Since Trump’s return to power, we’ve been talking more and more about data centers as a point of linkage between big tech, fossil fuels, and fascism. And we’ve been warning that fossil fueled AI is not a neutral tech – it’s increasingly being used as a tool of state sponsored terror, war, and surveillance.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has pledged to create an “AI-first” fighting force, supercharging an already AI-powered war machine. To do it, the Army and Air Force have announced plans to build data centers spanning thousands of acres of military property in Texas, North Carolina, Utah, California, Arizona, and Georgia — and more will follow.
It’s all to advance of AI and big data in warfare; autonomous weapons systems; algorithms making life-or-death decisions; automated surveillance to decide who lives free, who is arrested or detained, and who can be killed. Send a message to your Representative and Senators now demanding that they block the Pentagon from building taxpayer-subsidized data centers.
7-in-10 Americans oppose data centers being built in their communities, and it’s not hard to see why: Data centers are growing like a second coal industry. Each one may consume a city’s worth of water and electricity – mostly generated by fossil fuels. According to El Paso Matters, the three-gigawatt data center complex planned near Fort Bliss “would consume more electricity than all of El Paso Electric’s 460,000 customers combined.”
Earlier this week I helped organize a conversation amongst New England states about the role of Data centers and Democracy with our regional grid regulator. But local and state regulators are telling us they’re not equipped to fight big tech and the US Military. That’s why private equity companies like BlackRock — which we’ve been trying to get to divest from fossil fuels and climate chaos for years — are teaming up with the Pentagon on these big AI data centers. Teaming up with the US war machine let’s them evade public scrutiny and hide behind “classified” security agreements to negotiate “exclusive” 50-year term leases for the data centers on US Military bases.
It’s all a toxic, dangerous marriage between fossil fuels, big tech, and fascism. To get lawmakers to pay attention and prevent more data centers from destroying land, water, and air to power AI warfare, we need as many people as possible speaking out today. Sign and send your message to Congress now demanding that they Trump’s fossil fueled fascist AI war machine.
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