CHANDLER, Arizona — This Arizona suburb sent a searing warning message to Big Tech companies after city officials on Thursday night unanimously rejected a proposed artificial intelligence data center — capping a fight that attracted powerful interests from Silicon Valley and Washington.
A lobbying push that included Microsoft and Meta and outside political pressure to approve the project, perhaps most significantly from former Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, shined a spotlight on AI industry efforts to influence local decisions around development.
In the US, the western deserts are the best places. No radical weather, very predictable climate, zero tectonic activity, no natural disasters.
Force them to do closed-loop cooling, force them to bring some solar to the party, zero additional costs to other businesses and homes.
This is down to state and local people and politicians to handle. And it sounds like people are finally clueing in. And if they don’t, there are other ways to deal with such structures.
What pisses me off the most, there is no excuse for local politicians to approve these monstrosities. Usually, they’re wanting to bring tax revenues and jobs. These DCs bring neither.