Tim Steller's column: Project Blue raises even larger questions than water, power

Yes, the mega-data-center project planned for Tucson’s southeast side raises big questions about water.

Hence, the city of Tucson’s efforts to show the project as planned would be “net water positive.”

And of course, the proposal makes us wonder where all the power will come from, who will pay for it and how much it will pollute.

Hence, the developer, Beale Infrastructure, making on-the-fly changes to its proposal, tacking on a new plan Thursday to add new carbon-free energy to the project.

But the issues surrounding this and other data-center developments around the world are even broader. They include:

— A global society becoming even more dependent on digital technologies that have already caused major social rifts, disorders and declines

— An economy driven forward on a manic race by Big Tech billionaires to profit off of artificial intelligence no matter the consequences

— An oligarchy supporting the totalitarian tendencies in our current government that could consolidate power further in part through data-center development

This may be a pessimistic view, and I acknowledge that artificial intelligence — which is driving the data-center boom — could help solve some societal problems, too, by making scientific discovery unfold faster.

The UN’s International Energy Agency, for example, said in an April 10 report: “The widespread adoption of existing AI applications could lead to emissions reductions that are far larger than emissions from data centers — but also far smaller than what is needed to address climate change.”

So, the artificial-intelligence drive may lead to some important breakthroughs while at the same time further driving the deterioration of some normal human capabilities, like reading and writing. But fortunately, as local residents, voters and representatives, we don’t have to participate, certainly not at their rushed speed.

We can work together to assert our own bit of control over new technology, the infrastructure to run it and the interests pushing it on us to benefit themselves.

The ties that bind us to tech

I just checked my iPhone. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I have averaged eight and a half hours of screen time per day over the last week.

I’d love to say that most of it was on important, work-related matters, but the truth is, social media took up the biggest part of that time. Scrolling. This is the addictive property that Big Tech has built into their devices and platforms to sustain their profits, all served to us from data centers.

It’s not good for me, or any of us, especially not children.

“Children and adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems including experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety,” the U.S. Surgeon General’s office reports. “We cannot conclude that social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents.”

This is not by accident. Attorneys general from 42 states, including Arizona, filed suit in October 2023 against Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, accusing the company of knowingly designing products to reinforce compulsive and destructive use.

“Meta created a business model focused on maximizing young users’ time and attention spent on its Social Media Platforms,” the complaint alleges. “Meta designed and deployed harmful and psychologically manipulative product features to induce young users’ compulsive and extended platform use, while falsely assuring the public that its features were safe and suitable for young users.”

This company, Meta, is one of the four Big Tech behemoths driving the AI expansion and data-center boom, though the Tucson project is being built by third-party developers apparently to serve Amazon Web Services.

Tech giants not trustworthy

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There’s no reason to trust any of them. Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have all engaged in predatory, monopolistic or antisocial behavior in order to become the giants they are now and turn their leaders into mega-billionaires.

Now they’re rapid-firing investors’ money at AI-related projects in order to win the race to superintelligence and the expected profits that will flow to the victor.

The amount of money flowing into building out data centers and related infrastructure is staggering. Microsoft spent $88 billion in the last year; Google is planning to spend $85 billion this year; Meta is planning on $72 billion in spending; Amazon expects to spend $100 billion.

While this may be justified by future use of artificial intelligence, it’s also possible that groupthink is driving the building spree, creating a new real estate bubble. If it pops, we will have unnecessary data centers — and the electric plants to power them — strewn across the American landscape. Electric customers could be forced to pay for the construction of unneeded power plants.

In Tucson’s case, the company behind developer Beale Infrastructure is Blue Owl, a big investment firm funneling clients’ funds into data centers. After raising a $7 billion round of investment to build data centers and related infrastructure in May, Blue Owl’s Mark Zahr said in a press release: “We continue to see a generational market opportunity in data centers and digital infrastructure more broadly. Massive capital commitments are required to fund the underlying infrastructure needed to support the world’s leading technology companies.”

So, Tucson’s Project Blue is part of a massive global gamble on data centers for Big Tech’s artificial intelligence and cloud computing. It’s spreading huge, energy-sucking server warehouses across the world — around 5,400 of them in the United States so far. It may work out for the investors, but it may not, if their horse loses the race, or the bubble bursts. The challenge is to make it work out for us.

Who benefits? Tech oligarchy

The people this boom will benefit most are the members of our Big Tech oligarchy, a group that has shown itself unconcerned with or even happy about the decline of our democracy.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, has gone from an arms-length relationship with Pres. Trump last term to a cozy one this term. He donated $1 million to the inauguration, attended it, and joined other tech executives — when not attending his own, $50 million wedding — in wooing the president on issues that benefit them.

He is turning the Washington Post, which he owns, from one of the primary critics of Trumpism into a friendly Fox-lite.

The Big Tech billionaires are already benefiting handsomely from their support. Trump has fought European Union social-media regulations, used tariff threats to force Canada to rescind a digital services tax, and issued nine executive orders promoting artificial intelligence.

One of the orders, issued July 23, promotes the construction of data centers, offering loans, loan guarantees and waivers of environmental regulations, all of which could contribute to an AI data center bubble.

The Trump administration has already put AI to use merging federal databases to go after potential targets of immigration enforcement. And the same tools used against them can be used against us. In fact, the government has hired Big Tech firm Palantir to organize and analyze massive databases of Americans’ personal information from different, formerly siloed federal departments.

Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel, who remains its chairman and is a supporter of right-wing causes, a believer in tech monopolies and an avowed opponent of democracy itself.

Huge mitigation required

Every data center we build under the current regime consolidates the hold of Big Tech and its billionaire oligarchy on our society.

One of the few obstacles to this consolidation is the resistance of the people who still have the power to stand in the way. With the federal government bought off by Big Tech, that means local jurisdictions around the country that refuse to be bought off cheaply to the benefit of the wealthy.

Every community should start consideration of these projects from the understanding that data centers are a massive negative that need drastic mitigation if they are to be approved at all. They’re negative, despite the temporary construction boom, for all the obvious reasons — especially water, power and pollution — but also because they contribute to the Big Tech stranglehold on society.

The only reason we should approve such projects is if the developers mitigate all their damages and offer some big social benefit. For example, we could ask Amazon to solve our affordable housing problem, or even homelessness itself, in exchange for locating here.

This is the scale of demand we should be thinking about when confronting the Big Tech oligarchy’s wish to place their server warehouses in our communities. Pay all your costs. Mitigate all your damages. Solve a big problem of ours.

Only then will we think about it.

Contact columnist Tim Steller at tsteller@tucson.com or 520-807-7789. On Twitter: @timothysteller