There is an increased public discussion about the race to build datacenters in the USA that are part of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race for superiority. There are multiple facets within the discussion and some things to consider that might not be at the forefront, yet.
Overall, there is a global race to build the best AI system that is not dissimilar to the nuclear arms race. Arguably the use of AI as a weapon is one possibility; while the second aspect surrounds strategic economic power.
The USA is poised very favorably in this AI race due to the advanced tech industry in America and recent national security moves made by President Trump in the tech sector surrounding strategic critical minerals and domestic chip production. However, no one is quite sure where China is in their AI development and last year’s explosive revelation around China’s “Deepseek” model shocked the U.S. tech industry due to its advanced intelligence prowess.
With China and the USA both in this AI race, and the need for massive investment in datacenters to do the processing needed for an artificial intelligence brain of such significant capacity, there is a sense of urgency in the tech industry that is surfacing around the country. Simultaneously, with datacenters becoming more controversial, suddenly the geopolitical intelligence operations enter the picture.
Currently, it is well accepted inside the tech industry that part of China’s strategy against the USA in this AI race is to slow down American system development. As a consequence, it is beginning to surface that Beijing may be funding voices inside the USA to rally against the building of datacenters. Essentially, China funding voices, real or artificially boosted influence operations, to amplify domestic opposition to the datacenters.
Anytime the intelligence operations become part of a domestic issue that has national security implications, things get opaque, cloudy and muddy pretty quick. Is datacenter opposition organic – actual citizens and communities pushing back against the development in their towns and/or cities or is the opposition to the datacenters a form of foreign influence operation?
These questions become challenging to answer, and discernment becomes very critical. The truth might even be a combination depending on the localized opposition and/or regional importance. One thing is very clear, building the world’s leading AI system is being rushed with an urgency similar to atomic bomb development.
Here’s a great example of that type of question.
Today Gallup released a poll showing 72 percent of Americans are opposed to building AI datacenters in their area. [POLLING HERE]
The topline sounds pretty straightforward right? 7 in 10 Americans oppose “the construction of a data center in their area to support artificial intelligence technology.” That’s the polled result. Indeed, this poll is being cited in numerous media articles now emphasizing opposition to the datacenters.
However, put on your discernment cap and look at it closely. Notice the date of the poll, “March 2-18, 2026.” Why did Gallup wait two months to release the results of a poll on May 13, 2026?
Did the date of release today have something to do with the timing of President Trump taking a list of key U.S. tech and finance leaders to Beijing to confront China on exactly this AI issue? …. Or was it coincidental?
This is where you have to make up your own mind as to whether this Gallup poll is an organic outcome, an organically timed release, on an issue that just happens to be at the heart of the geopolitical negotiations currently underway in Beijing between the USA and China. Or was there some kind of influence operation around it?
I really don’t know the answer, but I’m well aware of how the influence game is played once various intelligence operations identify something as critically important. Who funded this Gallup poll? Why did they wait to release it?
At the same time this battle to win the AI race is underway, there is a psychological battle to influence the outcome. China plays this game very well and they know how to draw on emotional influence operations; that’s why Beijing spends so much time, money and human capital on North America.
Again, opposition to datacenter development can be entirely organic, justified and righteous. Simultaneously, the information around opposition to datacenters can be amplified, enhanced or become part of an influence operation to win a battle. The truth can also be a mix of both, but discovering the truth first begins with an admission of the possibility and a decision to put emotion away and think logically about the controversy.
I’m no fan of Elon Musk, but he said something in/around this issue that is very thoughtful and well presented:
Musk: “After World War 2, the US could have basically taken over the world and any country. Like we got nukes, nobody else got nukes. We don’t even have to lose soldiers. Which country do you want?”
One nation on earth held a weapon nobody else had.
Total dominance. Zero competition. No risk of retaliation.
Every empire in history that held that kind of advantage used it.
Rome. The Mongols. The British. The Ottomans.
They conquered until they collapsed.
America had a bigger advantage than all of them combined.
And it rebuilt the countries it just defeated.
Musk: “The United States actually helped rebuild countries. So it helped rebuild Europe, it helped rebuild Japan. This is very unusual behavior, almost unprecedented.”
Almost unprecedented?
It had never happened before. Not once in 5,000 years of recorded history.
The Marshall Plan wasn’t foreign aid.
It was the most radical act of restraint any superpower ever committed.
America turned its enemies into allies. Turned rubble into economies. Turned surrender into partnership.
Germany went from ashes to the economic engine of Europe in a generation.
Japan went from unconditional surrender to the third largest economy on earth.
Three years after the war, America was flying food into Berlin.
A city in the heart of the nation that just tried to destroy it.
That’s not policy.
That’s a civilization deciding what it is at the exact moment it has the power to be anything.
You’re being told a story right now.
That America is the villain of history.
You hear it everywhere. Media. Universities. Social platforms.
Musk: “There’s always like, well America’s done bad things. Well of course America’s done bad things, but one needs to look at the whole track record.”
Every nation on earth has dark chapters. Every single one.
The difference is what a country does when nobody can stop it.
And when nobody could stop America, it fed its enemies and rebuilt their cities.
Musk: “The history of China suggests that China is not acquisitive. Meaning they’re not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries.”
Probably right.
China has historically built walls, not fleets.
But the real question isn’t about borders anymore.
We’re approaching a moment that mirrors 1945 in ways nobody has fully processed yet.
AI is going to give a handful of people a power advantage that makes nuclear monopoly look quaint.
If someone is going to hold that kind of power, who do you want it to be?
The country that conquered when it could? Or the one that rebuilt when it didn’t have to?
Every alliance. Every trade route. Every economy.
Billions lifted out of poverty.
All of it traces back to one act of restraint that had never been done before.
And carries no guarantee of being repeated.
The most powerful thing America ever did wasn’t building the bomb.
It was what it didn’t do after. {source}
Artificial Intelligence (AI) development, winning the AI race, has been identified as the #1 national security issue of the next few years. The winner in this digital war could turn off the lights, pollute the water, hack elections, empty your bank account, control communication systems and generally create nationwide chaos without ever firing a kinetic missile.
AI is both an offensive weapon and a defensive weapon guarding against AI attacks.
Within the race and setting aside that technocrats will reap billions from it regardless of outcome, the regional AI datacenters are likely to be a political issue. Think about 2028. AI and the development of these datacenters could be a very divisive topic.
How do you feel about it?
Sundance, thank you for the information. I am going to find a man who discusses this and has knowledge of this suject for your perusal. His contention is that there is another technology that is rising that makes Data centers in essence obsolete. If this is even remotely correct, the Data centers are water and power intensive to a magnitude.
Jay Valentine?
National security issue or not, nobody wants one next to their neighborhood. And that’s where they are building them. Giant concrete walls bringing down their property values. It would be different if they were building them out in the countryside. Visit northern Virginia and you will understand.
They do intend to build data centers in the countryside. But first they will string huge electrical wire monstrosities thru the countryside. And that energy will go to Virginia and DC, to feed the ravenous data centers already built there. The “countryside” will pay for this. The politicians will get money for this. But the largest, oldest, first county in this countryside is Hampshire County WV. Where George Washington surveyed the land. Historic places. Where there are mountains and healing springs and fresh water and beautiful farms and star filled skies. Where people go to church and children can play outside. And this technology will slice right thru mountains, homes, farms, families and property and privacy rights. Windmills are already killing our eagles. Data Centers will drain our aquifers, our fresh water, our streams and rivers. I hope new energy tech will quickly emerge and render data centers obsolete before our beautiful state of WV is destroyed.
THEY ARE OBSOLETE!!! Black Swan Destroys The Data Center Narrative
https://theblackswanfiles.substack.com/p/black-swan-destroys-the-data-center
When any data center application can be shown to run on an Apple mini – the scam is up.
I dont trust the experts of any field or office.
Americans have been pushed to the dump in Support of profits for those on top.
The govt forced vax and poisoning of people. Govt created poor food standard and allows poisoning of our air, food & water.
I would say yes we need to win the race against communism. But how about we fix our borders and these other issues before pushing our citizens and veterans on the street.
I trust Trump but people arent doing well and govt has destroyed savings of all people.
When I was born it was over 700 oz of gold to buy a house and now it is under 100. This is due to govt printing money creating inflation.
GDP is meaningless when it only feeds illegals and the top while the middle class is walked over
Newcleus released the song call Computer Age (push the button) over 40 years ago.
God-given wealth (ti.e, whether, soul & offspring) with free to protect it. Instead we trade that for man-made riches ($, status & power).
What will this AI do for people other than elimante them?
Seems like every advancement made leads to falling birth rates and societal decline.
So what is the real benefit? Do we get to be more evil than China?
Some times you have to look in a completely different set of information and rejection of the current path to find the right path.
AI will not benefit humanity when evil rules.
That power is not going to belong to countries.
That power is going to belong to people; maybe lots of people eventually, but first a very few people whose power spans nations and who are onto themselves empires without a capital, without an army to lose, without a people. Their rivals and their allies are each other.
Many of those people were on the trip. Do you know any of them who you believe would exercise benevolence and restraint? There’s a phrase “FU money” with the obvious meaning and the point being not being beholden to have to do things you don’t want to get by. This is “FU power” meaning not beholden on another to do as they wish.
Also, like nuclear dominance, the window is limited in time. Whomever holds the opportunity must use it or forego it swiftly.
IMO the ‘best’ of them is Musk and in my mind’s eye I see him wishing to become the Tessier-Ashpool clan from the Gibson cyberpunk novels. (Which, by the by, is not a terrible idea for these data centers; nice and cold, abundant energy once you’ve hauled all the parts up the well, and no noise pollution! I wonder who has companies to go to space and to communicate data from space to Earth?)
We need data centers but of course they a villainized every single night by our communist local news. They cover in detail these meeting of regular “folks” against the data centers. Smells very fishy to me.
Regardless of my feelings about the changes AI will bring–WILL bring–to culture and civilization…
despite every romantic notion I feel about anything from the past…
working through every alarm and urge toward resistance in my liberal arts and theology educated brain…
and hours spent in regular, calendared, large group discussions with the finest and brightest men in my community (educators, doctors, lawyers, creatives, and entrepreneurs) about our best response to AI (and how to prepare kids for that reality)…
there is one incontravertable thought I cannot defeat or dismiss:
As a national sovereignty issue, IT IS A NECESSITY.
End of debate.
It’s time to get on with facing humanity’s greatest challenge.
—–
Can’t help but recall a scene from “The Magnificent Ambersons” set in around 1910, when young George confronts automobile inventor and manufacturer Eugene Morgan, claiming that his automobiles should have never been invented. Instead of taking the bait, Morgan replies with calm, thoughtful reflection:
“I’m not sure George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward, they may be a step backward in civilization. May be that they won’t add to the beauty of the world or the life of the men’s souls, I’m not sure.
But automobiles have come.
And almost all outwards things will be different because of what they bring. They’re going to alter war, and they’re going to alter peace. And I think men’s minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right. May be that in ten to twenty years from now that, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn’t be able to defend the gasoline engine but agree with George – that automobiles had no business to be invented.”
But AI has come.
Spot on. This is also the argument against dodohead anti-2A people (not the leaders who know full well what they’re doing). Firearms can’t be uninvented; so our Constitution democratizes their ownership and use so that power is shared.
Democrats ubder Truman (kkk) rebuilt Germany with a Nazi leftover government after the war. They created the German intelligence machine with one of Hitlers main intelligence chiefs, Reinhardt Gehlen. He was in an out of the US consulting with the C1A an original Nazi organization itself. The socialists and communists eventually took the helm of the Democrat party using the so called Civil rights movement. They then moved to change the nature of the CIA and it’s foreign clients. Today the party and the agency is half socialist half gangster.
People have no idea what is really needed, or the impacts, to the US economy, US dominance and leadership. If you make a poll where no one understands what is at stake and how their lives will be impacted, of course you get this result. Let’s only tell people there is a negative impact to power in their area and do a poll. How about sharing the benefits to the community from the jobs, revenue and world leadership of their part of the solution for our country? Luddites battles from the anti-Trump anti-progress crowd. I vote yes, let’s GO!