This piece nails a foundational point that too many tech narratives skip: technology is always grounded in the terrain that sustains it—energy, labor, material, and enforcement infrastructure. Too often we talk about “innovation” as if software floats free of physics, finance, and societal conditions.
Understanding the terrain beneath technology reframes the AI debate from what can be built to what can be sustained. That’s a crucial shift.
Thanks for the kind words. I’ll be posting a piece in the near future one the public policy impacts and issues that should be considered in the current AI build-out boom. For most people a 300MW data center sounds abstract, but when you compare it do other industrial uses, that’s a huge point load on our system. The only thing that’s close are steel mini-mills. Even car factories and refineries might only use 30-50 MW. These data centers are a huge industrial build-out that’s not getting any coherent national policy response. To be clear I’m not anti-AI. But the current free-for-all have impacts that need to be considered.
This piece nails a foundational point that too many tech narratives skip: technology is always grounded in the terrain that sustains it—energy, labor, material, and enforcement infrastructure. Too often we talk about “innovation” as if software floats free of physics, finance, and societal conditions.
Understanding the terrain beneath technology reframes the AI debate from what can be built to what can be sustained. That’s a crucial shift.
Great work.
Thanks for the kind words. I’ll be posting a piece in the near future one the public policy impacts and issues that should be considered in the current AI build-out boom. For most people a 300MW data center sounds abstract, but when you compare it do other industrial uses, that’s a huge point load on our system. The only thing that’s close are steel mini-mills. Even car factories and refineries might only use 30-50 MW. These data centers are a huge industrial build-out that’s not getting any coherent national policy response. To be clear I’m not anti-AI. But the current free-for-all have impacts that need to be considered.