34 Comments
User's avatar
Ian Watkins's avatar

They've seen that climate doomstering is coming to an end, so they're looking for the next profitable schtick….

John Haupt's avatar

How much of this kind of influence peddling is going on in other realms as well.

Lon Guyland's avatar

You can be sure that this isn’t unique. It’s a model, a business process.

Jrod's avatar

Why can't these billionaires just bug off and enjoy their riches while leaving the rest of us alone?

William Lomax's avatar

Money is just a steppingstone to POWER ... Controlling Power over others.

Doug Ross's avatar

Nicely done, Jordan.

I put together some related material on the CCP-funding angle of this, which unfortunately has been succeeding at scale.

The Foreign Plot to Kill American AI

https://directorblue.substack.com/p/the-foreign-plot-to-kill-american

Nick's avatar

Maybe what we can't beat in numbers we will beat with quality. Keep up the excellent journalism!

hoppah's avatar

How naked the corruption.

Tina Stolberg's avatar

I ascribe to the adage moderation in all things. While I see positive and negatives with AI, we all deserve transparency so I appreciate understanding where any and all funding comes from.

Freedom Fox's avatar

"Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/projection

Jordan NEVER addresses any good-faith objections to the AI Data Centers. Like this comment of mine on a prior comment to his Stack outlines:

https://www.dossier.today/p/the-shanghai-billionaire-behind-americas/comment/266923334

Jordan repeats broadbrush smears of AI Data Center Skeptics as all being bought off, astroturfing or simply being ignorant knuckle-draggers who long for horse and buggy days. Accuses others of being bought off when his continued repeated slimes and slanders of good-faith objections raise questions about his sincerity. Having taken off a few years from Substack after being a Covid skeptic lost its ooomph for driving readership subscriptions, exploring other opportunities for his financial security. His return has been a repetitive drumbeat of AI Data Center public relations spots intended to mock and shame skeptics into a caricature, build straw man arguments against them them to knock down, ignoring the actual reasons for concerns of good faith skeptics.

It's almost as if Jordan sold his platform to an AI writer that repackages the same, repetitive straw man PR pieces into slightly different presentations, lacking the ability to engage with good-faith concerns. Jordan wants his cracker? There's not even a real parrot behind the Dossier anymore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfd5Hi6eT3k

hoppah's avatar

Maybe because all the "good faith AI data center skepticism" includes piles of horse-crap like "AI IS DESTROYING ALL THE WATER!" It's as dumb as the whole AGW thing and twice as corrupt.

Freedom Fox's avatar

So because the radical lefty enviros and D's have jumped in with their red herrings that renders actual concerns that truly matter not good faith? Subject to the broadbrush smear that Jordan and you? want to engage in so you don't have to deal with it?

I'm under no illusions that the Marxist camp cares one bit about the surveillance and control systems I describe in great detail, with credible sources that AI is designed to create and enforce. They want their bloody, corrupt and evil hands on AI Data Center and 24/7 control as much as anyone, the Fascists, oligarchs, technocrats, all of the wannabe tyrants. AI Data Centers + AI surveillance and control systems are a tyrants wet dream technology, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ayatollahs, Shahs, Pinochet's, Khmer Rouge, Rocket Man, all the tyrants have lusted for such a system.

Does the system get built out and deployed against humanity without so much as a debate about it, no say of the people, no rock-solid protections for civil liberties, free speech, from lawfare, weaponized justice systems that we're supposed to trust they won't use such a system against us after what they did during Scamdemic, without consequence or even so much as mea culpa's for?

You want me to care about the bad-faith arguments of those who really want the infernal, damnable system that you, Jordan raise to avoid debating the most fundamental concern of all for free people that AI Data Centers pose?

The scene from Rodney Dangerfield's movie "Back to School" has a line that fits your trust in the system and its minders to use the tool for good and prevent it from ever becoming used as a weapon: That's in Fantasy Land. And you're either too stupid to realize it or a bad faith actor yourself.

Debate the issues I raise. Don't broadbrush smear them. Or reveal yourself as the supporter of totalitarianism that you are.

hoppah's avatar

As soon as I see someone in "good faith" lambasting the water use baloney rather than plastering it onto their list of AI's evils, I'll give the naysayers more credit.

Freedom Fox's avatar

"Denounce the water use argument. Or I'll support the police surveillance dystopian Orwellian state takeover of humanity, Minority Report existence! Ha! That'll show you!"

Can't fix stupid.

hoppah's avatar

Ahh, the strawman. Always entertaining.

Freedom Fox's avatar

hoppah: Mask up! Above the nose! Two of them work better, three best! My mask protects you, yours protects me! Get your 15th booster! 100% safe and effective, stops covid in its tracks, ends with me! Ukraine strong! The California election and all elections in the US are the safest, most secure, ever! Trans women are women! Stop the Trans genocide! Climate change deniers are killing us! Cow farts will make the oceans rise and entire cities will be under water by 2028! Hunter Biden's laptop has all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation! You're not a horse, you’re not a cow, seriously y'all, stop taking Ivermectin! Trump says Nazi's are very fine people and hates black people! And every other lie that hoopah spreads.

Can't fix stupid. And propagandist liars like hoppah.

Spadesman's avatar

Take the L man, the resistance to AI data centers are 100% real and you utopia of a data center in every county of America is not gonna happen. When are you going to watch the local news reports of the CONSTANT HUM coming from a data center?

MichL's avatar

So? They don't need to to capture every single thing we do? You know that right?

James M.'s avatar

I'm glad someone is digging into these connections... because I've given up. All I'm certain of is that nearly everyone in this space has ulterior motives, dark associations, and (generally) a bent towards sociopathic ambition.

https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-first-bubble-of-the-age-of-hyper

Marilynne Martin's avatar

AI plus data centers = Big Brother. Period. Glad to see people rising up to reject Big Brother.

They say "we can't let China win the AI race". Well China does seem to be ahead. They have a nifty "social credit scoring system" in place. Are you longing for that system in America?

Let China win.

Jordon, write the essay of all the negative things that will happen to America if we lose the AI race. I can't see anything but positives to throw this race. But hell, I like talking to humans.

hoppah's avatar

Oh, you think these people are against AI? You figure they're fighting the Good Fight to protect us from a future with AI in it? Well, let me ruin your fantasy: they aren't. They're fighting over which one of them gets to run it.

Dave Bondy's avatar

The fear is out of control. ALso, the people fighting data centers have a legitimate concern, but we need data centers

MichL's avatar

We don't need data centres. It's a completely made up requirement and all to surveil us.

Dave Bondy's avatar

The data has to be housed somewhere?

Marilynne Martin's avatar

Maybe the data doesn't need to be collected in the first place.

hoppah's avatar

MichL says, on an app hosted in a data center.

Dave Bondy's avatar

I don’t think a lot of people realize everything you do on your phone is data but I guess I do get the other person’s point that why are they collecting all of the data?

Gym+Fritz's avatar

I was going to say good point, Dave, but I’m not sure if is. When I drive to my son’s house, I go past Dulles, and then about a dozen data centers, plus a few under construction. I’ve been told this is the highest density in the country. The D/Cs are big, and getting bigger, but none are on the scale that Musk and others envision (big enough to warrant restarting a nuclear power plant!). The controversy gets clicks; you hear about massive amounts of electricity and cooling water, but you seldom hear details about why they are being built, what they actually do and why it’s worth spending hundreds of billions of dollars on them, especially if it soon may be better to build them in space.

The situation seems analogous to railroads 100 years ago, lots of investment and innovation - then you hit a peak / something new comes along (quantum computing? / a moon base? / fission energy?) - the game changes, and data centers become like railroad tracks, they are still useful, but . . .

William Lomax's avatar

Fusion, not Fision.

Mary Mc's avatar

But, do we need so many? If they are so needed why do we need them built "yesterday"? How about we slow down a little and get the mega tech egos out of it.

How much is what is being built is duplication? How much rural countryside needs to be destroyed so that Amazon, Google et al can know what I prefer in products? If I wanted them to know that, I'd let them know. I don't want/need targeted advertising. I don't want anyone knowing where I drive, how I drive etc.

There are many uses for AI that I'm sure would improve all lives but IMO they are far fewer than the proposed uses. The Data Centers will also be used for crypto, I have no use for it and want nothing to do with it.

AI is a double edged sword, it needs to be slowed and more thoughtful planning going forward. The RUSH bothers me. I see the same issues as with all the "green energy" fast track scams to get rich quick.