Top Democrats hate nothing more than President Donald J. Trump, but data centers are a very close second. And yet Democrats and data centers are the best of frenemies.
“We need a federal moratorium on AI data centers,” insists Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He also said on Sept. 15, “AI is an existential threat to humanity.” Even worse, he told CBS News that day: “The potential danger of AI is probably greater than nuclear weapons.” So, evidently, Nagasaki was a light breeze compared to ChatGPT.
Sanders announced Wednesday that he wants a U.S. Department of Artificial Intelligence to ride herd on AI, or “Super Intelligence,” as Trump rechristened this incredible technology in his address to the United Nations the previous morning.
Sanders’ protégé concurs with her mentor.
“Congress has a moral obligation to stand with the American people and stop the expansion of these data centers until we have a framework to adequately address the existential harm AI poses to our society,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., asserted on June 24.
Far-Left Democratic candidates also have data centers on their hit lists.
“We got to stop data centers from being built if they can’t meet the demands of our communities,” U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico declared in Texas. His counterpart in Michigan, Abdul E-Sayed, boiled it down to six words: “People really f—ing hate data centers.”
It would be easier to take these and other Democratic foes of data centers more seriously if they did not depend daily on data centers.
At the very top of Sanders’ U.S. Senate website, right beside his photo, he invites visitors to “Follow Me on Facebook” and “Follow me on Twitter.”Sanders’ missives on “greedy billionaires,” Medicare for All, and so much more all sit on computer servers that are housed within data centers. Many are financed by multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and trillionaire Elon Musk. Sanders’ official government website also preaches the proletarian gospel—from deep inside data centers.
Ocasio-Cortez has 4.1 million followers on TikTok. At a quick glance, her account features at least 238 videos on everything from a “Forgiveness Plan” to “Team AOC donates turkeys.” These clips are not roasting inside some oven at 350 degrees. They exist within data centers, waiting for data-center detractors to click onto them.
The campaign website for Talarico for Texas welcomes donations payable via Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover. Those who are not into credit cards may back his race by using Google Pay, PayPal, and Venmo. ActBlue, the Democrats’ dodgy e-bagman, coordinates this for Talarico and other Democratic candidates.
All of the above is possible, thanks to data centers. Without them, Talarico and other candidates would have to open envelopes delivered by the Post Office, extract paper checks, and then hand those funds to bank tellers for manual processing. Ah, the good ol’ days!
Try as he might, Michigan’s El-Sayed cannot shake his previously beloved Hasan Piker.
Comments such as “Zionism is fascism” and “I want Chinese style Communism” keep cascading from this online extremist’s mouth. El-Sayed pretends not to know Piker, but El-Sayed cannot erase the indelible evidence of their now-curdled courtship.
El-Sayed appeared on Piker’s podcast, by Piker’s count, “a hundred times.” These are nestled, and ripe for inspection, within data centers.
“The bitter irony in this debate is that Bernie Sanders, AOC, and their fellow travelers use data centers every day to post anti-data center slop on social media,” James S. Erwin observes. Americans for Tax Reform’s Director of Innovation Policy adds: “Comrade Sanders uses data centers when he invites agents of the Chinese Communist Party onto Zoom calls, so they can lecture Americans on AI safety. Unless they’re using carrier pigeons, all of this anti-data center propaganda depends on America’s vast infrastructure of data centers.”
Top Democrats avail themselves of America’s 5,427 data centers while hammering such facilities.
Tech-savvy heroes? They are tech-hating hypocrites.
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