They're destroying one (1) copy of a mass-produced item for each AI company.
Public libraries destroy millions more yearly as a matter of routine.
This is just part of a CCP-aligned moral panic, along with the water use nonsense, and similar with the soviet-aligned moral panic that destroyed the civil nuclear industry 40 years ago.
I've heard people say this, but I haven't seen any evidence for it. Do you have any evidence?
Exactly the same as shutting down perfectly fine German nuclear plants was aligned with Russian interests.
Notably since all the controversy many data centers are very loud about being closed loop and with significant consideration given to other local impacts as well.
They don't have to, and the vast majority don't.
The lie and moral panic is that all datacenters necessarily waste precious drinking water; it's patently false and used by agitators to push, unwittingly or not, a Chinese Communist Party agenda.
is it actually? it feels more like US propaganda that we have to let our oligarchs run roughshod over us because of what we imagine the big bad CCP might want.
i dont think the CCP cares whether there's data centers in rural america.
Regulation that requires closed loop cooling seems simple enough, same with lots of the other problems people have with data centers:
* sound and infrasound under x DB
* no air quality change
* must pay to build out electrical infrastructure
etc
its not to the CCPs benefit or loss to make sure the data centers are built well if they get built
They certainly care that the US loses the race for AI.
What was nonsense about water use?
Order of magnitude more water is lost from wasted irrigation (e.g. during rain, of fallow fields, sprayed into windy air, etc) than data centers.
2. Datacenters have been shown to reduce utility prices. They provide suppliers with previsible long term demand which allows for cost-effective network and production planning.
The claim never made sense to me either, I can only assume those that regurgitated such claims never worked with HPC or even general datacenters before.
Was recently talking to a (non-technical) friend about this, she was surprised after talking about the "insane water use for AI datacenters" when I responded that open-loop cooling is pretty rare for a datacenter and I've never actually seen it used before, versus closed-loop (or just regular air-based cooling) which has no real noticable water consumption.
But I understand blaming your energy waifu for its own failure is unacceptable for nuclear bros.
running nuclear plants were shut down while running just fine
What other nonsense do you believe?
Look up Greenpeace Energy, and what cushy corporate job Schroder got after leaving office.
Lying is difficult since you don't have reality to keep your story straight.