BrianKrebsThis administration's recently redoubled efforts to kill federal funding /approval for wind and solar projects would seem to be directly at odds with the tech industry's insatiable need for more power to feed AI. How is this not glaringly obvious to everyone, including reporters who write about these topics?
BrianKrebsbottom line: the administration's actions will almost certainly result in Americans paying a LOT more for power in the coming years, as demand exceeds supply and major infrastructure investments are needed just to accommodate data center needs.
from an IEA report earlier this year:
"In the United States, power consumption by data centres is on course to account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals. In advanced economies more broadly, data centres are projected to drive more than 20% of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030, putting the power sector in those economies back on a growth footing after years of stagnating or declining demand in many of them."
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2025/05/13/ai-needs-more-abundant-power-supplies-to-keep-driving-economic-growth
From the IMF:
"The world’s data centers consumed as much as 500 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, according to the most recent full-year estimate by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. That total, which was more than double the annual levels from 2015-19, could triple to 1,500 terawatt-hours by 2030, OPEC projects."
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2025/05/13/ai-needs-more-abundant-power-supplies-to-keep-driving-economic-growth
Mathaetaes@briankrebs@infosec.exchange Tech startups and their rockstar tech employees aren't good at strategic thinking... they're good at generating hype and demos. It's an self-licking ice cream cone of hype, investment, demo, more hype, etc... that fuels inflated valuations, which reinforce the hype cycle.
If you want to foster long-term profitability, you need employees who aren't mercenaries ready to jump ship at the next job offer. This means you need a culture of investing in employees long-term... which goes directly against the near-term hype model. Near-term greed will always oppose long-term sustainability.
US industries started losing their ability to think strategically right around the time companies started replacing pensions with 401k contributions. They've incentivized running fast and staring at their feet, with nobody actually looking down the road at where they're running to, and now that culture prevails in pretty much all of tech, but has seeped into many other industries as well.
Delaney 🇨🇦
✊
🇺🇦
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky spells it out
AA@briankrebs@infosec.exchange The oil lobbies?
Don Marti@AAKL@infosec.exchange @briankrebs@infosec.exchange The whole situation smells bad to me because of the national security side
It's hard to watch the news from Russia without getting worried about the vulnerability of oil and gas to hard-to-trace drone raids that would be within the budget of a college engineering project or affluent model airplane hobbyist—attacks that would be easy for a state-backed group
AA@dmarti@federate.social @briankrebs@infosec.exchange We don't really know what deals were done under the table with these companies. Those who paid the $1 million dollar tithe are rewarded. And the oil lobbies paid more than most, to the tune of $445 million:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/23/big-oil-445m-trump-congress
AA@dmarti@federate.social @briankrebs@infosec.exchange We don't really know what deals were done under the table with these companies. Those who paid the $1 million dollar tithe are rewarded. And the oil lobbies paid more than most, to the tune of $445 million:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/23/big-oil-445m-trump-congress