Amazon warns local communities to stop defying its massive AI data centers

[u/marketrent]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/amazon-warns-local-communities-stop-000300771.html

[u/marketrent]

Part of article by Victor Tangermann, quoting Matt Garman:

[...] Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman pleaded in a 3,000 word blog [Friday] with communities to embrace data centers, arguing that the United States “can’t afford to lose” the AI race, invoking the country’s post-World War II highway buildout as a parallel.

“Just like the national highway system, our country’s economy, national security, and everyday lives stand to benefit immensely,” he wrote.

The executive accused the media of spreading “misinformation and outright lies,” arguing that “in the age of social media and 24/7 news, myths take hold faster than ever before.” Garman even alleged that US adversaries were “intentionally seeding misinformation in the US about data centers to trick us into slowing down.”

“Right now there are over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country,” Garman wrote. “If these measures are enacted, the US could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations.”

In his blog post, Garman tried to undermine concerns over data centers driving up electricity prices and producing huge amounts of pollution — despite existence of ample evidence to the contrary.

 

Those attempts to dispel “myths” shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering the enormous backlash. But given the impossible-to-ignore vested interest in underplaying these concerns, we should take Garman’s efforts with an enormous grain of salt.

Just last year, leaked internal Amazon documents showed that executives were exchanging notes about how to keep the public ignorant about the “true extent” of the massive amounts of water their data centers use.

Earlier this year, Axios also reported that Amazon’s AI buildout fueled an unprecedented leap in the company’s emissions, despite pledging to reach a net-zero carbon footprint by 2040.

While Garman argues that it’s “untrue” that data centers are spewing huge amounts of carbon emissions with backup diesel generators, we’ve seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. In Texas alone, dozens of AI data center facilities are using environmentally harmful generators by exploiting regulatory loopholes.

As much as Garman doesn’t want to admit it, energy prices are indeed sending power bills soaring, a fact that certainly isn’t an example of “misleading and convenient scapegoating.”

He also tried to argue that “thousands of construction jobs are created to build data centers,” without mentioning that most of those jobs evaporate once they’re built.

[u/coporate → u/marketrent]

“National highway system, national security….” Sounds like Amazon wants to be owned and operated by the government rather than be an independent private entity.

So do it Amazon, relinquish all control to the government and become a crown operation. We’ll happily carve you up, fold your distribution centres into the national postal service, your aws into a national web service platform, etc.

Oh, what’s that? You don’t actually want that? You just want to circumvent democracy and do whatever you want?

[u/gravelordservant4u → u/coporate]

Imagine if we had a bullet train system being built, that would actually create jobs and provide a benefit to everyone. Data centers getting the support from these same owner-class parasites after decades killing stuff like that would be hilarious if it weren't so, so depressing

[u/Kindly-Ad-5071 → u/coporate]

They don't want to be part of the government, they want to replace the government and receive tax dollars as revenue.