Also worth mentioning that the target audience is also likely interested in enriching themselves for their efforts (as do most of us). The problem with China in this regard is that such people will be rightly suspicious that their intellectual property will be stolen or simply taken. Likewise any wealth you do get can be taken for any reason, yourself deported or imprisoned, etc etc.

You have a firm like NVDIA that currently has a market cap of $4.5 trillion. If it were a country and we compared GDP (this is an apples to dragonfruit comparison, I know ) NVDIA would be 4th on the list after USA, China, and Germany and ahead of Japan

  United States 29.1T
  China 18.7T
  Germany 4.6T
  Japan 4.0 T

Why can't...why shouldn't a firm like NVDIA, MSFT, ORCL, FB, AAPL etc build out their own capacity? For this one project they could by 5000+ solar panels, some acreage in gods country, all the battery packs they need, and tweak the software to run during the optimal times. Do it all in-house for relatively cheap.

Here's what I think pisses people off....they don't do this, rather these firms make false promises about nuclear but then squeeze their way into existing generation and transmission, raising prices for residential customers. In essence arbitraging. "Hey, we can spend XX billion on our own generating capacity, or we can take from existing capacity + transmission, raising rates for everyone and ourselves, but it will be a few billion cheaper than building out our own generating capacity." They have trillions but are still sticking it to society so the SVP of blah blah blah can make his quarterly numbers

It also speaks to how truly invested in this AI race they are. Which is to say not as much as they advertise since they are only putting a fraction of their sizable cash towards renting AI 'stuff'

About the only good thing that may come of this is that the extra capacity and transmission will be available for EV's and residential electrification (away from nat gas) when the AI bubble deflates. Not sure what to do with all the GPU's, maybe artificial coral reefs? Grind into silicon dust and make more solar panels?

Presumably there are reasons unbeknownst to the public where building a data center there makes sense. But seems really odd that given the energy requirements for data centers that they would decide to plop one down here. Cost of construction must be at least 2x that of the mainland...so also weird.

Maybe a cover story for some NSA listening post? Looks like the have dorms for the workers though....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_West_Point_Immigration_Detention_Centre

This. Money is fungible, whatever these seemingly specifically allocated taxes go towards it first goes into a big pot, then is doled out. In the current admin they have decided to use the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to direct/redirect funding to their political aims despite the original intent, or even the law(s) passed by the congress.

Also what the previous poster mentioned. A person may think they will never fly anywhere (sad) , just as I think I will never drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana. So why should my tax dollars go to paying for I-69 ? But then later, a friend is getting married in Ft Wayne and I go. Better that my tax money was used to make that road in advance versus asking them to build it a month before the wedding.

I would be curious if there is some general formula on best way to apportion "use-tax" and "good for overall society tax" in percentage terms. Like

Unfortunately I doubt it. Methinks this was floating a trial balloon to get the idea of govt investment/bailout, etc I mean the current administration has already done this with other firms Intel most notably. So the CFO of OpenAI (formerly of NextDoor...how's that stock doing?) is looking at the books and realizing that there is an increasing probability that these stratospheric-valued $500B-$1T contracts within Oracle/OpenAI/NVDIA, etc are likely to collapse at some point. So float the idea of govt bailout for "National Security" now and then when its time try and cash in.

I'm going to start writing my "Big Short" movie script for the AI era....looking for casting suggestions.

"Zuck takes a dump on Threads"

My own experience on social media recently was looking at a YouTube video on a device where I was not logged into YouTube. Watched the vid I wanted, then of course a new one pops up and I lazilly/habitually start to watch it, even though inane. About 45 seconds in, I'm like this can't be right...poke around a bit and yeah, at the start was a tiny icon "Sora" that flashed for a moment. I was watching AI slop. Done with that. Eventually 90% of YT..99.9% Facebook/Insta will be fake crap. Then I (hope) that people will leave en masse and read a book or something.

I'll agree with the post title...not sure about the rest.

I use Wikipedia weekly, basically to look up stuff I see/hear/read elsewhere. For example somewhere I read about the "Great Unconformity". Go to Wikipedia there is a very detailed article, images, links, etc. just what I need. And importantly it clarified a mis-representation in the original source I read.

So yeah, for people who are looking up other people. especially political figures, or ongoing geo-political conflicts in Wikipedia . Yeah good luck, and be ready to be rage-baited if that's how you want to spend your time. But please leave Wikipedia alone...make your version if you must.

Came here to say the same thing. "...Always Chickens Out"

So much damn winning happening that I feel like a Tar Heels fan.

Actually, I'm calling it now. Bill Belichick as next US president. I mean he is a Patriot after all.

Real.

Unintentional Austin Powers reference. Love it.

It does write itself.

Soldier in trench on the frontlines in Eastern Poland. Incoming artillery rounds thud closer and closer. The an alarm for an incoming drown swarm headed for his sector. He quickly begins to configure countermeasures, and ....

A "Hey soldier, would you like to meet women over 40 in your area?" ad pops up. Unable to find the close pop-up X in time he perishes.

BTW so nice that there is continuity in the graft of DOD procurement. Different names, but the scam still remains the same.

Thanks for the link to the article chart, very informative. However wtf is up with California ?!? They have a lot of renewables, but also the 2nd highest prices after Hawaii.

asking rhetorically

I think we should go one step better and work to lower the human population. Not "Moonraker" style, but rather the tried and true family planning and financial incentives. This of course requires social change, primarily in moving away from the pyramid-scheme of economic growth based on popping out new consumers. And frequently (positive) societal change is harder than engineering or chemistry. Certainly less sexy than sleek techno-solving problems.

With 2025 technology and a 1990 world population this planet would be quite nice, very livable, and sustainable.

Admittedly I am not deeply knowledgeable on this. While they are not issuing debt like corporate bond style debt, they are still borrowing this money. I's not coming from current revenue or capital they have amassed, rather it is in the form of agreements with other companies. Reminds me of 'swap' derivatives used by financial institutions, hedge funds, etc.

So for example, NVIDA lends Oracle $100 billion in GPUs, then Oracle lends OpenAI $100 billion in data center space, then OpenAI lends NVIDA $100 billion in compute. Pretty well balanced unless/until the value of any one of these falls.
-If the market turns to smaller, cheaper chips then the $100 billion of NVIDA drops and upsets the balance.
-If other models turn out to be more popular, cheaper than Chat GPT the value of compute drops and upsets the balance.
-If capacity if data centers starts outstripping demand, the value of Oracle declines and you get the picture.

any of the above scenarios can be rebutted, no question. The issue is that these of these have to stay more or less in balance or things can start to unwind. We've seen it again and again in the financial world (e.g mortgages/CMO's) , and really this current AI investing is just financial deal making clothed in "Tech"