We lost the vote in Goochland County; 4 of 5 Supervisors voted to approve a Technology Overlay District (TOD) and Technology Zone that could include data centers. We learned that a likely center would be two million square feet, or 3000' x 200' in size. That's three times the length of USS Nimitz supercarrier or twice the square footprint of the Short Pump Town Center, a huge outdoor mall about 20 minutes from where I live. I've always hated Short Pump and that mall in particular; it was once prime farmland where a friend stabled her horse. It's now a suburban asteroid belt.
The proposed data center is worse. And soon it may be utterly obsolete. I commend to you articles by Bryan Alexander and Noah Smith about why this entire industry could soon find itself in deep trouble and why that matters to the larger economy.
Other localities will be fighting date-center behemoths that use enormous amounts of energy and water. Their parking lots create heat-islands and they lower property values. It's likely we citizens will be taking the county to court, as plans were modified at the final moment to include 900 additional acres without public discussion. The entire process seemed rushed through, perhaps spurred on by money from industry, before a new Governor in January. She has promised to develop a statewide strategy. I hope so, and perhaps it can preempt the sort of hasty decisions made here. My state has more data centers than any other.
So what are arguments that money-hungry county officials will heed? Quality-of-life issues may help, but I think environmental concerns, sadly as usual, fall on deaf ears. Our nation's brand of capitalism, one I despise, values short-term thinking and profiteering. I'm a Distributist, not a Socialist; I want capital held and decisions made by the large number of citizens possible. I want data centers small and as rare as possible.
In any case, here are 10 technical and economic arguments to make with your local officials as you organize against this bonanza. They are based on my remarks at our recent county meeting. You can share these in 3 minutes at a meeting, if you practice!
- AI drives this rapid growth in data centers.
- The AI industry is not turning a profit and has shown only limited ROI for hundreds of billions in venture capital and now, risky loans. Subscriptions make up a tiny portion of revenue.
- The current model of AI relies on “brute force” computing to simulate human reasoning. This method requires huge data centers that drive up electric bills for ratepayers, and it uses lots of ground water. The Microprocessors in data centers need to be replaced every few years, meaning short life-spans for their hardware.
- Real “Artificial General Intelligence” (aka AGI or “Superintelligence”) is unlikely with silicon-based semiconductor technology, yet AGI is the stated goal of OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google.
- Without more powerful new models, investment may well leave this sector, as 80% of firms that have already deployed current AI models have shown no gains in productivity.
- While Meta and Google have varied sources of income, other big AI firms are one-trick ponies. If the gold-rush turns into a bubble that bursts, it will harm the entire economy. What would happen in your locality when a data center goes dark, its owner bankrupt?
- NVIDIA just announced a new Spark workstation that brings hardware-based AI to developers’ desktops. Coders no longer need to send work to data centers for processing.
- Soon consumer devices will have this capacity. When we have AI-on-a-laptop or phone, which is Apple’s goal for Apple Intelligence, the data-center boom will likely go bust.
- Does your locality want to build power-hungry, thirsty data centers that may be obsolete in a few years?
- Quality-of-life issues are a form of return on investment. Start with that, not data centers.
Image source: first try with ChatGPT 5 for prompt "Generate an image of a two million square foot hyper data center in ruins."
