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Back in 2016, Marco Gutiérrez, the Mexican-born founder of Latinos for Trump, issued an ominous warning to the US. “My culture is a very dominant culture,” he said on MSNBC. “It is imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”
A decade later, I regret to inform you there is not a taco truck on every corner. But I am here to issue my own ominous warning about the takeover of America: not by immigrant culture but by AI culture. To echo Gutiérrez: it is imposing and it’s causing problems. And if we don’t do something about it, we’re going to have datacenters on every corner.
I’m not some sort of data-hater, OK? Datacenters – physical facilities housing storage systems, servers and network devices – are a critical part of powering the internet; if they disappeared, the modern world would cease to function. The banking system would collapse; you wouldn’t be able to stream Netflix, go on social media, or (most importantly) read the Guardian online.
But while we obviously need datacenters, the AI boom, and the enormous amounts of computing power it requires, has caused their footprint to massively expand – and our utility bills to jump. “When a data center comes online, retail customers usually help to foot the electric bill: American utilities sought almost thirty billion dollars in retail rate increases in the first half of 2025,” the New Yorker explained last year. Meanwhile Bloomberg reported on a new study this week that shows “power prices on the largest electric grid in the US jumped 76% in the first quarter due to rampant demand from data centers.” Things will only get worse. Today datacenters consume 6% of electricity supply in the UK and US; by 2030, they could account for more than 14% of the US’s total power demand.
It’s not just how much they cost that’s problematic. AI datacenters are noisy, emit pollution that could harm community health and divert much-needed resources. Last year, for example, residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed low water pressure; eventually they discovered a nearby datacenter had taken 30m gallons of water, initially without paying for it. It is no surprise that a new Gallup poll has found seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing AI datacenters in their local area. Indeed, most Americans would rather live by a nuclear power plant than a datacenter.
Of course, the people getting filthy rich from AI will never have to live nextdoor to their moneymaking creations and seem fairly blase about the issues associated with their expansion. Take the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, for example. “As AI grows, how big do data centers need to be?” podcaster Theo Von asked Altman last year. “Is that a concern of you guys?”
Not really, judging by his response. Altman waxed lyrical about the scale of the datacenter OpenAI was building before saying that while he wasn’t sure where things were going, he had a lot of guesses. “I do guess a lot of the world gets covered in datacenters over time,” Altman said. “But I don’t know because maybe we put them in space … I wish I had, like, more concrete answers for you, but like, we’re stumbling through this.” In true Silicon Valley fashion, while the industry may be “stumbling”, it’s regular people getting hurt.
But forget the regular people. Won’t anyone think of the poor, oppressed datacenters? As backlash grows, the industry has gone into full-on defensive mode. The venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary, for example, has claimed that people protesting against a vast datacenter in Utah are not actually concerned, they’re just paid agitators. “There are professional protesters that are paid by somebody, I don’t know who,” O’Leary said in a video on X last week.
More perniciously, we’re starting to see more discussion around the idea that AI might have legal personhood, and datacenters might have certain rights. Earlier this month, MLive and 404 Media reported on the University of Michigan’s attempts to build a $1.2bn, nuclear weapons research and AI datacenter in Ypsilanti Township. Township officials voted on a year-long moratorium on water and sewer services for the facility, while it conducted environmental impact studies. In response, the university claimed the moratorium discriminated against datacenters. “[T]he proposed moratorium is pretextual and unlawfully discriminatory because it singles out ‘data centers’ by label rather than by utility impact,” a legal threat said.
It seems highly likely that we are going to see more discussion about certain “rights” being attached to datacenters. After all, looking at the issue more broadly, corporate personhood has been a part of US law for over a century and, in recent decades, the rights afforded to corporations have steadily expanded. The supreme court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling found corporations have a right to political speech. Then in 2014, the supreme court’s Hobby Lobby ruling found some companies should be allowed a religious exemption from requirements to include contraception in employee health plans. This significantly broadened the scope of personhood rights by acknowledging a right to corporate religious expression. In its 2023 303 Creative LLC v Elenis decision, the supreme court similarly held that a website design business owned by an evangelical Christian could refuse service to same-sex couples. This once again seemed to put the free speech right of corporations over the rights of LGBTQ+ people not to be discriminated against.
“Today the Supreme Court once again advanced the personhood rights of some corporations to the detriment of actual human beings,” The Brennan Center for Justice said at the time of the Hobby Lobby judgment. “[We are] very concerned about the continued trend of corporations successfully asserting the rights of human beings, while injuring the interests of actual human beings.”
They were right to be concerned. Given the way things are going in the US, corporations seem to have more freedom of speech than university students. And it might not be long before datacenters have more rights than women.
Oklahoma bill on child marriage becomes law
The bill makes it illegal for anyone under 18 to be married, removing current exceptions that allow minors to get married with parental consent or court approval. While one lawmaker voted against it, we were largely spared the creepy speeches we saw when New Hampshire raised the legal age of marriage in 2024. Back then the Republican state representative Jess Edwards said that the bill would make abortion “much more desirable” for people of a “ripe, fertile age”.
What happened to Aisha and Huda Al-Aqqad?
Ever since seeing it, I have been haunted by this photo of 78-year-old Aisha and 41-year-old Huda Al-Aqqad, a mother and daughter who were abducted from Gaza. A grinning Israeli soldier posted a photo of the blindfolded women in a van while flashing a thumbs-up. An investigation by Sky News identified the women and tried to find out what happened. Are they being sexually tortured in an Israeli detention center? Are they dead? The Israeli military has no answers and seemingly no interest in investigating.
Supreme court allows abortion pill mifepristone to continue to be available by mail
While this is good news, we shouldn’t be complacent. Expect anti-abortion extremists to continue to try to outlaw abortion pills nationwide.
Single women are buying more houses than single men
The Guardian has a fascinating piece about the men who feel emasculated by this. (Love is Blind enthusiasts will immediately recall the Chris Fusco/Jessica Barrett drama from season 10, and how hostile Chris was after seeing Jessica’s nice house. Which reinforces my thesis that all you need to know about US culture, you can learn from Love is Blind.)
Hannah Einbinder is in a new lesbian horror movie, and she’s got her priorities straight
During her Emmy Awards win last year, the Hacks star signed off with the instantly iconic phrase: “Go birds, fuck ICE, free Palestine.” (For confused non-Americans, Einbinder wasn’t bigging up her local street pigeon – “‘birds” refers to Philadelphia’s football team.) In an interview promoting her new queer slasher film, Einbinder, who has called out Hollywood’s silence about Gaza, said she would continue to be vocal about Palestine.
In antiquity, women were considered the more sexual sex
The Guardian has a piece by a historian on why that changed.
The week in pawtriarchy
A Canadian fox was caught red-handed after police officers received a call about a “theft of BBQ goods”. Despite apprehending the fox with a mouth full of hotdogs, police let the animal go. I don’t know if justice was served, but dinner certainly was.
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