During the recent gubernatorial campaign, I was the only candidate that openly said I would ban data centers on Day 1 and make the ban permanent. Of course, it did not help me or my campaign as hundreds of thousands of dollars of data center PAC money was funneled into my opponent's campaigns against me. However, it is time to bust the data center myth that we are all being fed.
Data centers are framed by our compromised politicians as some type of race against China to dominate AI which is why we have to locate it in our state and capture all the early bird advantages. This is a false narrative.
In its very basic form, a data center is nothing but a building with power, water, networking, and racks of chips. Very capital intensive but with very few jobs. In theory, these centers can be physically located anywhere as long as America has control over data security, and we control the technology that goes into the chips. That is the AI race, not physical data centers.
So why are states and the politicians fighting to locate these data centers in our back yard framing it as some kind of patriotic duty to win the AI race against China? Because they are stupid and corrupt. Stupid enough to not question what advantage it gives us with geographic location and corrupt because many of them, including those running in local races, are accepting dark money into their campaigns from these operators.
Remember, in SC PAC's do not have to disclose their source donations which means you have no way of knowing how far and how deep this PAC money flows.
In a state like SC that is power, water and land constrained why would we want a data center in our back yard? Absolutely no reason. They bring very few jobs except in the building construction phase, and they consume large amounts of land, water and power. Without data centers, our power grid is close to being in balance perhaps with a few small de- bottlenecks. With data centers, we are way out of balance very quickly.
The only reason to have a data center physically here is perhaps property tax and equipment tax revenue. Much of this is often abated as "economic development incentives" by politicians who do not understand the difference between a balance sheet and an income statement. Beyond nebulous property tax revenues, the jobs created per megawatt hour or per water gallon or just jobs created are all a disaster. The tradeoffs on quality of life, land use , power and water consumption are also horrible.
It is easy to say we will get the data centers to pay for what they use but given that power capacity can only be added in large steps not small increments, it would require some incredibly sophisticated structuring of data center contracts to keep residents from holding the bag. We know from many recent economic development deals that sophisticated financial structuring is not exactly a strength of the SC government. I give you the recent disastrous VC summer nuclear project and the even more recent disastrous Scout Motors deal as examples.
Then we have the fear mongering. If we don't have data centers here, China wins the AI race. It is a classic " race to the bottom" with baseless fear mongering. Can someone explain how China wins the race --by building more ugly buildings?? China only wins the race on chip technology or the ability to steal technology no matter where it is.
A data center strategy starts with the federal government deciding how they want to control access to our chip technology. Then, they can decide how they want to manage the security of the data. Perhaps, there are large tracts of land in the US or with allied nations that have abundant power and water. Regardless, local communities that struggle with land, water and power should not have data centers forced down their throats when the benefits to them and their way of life are non existent.
It is time for our state and local leaders to disclose when they accept money from these data center folk. We have a right to know they are compromised and not working in our best interest. Even better, lets change the disclosure laws so we get out of being a bottom 10 state when it comes to campaign finance disclosure. In the interim, it should be a big NO to data centers in SC.
The Reddy Room (reddyroom.com) represents the opinion of Lucky Dog Publishing owner Rom Reddy, but not necessarily the opinion of the newspaper. In keeping with our philosophy of publishing all opinions, we welcome responses, which must be limited to 400 words and will be published on a space-available basis.