Investing in America 2025 | Hacker News Reader

Investing in America 2025

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46 pointsgmays60 comments

PR to appease the administration I guess

Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Virginia and an article referencing Sundar at the White House.

Seems pretty clear to me :)

EDIT: to be clear, I think investing in struggling, predominately red states is totally fine and good. I'm more taking issue with the way this information is presented. The red/blue text gradient, the "investing in America" focus, etc. It feels specifically crafted to appeal to a certain mindset. Contrast this with, say, the roll-out of Google Fiber in Kansas, etc. where the focus was on technology not patriotism.

No investments in California? What are we, dog-meat?

What, the 4th biggest economy in the world needs an investment? Aren’t they supposed to be the investors?

What, the biggest economy in the world (US) needs an investment?

Sure doesn’t.

What is Mountain View if not Google's largest investment of all?

'This is totally normal'

Bonus: The locals pay higher utility bills thanks to the “investment”.

Bingo. There's little to no employment creation here besides some temporary construction jobs. I hope these governors cry foul.

I think all elected officials plug their ears when they hear this.

I know the governors of Wyoming gave land away to NCAR and Microsoft talking about how they were going to "diversify Wyoming's economy," and then every employee of those data centers was a contractor out of Colorado. The current governor has kept up the hype, now claiming that AI will be good for the local energy companies despite the fact that the proposed centers are going to be connected to out-of-state energy pipelines.

When you look at top campaign contributions and see Google and Microsoft at the top, you understand why the gubernatorial class keeps their ears plugged.

Bend the knee for complete appeasement

They have been advertising this initiative with various physical signage in Washington DC for the last several months. Very squarely targeted at lawmakers and the current administration.

HUNDREDS OF JOBS!!!

Finally, unemployment is OVER!

https://www.arkansasedc.com/news-events/newsroom/detail/2025...

Dont' be evil. → Do the right thing. → Investing in America. → Asking America for Investment. → Asking NVidia for Investment. → Begging NVidia for Chips. → Getting in the government free chip line with everyone else. → Selling retro Google logo t-shirts on ebay. → The Museum of AI discovery with the original Attention is All You Need hardcopy on display under a cheap glass case.

Soon Sundar Pichai will wear a MAGA hat to avoid being deported.

Most of these releases have older dates but surprised a number of these data center investment ones haven't been shared/mentioned around here.

This initiative is meaningless if it doesn’t create jobs in the range where most employees are being shed in this new economy. It doesn’t mean that everyone needs to work for Google, just that FAANG companies need to invest in all sorts of places, for whatever suits their interests. Maybe this also means more incubators, or non-profit research programs to bolster foundational research.

I'm sure that there were individual press releases that outlined each of these investments but it is nice to have them all in one place.

I thought that Google was doing more than ~30B in data centers, and some of the write ups talk about over the next 2 years.

I don't understand the objective if it isn't comprehensive.

Oh, I know this! Coming from a third world country, this kind of communication from major companies looks familiar. It happens because uncertainty about rule of law, so the company needs to show public alliegeance to the ruler to obtain protection (and favors eventually). We call this boot licking.

Good, massive corporations should always fear the government and stay in line under the rule of law.

We've spent far too long where things were the other way around, with the wrong side giving the orders.

This is the opposite of the rule of law

So the rule of law is when the government fears the private corporations?

I mean, that sure sounds like what we have now, but it hasn't exactly proven itself to be a great thing for society.

The rule of law is when governments follow actual law not random whims of some stupid idiot. Google can't kill me, governments can kill me. There's no company who can directly kill me unless, again, they get aid from some government. Governments are the most powerful and dangerous gangs in the world.

I generally agree with you but I'm not super sure the dichotomy is that important.

> There's no company who can directly kill me unless, again, they get aid from some government.

Companies can spend a lot of money to buy this government aid. Heck, companies can more or less buy governments altogether.

I mean that's the point. Without a state to buy they don't have that kind of power. Likewise how religion or nationalism turns a fight between a few peoples into a war between millions. The state is the source of that power and violence, not the company by itself.

Corporations hiring mercenaries isn't exactly a novel concept, though, so I remain somewhat unconvinced.

Its a rare thing. Most of the every day power one fears is the government's obviously. I like to think of it this way, if someone made a false complaint about you to the cops, then is he himself the dangerous entity or the actual government gang member who comes to your home.

But if there was no government, or no appreciable power held by the government in that scenario, then the guy would presumably just come after you himself.

Even in your example, the reason why he's filing this false report is because if he were to take matters into his own hands, he would face retribution.

If corporations are the only things then they become defacto equivalent to governments in power. But currently corporations exist within governments.

Governments have infinite power. Google can't legally kill me, my government can. No corporation can attain even close to the power of a government.

> No corporation can attain even close to the power of a government.

Oh you sweet summer child

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

https://www.realbusinessrescue.co.uk/advice-hub/companies-wo...

>Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the *state* and favored economic monopolies,

No state, no power.

And what is the difference between a 'state' and a 'corporation'?

What happens when a corporation has more power, influence, control, and private security than a country?

This reminds me of discussing things with libertarians. "It's bad when a government does it, but when a private corporation does it, it's actually okay guys, it's the free market and all."

I still don't know of any legal means for a corporation to own fighter jets or carrier ships so no matter how powerful they will still be weaker than a government.

Does those numbers ad upto what he said during the lunch !!

The fact that every company feels the need to do this shit simping for Trump just so that they can try not to get put on the chopping block is a shame on this country.

You mean like every company implementing DEI for the last administration? I don't like Trump but this is how both sides have been playing politics. I suspect I'll get downvoted and flagged for this which I think will prove my point.

Maybe some companies implemented DEI because civil rights matter to people? And those that care have kept it.

Trump just cut a bunch of money to blue state projects. Did the last admin do that to the red states? 60% of Biden’s infrastructure bill went to red states.

> Maybe some companies implemented DEI because civil rights matter to people? And those that care have kept it.

And some companies care about hiring in America and always have. This is an article about Google which dropped DEI the second it could. Clearly it didn't really care.

It’s just that we still have DEI. The uplifted group is just much smaller - billionaire friends of Trump.

It is so bizarre the way some people act like all DEI policies were introduced between January 2021 and January 2025. I can understand being against the policies, but people are just straight lying about how, why, and when those policies came to be.

And Trump isn't the first person to push for hiring in America or other such things. Under both Obama and Biden companies, government and academia significantly increased DEI spending. Multiple executive orders were signed by both to promoted DEI.

Fun fact, my comment said nothing against DEI and you assuming I did more or less summarizes modern political discourse on both sides. Even implying something isn't 200% amazing means you must be utterly opposed to it's very concept.

>Fun fact, my comment said nothing against DEI and you assuming I did more or less summarizes modern political discourse

Fun fact, my comment said nothing in support of DEI and you assuming I did more or less summarizes modern political discourse.

DEI was not implemented "for the last administration" like you implied. My comment was not even really about DEI, it was criticizing you for implying something that wasn't true. And you seem to know it yourself with the way you subtly shifted the conversation from "the last administration" to "under both Obama and Biden", pushing the age of these policies back another 12 years.

Suddenly the pictures look like in the 1990s again. This is the company that radicalized software engineers and open source projects throughout the Biden administration and cheered on any woke cancellation.

And if Harris is elected in 2028, they'll flip again. I've never seen such blatant cowardice and treachery.

Off-topic, but do you think Harris is the likely D candidate?

I'm a mere observer of American politics, but both Polymarket and electionbettingodds.com have Gavin Newsom in the lead to be the candidate, and JD Vance to win the election.

https://polymarket.com/event/democratic-presidential-nominee...

https://www.electionbettingodds.com

Right now the party still seems to be scrambling. I really hope we get a decent candidate next time around so we don't get another geriatric oldfuck who just sweeps the election with little competition.

If they're even considering Harris again though, I have no hope whatsoever.

Newsom may be a minor improvement, but they really need to do some soul searching if they think neoliberal policy is going to win an election in 2028.

It really is quite astonishing to see how disconnected they are from their base. They should really have future elections in the bag with the way demographics and polls are looking.

I don't think this has much or anything to do with Trump. Data center industry is beset from the left by those ignorant of thermodynamics and angry that they studied English. More articles are published every week about how much energy or water the data center industry consumes than have ever been written about any industry in the history of written commentary, even when the other industries are hundreds or thousands of times more energy intensive. So the data center industry is out here trying to defend itself even though it is the only industry that builds its own renewable power plants, the only industry that is thoroughly transparent about its energy and water consumption, and an extreme outlier in terms of value gained for little impact.

Dammit. I should have known not to study English!

It's OK to study English, but it helps to squeeze in some elective thermodynamics and statistics if you can!

They could start by prioritizing hiring americans

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