Paris Marx’s new book Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires arrives as US opposition to data centers intensifies, with the issue positioned to influence key midterm races in less than two weeks. Marx, host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast and a longtime Big Tech critic, said he did not anticipate the fight would peak as his book was released. The book traces the tech industry’s pursuit of power and the resistance it has met, from antiwar protests against American computers during the Vietnam War to recent fights in Ireland and Chile, and an alternative model in New Zealand.
Marx pointed to the Netherlands and Singapore, which had moratoriums dating to 2019, and to Ireland, where growing recognition in 2022 of data centers’ electricity demands on the grid drew attention. Dublin’s moratorium came in 2021 after the grid operator said there was not enough capacity to connect more data centers. Industry then sought sites elsewhere in Ireland, moved to tap the gas network for generators, and eventually began building dedicated gas power plants for data centers instead of connecting to the grid. Data center companies also lobbied for legislation allowing private companies to build electricity cables, which Marx said raises equity concerns about Ireland’s public grid.
In The Dalles, Oregon, Google worked to keep its water use figures secret, persuading the city council to withhold them for the better part of a year, Marx said. When the community obtained the numbers, it found Google was using 29 percent of the community’s water. After ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022, it became apparent that generative AI would require far more data centers, and communities already feeling the effects of construction faced the prospect that many more would follow.
Marx said the Irish experience foreshadowed the US, where companies are racing to build large private gas power plants for data centers. In Ireland, data center operators obtained emission licenses from the Irish Environmental Protection Agency to burn fossil fuels, and the agency warned that climate targets would be harder to meet. Marx said he was not surprised to see the same pattern in the US, though the scale and speed were staggering.
Asked about the physical infrastructure if the industry falters, Marx said he believes there is an AI bubble and questioned whether planned data centers and gas plants will be built before demand for AI is reassessed. He cited the dotcom era’s excess fiber build-out and an earlier data center build-out in which many data center companies failed and Equinix bought up a large number of data centers to be ready for capacity’s return. He noted that data centers planned for AI depend on chips that must be cycled out within a few years, so the facilities may not be useful when demand returns, while the gas plants will remain and seek new customers.
Marx said he wants governments to impose firmer regulations on data center development and pair them with rules on AI products, arguing that promised benefits of generative AI have not materialized and that harms have emerged. He said governments are buying the narrative Sam Altman sold in early 2023 rather than what the technology has become, and that the resources devoted to generative AI infrastructure should be assessed against what computation is really needed and what is gained. Wired’s Joel Khalil, who covers the European Union’s AI power demands running into countries’ climate goals, said he would not be surprised if data centers become a political flash point in Europe as countries hold elections next year.
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