaling down nuclear reactor a physics issue or supply chain issue?"
Gemini:
"Scaling down nuclear reactors—often referred to as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) or microreactors—is primarily a supply chain and economic issue, compounded by significant engineering challenges rather than fundamental physical impossibility."
ChatGPT:
"Short answer: mostly an engineering/economics and supply-chain issue, not a fundamental physics limit.
From a physics standpoint, nothing prevents small reactors.
byop?
ReplyDeleteWait, what if we need to pull the plug?
ReplyDeleteWe’re going to have to be trying to storm data centers fighting off waves of drones and robots to shut it off
DeleteThe more self sufficient these data centers are, the less leverage the public will be able to hold over them, should that need arise.
ReplyDeleteThe less power luddite redditors, blogs, have the better.
DeleteUnless of course we ever managed to get back a government that exists for the people instead of for the billionaires.
Delete"a pledge saying they will generate or buy all the electricity their future AI data centers need"
ReplyDeleteWTF how else would they get power...?
Am I stupid, or is this meeting just another fake performative timewaster?
They wouldn’t actually be paying for it. A lot of it would be subsidized and then the power companies like they’ve been doing, jack up the rates for everyone in the area to make the data center power costs lower. I don’t think anything real will come of this because it’s Trump, but ultimately no the ai companies wouldn’t really be paying for it
Delete"WTF how else would they get power...?"
DeleteBy connecting to the existing grid knucklehead
How else would be the utilities companies charge their usage to everyone else because supply and demand
DeleteThat's called "buying" the electricity.
DeleteSo Trump is pretending to do something, except he's just asking them to make more power or buy it... So exactly what they are already doing.
DeleteUtility companies charge rates based on total usage. For areas like loudoun county in Virginia the extra power usage from the data centers also gets passed to regular residents. In some cases tripling an average home owners electricity bill after a data center gets put in. What trump is saying here, is data centers have to pay the entire bill themselves for what they use, instead of being able to have the surrounding neighbor hood pay for it.
Tl;dr Trump wants to reduce electricity costs for the regular home owner in areas with data centers.
Exactly and building a power plant requires license and you actually need time. It is easily 3 to 5 years before another new power plant pop up based on the current building schedule. Next they start buying all the concrete, is trump going to say go find your own material and stop buying from the same source as house builder. ???
DeleteSMR’s Are the answer. Been in the plan for a while
DeleteThey don't want them buying only from existing power sources, they want them to build their owner power plants. If they don't it would drive up cost because they would be using all the supply.
DeleteThe reality is, they already have to do this just for the sake of logistics.
DeleteThey're building data centers that take 8 GW of electricity in areas that historically only use 12 GW of electricity.
Trump gets to look like he’s the boss to the tech companies, makes voters happy. Companies get to not change their behavior.
DeleteLooks like power, housing , water bills will be rise again soon.
DeleteComment has been removed
ReplyDeleteSurprised this is the first time. Surely telecommunications centers have been targeted before. These are far more resilient than a phone switchboard (interestingly specifically with war in mind, since the invention of the internet thanks to DARPA and others), but are a bit analogous and even evolved from the same place.
ReplyDeleteThe difference with modern computing datacenters, vs old-school telecom switching centers, is how carefully, and fragilely balanced a modern datacenter is between power consumption, heat generation, and heat dissipation (e.g. air conditioning/cooling).
ReplyDeleteDisrupt any of that, and the glass house shatters, and it's surprisingly easy to disrupt that careful balance.
Without resorting to missiles, bombs, or drones.
You add in the kaboom quotient, and it's really, really, really easy. None of this stuff is designed to resist this.
The real solution is to not poke the hornets nest with the broomstick, and start wars that result in drones blowing up datacenters.
Why not considering that AWS facilities were not completely commercial?
ReplyDeleteMost cloud providers have a sovereign government sector. AWS is no exception, so yes crippling a government's infrastructure is usually part of war.
DeleteThere’s no way AWS has government cloud facilities in a non US country.
DeleteThey do https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/opening-the-aws-european-sovereign-cloud/
DeleteNot US cloud.
DeleteEU government cloud would likely have EU citizenship/background requirements, like the US would likely have.
? yes
DeleteThe inference in the previous post was that by hitting data centers in the Middle East it was hurting the USA.
DeleteIt really doesn’t… at all
I don’t think militarizing DCs should be the next step. Having to park an Avenger ADA battery onto Amazon’s sites would probably attract more attention.
ReplyDeleteIt really wouldn't make sense to blow up the horse stables anymore, right?
ReplyDeleteI've thought about this for years specifically when visiting an colo that is dead north of Dulles runway 1C/19C (not sure if I can say which?). Whether accidental or on purpose, a plane into that building where numerous gov agencies are housed would cripple the country for a few days at the minimum. Yes, most have backup colos on the west or south, but failover is rarely perfect.
ReplyDeleteTo be totally honest it doesn’t matter what run way at Dulles. That airport is surrounded on all sides by the same thing, just different companies.
DeleteUS and Israel are using AI in their war planning right? Wouldn't that make data centres legitimate targets because they are command and control nodes?
ReplyDeleteisrael has attacked banks, fuel depots, electrical infrastructure, and civilian buildings that may have soldiers in them because they support the military in some way. that's a much lower threshold than the ai explicitly used for operations
DeleteYou could also word this as “Iran places critical military infrastructure within civilian facilities, rendering them valid military targets”.
DeleteThe article said these data centers are representative of us economic/technological links, and not explicitly used for military purposes.
i could word it like that, but i'm capable of independent thought.
Deleteamazon's aws is directly used by israel's unit 8200. the datacentres in uae and qatar are part of the "pax silica" initiative with the u.s., which is advertised as a commercial partnership but has dual-use implications, like all the commercial ai software being used by the military (like anthrooic's claude or openai's chatgpt. google and microsoft also has exclusive contracts with the idf for use of its infrastructure to power israel's military ai services).
dual use objects are valid targets when used for military purposes, but again, we're at the countervalue stage of warfare where you don't need legal justification to attack an object so long as it furthers your strategic goals.
Valid point on Israel, it was 6am and I was really only thinking of the US, and the context of the article in my comment. But I would personally argue UNCLOS violations of non-party nations are the legally speaking low bar of the war. And yeah, would agree on the stage of warfare.
Delete"You could also word this as “Iran places critical military infrastructure within civilian facilities, rendering them valid military targets”.
Deletemeanwhile IDF headquarters is in the middle of Tel Aviv
Is a facility the same thing as a city?
DeleteUhhhhhhhhh
ReplyDeletehttps://www.twz.com/air/ai-is-now-helping-the-f-35-spot-enemy-air-defenses
That’s a little different. Striking data centers wouldn’t impact algorithmic training on a closed system inside the aircraft. F-35s aren’t flying around connecting to Amazon servers lol
DeleteAmazon (and Google) collaborates with the Israeli government on crunching data with their cloud servers for Project Nimbus. Defence contractors like Palantir on a partnership with Anthropic worked on hosting AIs on AWS servers.
Deletehttps://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2024/Anthropic-and-Palantir-Partner-to-Bring-Claude-AI-Models-to-AWS-for-U.S.-Government-Intelligence-and-Defense-Operations/
Amazon literally has technical execs in DoD/DoW outfits working on mission critical architecture in the autonomous space. F35s connecting to AWS isn't remotely far-fetched, highly probably even.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/shield-ai-and-aws-collaborate-to-deliver-mission-autonomy-at-fleet-scale/#:~:text=Conclusion,team%20or%20Shield%20AI%20representative.
The AI they’re describing in that article is pattern recognition. Models are trained, validated, and then implemented in closed systems. The F-35 would be connected via datalink to closed military systems not pinging random cell towers for information as it flies around
DeleteOk but let's look at the bigger picture - Removing local servers mitigate further data collection used for data processing and pattern recognition. The existing systems would be inhibited to working with they currently have.
DeleteIt'd be like bombing a missile factory, which wouldn't stop missiles already mounted on launchers/TELs from engaging their designated targets but it'll halt or reduce the chances of future attacks.
I’m not disagreeing with you on anything other than pointing out that what you’re describing would not impact the F-35. Targeting a data center would not impact the ability of a previously trained AI pattern recognition model. Once it’s done it’s done. Maybe it could impact future training, but those datasets aren’t being housed in Amazon servers in the Middle East. They’re offline, compartmented data sets.
DeleteThat fails to account for the fact that the datacenters the F-35’s AI is being trained on are all US based, and the mainland US is safe as houses so your point doesn’t really make sense their either
DeleteComment deleted by user
DeleteYes, but the last part of my statement is where closed comes in. It’s not reaching out to an external server to do pattern recognition
DeleteSo this is a specialized application AI model, not LLM? I think that will depend on whether it's Edge( completely run on F35 itself) or F35 sensor just collect data then send to data center to analyze then return back to the plane. I guess it's depends on the complexity of the model, computational and energy need, the durable requirements we usually see in military hardware chip, so it can range from run on a closed system using embedded chips like Jetson/Orin or have to send to data center.
DeleteThis SUCKS. I had to send my house slave across town to pick up my dinner because Uber Eats was down.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of recruiting tech workers through the United States Tech Force sounds smart, but I’m skeptical that 1,000 hires can really modernize the entire federal tech stack.
ReplyDeleteAI infrastructure is clearly the new geopolitical battleground — whoever controls the biggest data centers and compute power will dominate the next decade
ReplyDeleteMaking tech companies pay the electricity costs for AI data centers seems fair. Otherwise regular consumers might end up subsidizing Big Tech’s AI boom.
ReplyDeleteThe America’s AI Action Plan sounds ambitious, but scaling power generation fast enough for AI could be the real bottleneck.
ReplyDeletebull
Deleteshit
What worries me is the military angle. AI tools are already being used to identify targets and speed up battle planning.
ReplyDeleteData centers becoming targets in wars shows how critical digital infrastructure has become — they’re basically strategic assets now.
ReplyDeleteIf the government pushes AI development too aggressively, we might end up with a tech arms race between countries.
ReplyDeleteI’m curious whether the massive AI infrastructure investments like Stargate LLC will actually deliver results or just burn billions.
ReplyDeleteThe line between Silicon Valley and the military seems to be disappearing as AI becomes central to national security.
ReplyDeleteAI policy announcements always sound exciting, but the real question is whether the America’s AI Action Plan is still on schedule or quietly slipping behind.
ReplyDeleteAI, energy, and the military all in the same announcement… feels like we just skipped straight to the cyberpunk part of the timeline.
ReplyDeleteEveryone’s talking about AI models but the real story is the power grid. Those data centers are going to eat electricity like crazy.
ReplyDeleteA ‘Tech Corps’ for the government actually sounds like a good idea. The federal tech stack is ancient.
ReplyDeleteModern warfare + AI + massive data centers… this is starting to sound like the early plot of a dystopian movie.
ReplyDeleteIf the US doesn’t scale AI infrastructure fast, someone else will. This stuff is basically the new space race.
ReplyDeleteI’m curious how they plan to power all these AI data centers without sending electricity prices through the roof.
ReplyDeletePeople arguing politics while the real story is that AI is becoming national security infrastructure.
ReplyDeletefacts
DeleteHonestly surprised it took this long for the government to treat AI development like a strategic priorit
ReplyDeleteThe moment data centers become strategic military targets, you know the world has changed.
ReplyDeleteso...
DeleteEveryone debating AI models, meanwhile governments are quietly planning the compute and energy war behind the scenes
ReplyDelete