mapping365

I love how this is immediately used as an excuse to reinflate the AI bubble. Silicon Valley and Wall Street are just begging for backlash.

I think it can't be categorized as NIMBYism because the underlying sentiment is not just no data centers in my backyard, but anyones backyard. It's about the AI project itself, even if it expresses itself differently for a local context.

It's gotten to the point where investors aren't mindlessly buying the debt.

I think the level of mania that has been in the AI data center bubble in the last few years has come at the cost of permanent damage to the future of the industry. The public is in revolt.

I feel like that is besides the point. I think the fact that ended up this way is an illustration how hardened the public has become. There's no niceties, procedure. The public has been pushed well past that point. This is not a negotiation.

This is more a harbinger of what is about to happen all over the country. So the specifics matter less than it marking the political ascendancy of the backlash to AI / data centers / big tech / billionaires...

It feels like this is the first time I've seen the political system move in tune with the public mood in regards to AI and this is public anger finding expression in public policy.

Eminent domain is like the the Thanos snap version of state power in a democratic / capitalist country. The ultimate representation of the peoples will over the individuals desire.

Backlash is just a natural consequence in a democratic society to the absolute accelerationist mindset that AI development has taken since 2022. Actions meet consequences. I mean it wasn't so long ago they were talking about wiping out all white collar work and consigning most the country to the permanent underclass. If you look at how the rest of the economy has been starved of capital to fund all this and how its contributed to inflation and job insecurity, it doesn't really take a foreign actor to spark a massive backlash.

I feel like if they just expanded this logic slightly they would realize that data centers as an investment class are uninvestable.

These data center companies are in for a world of hurt. I doubt they have an inkling of what is coming their way.

Nah, back in early May / late April I was listening / reading up on energy. And the thing that stuck with me was, when you start hearing chatter about energy export bans, that is how you know the situation is at critical point. That it'll start generalized and unattributed but it's a way to introduce the topic into ether. You don't want to surprise people with a ban, that would be even more catastrophic. You build up to it.

And there it is. The tell that the energy crisis is dire: unprompted leaks of energy exports being halted. The energy markets are being manipulated by Bessent to keep the price artificially low. But we're running out fast.

It's largely the same. And it's Jensen circular deals that providing the cash in the first place.

It means it is very fragile. Now if you consider that this probably Nvidia's money doing a circuit, it looks even more dicey.

"The movement to curb the data center boom emerged Wednesday with new political muscle. Winners this week either want to crack down on new data centers or enact a moratorium."

I think that ignores the scale and speed of what is happening with the buildout. That it's gotten to the point that states are putting in moratoriums, thats pretty incredible. I've never seen political government forces mobilize this quickly except in some sort of emergency situation.

Or look at it this way, a massive change has been forced on the public through the decisions of a small number of people. Basically the whole "Accept your fate, it is inevitable" backfired spectacularly. The people were robbed of their agency, their democratic process. This is just the democratic will reasserting its agency.

Yeah, but how badly did Silicon Valley fuck this up to unite Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon in a common crusade?

This is not your standard partisan issue.

What the Unabomber, Steve Bannon’s tech guy, and Bernie Sanders taught me about the great data center backlash of 2026 - https://www.wired.com/story/how-data-centers-broke-american-...

Data center approvals in Texas halted until audits completed, Gov. Greg Abbott says - https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/03/texas-data-center-pr...

DeSantis lambastes White House over possibility of blocking state-level AI laws - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/4605403...

New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium - https://www.reuters.com/world/new-york-becomes-first-state-i...

Libertarian Ohio governor candidate calls for ‘immediate moratorium’ on new data centers -https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/08/ohio-governor-candida...

Oregonians want data center moratorium and no more tax breaks, poll finds - https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2026/08/oregonians...

Virginia state senators call for data center moratorium - https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/v...

Tucker Carlson, Kevin O’Leary have testy exchange over Utah data center issues - https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-kevin-oleary-...

It's an elite project, being forced on us without having any choice. It is worsening inflation. It is increasing inequality. It is threatening careers. It has cheapened human creativity. Just look at how the elite of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and politics are coalescing to absurd lengths to fund and build these things. Why wouldn't you be suspicious...

The new poll found that 41 percent of Americans would oppose a data center being built within three miles of where they live, up from 28 percent in the January survey. The number supporting those projects dropped during the same period, from 37 percent to 24 percent.

The shift was especially pronounced among people who said they had voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race.

The results reflect the scope of the challenge facing the industry and its supporters as the rapid buildout of data centers brings the issue home to voters ahead of the November midterms. More than 200 data centers are going up in dozens of competitive House districts, a recent POLITICO analysis found.

“It’s rare to see political attitudes change this fast in an era where they are often quite static and partisan,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First.

Surely this justifies the trillion dollar valuation.

Not the first time, not the last either. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/creditcards/themes/... https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap46k.pdf South Korean gamblers are the index species of any global credit bubble.

"The U.S. bond market has long had a dark cloud hanging over it: the threat that one of America’s biggest creditors, most likely China or Japan, might liquidate some of their enormous Treasuries holdings, driving up borrowing costs and triggering an economic and market crash.

Markets have largely shrugged off this doomsday scenario for decades – and for good reason – but the historic joint U.S.-Japan currency intervention last week is a reminder that they shouldn't get complacent.

For years, most experts believed that China, America's main economic and geopolitical rival, would be the country likely to trigger such a crisis. But Beijing’s stash of Treasuries has actually shrunk over the past decade. From a purely financial perspective, Japan, arguably America’s biggest ally in Asia, poses as much of a threat due to the sheer scale of its exposure to U.S. debt. It’s officially America’s biggest international creditor, to the tune of $1.14 trillion.

Of course, no one expects Tokyo to willingly light the fuse on this potential tinderbox, but that doesn't mean accidents can't happen, particularly now. Markets face a perfect storm: extreme weakness in the yen , stress in Japanese government bonds (JGBs) and parts of the Treasury curve , and credibility issues at both the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan.

This may help explain U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s unconventional joint currency intervention with Japan last Friday to support the ailing yen, which had fallen to a 40-year low against the dollar, while JGB yields hit record highs. "

Oracle and Coreweave about to have a debt heart attack. x_x

So NY and Texas....

"AI has rapidly become a huge economic factor while affecting everything from capital investment to how much you pay for an iPhone. The U.S. economy keeps putting more eggs in the artificial-intelligence basket. Tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to meet AI computing needs and issuing billions of dollars of debt to help make those purchases."

I think the easiest explanation is that this buildout is starving the rest of the economy of capital. People can see these massive numbers going into data centers and how the rest of the economy is stagnating. People see the zero-sumness of it.

The people who made money on fiber and railroads were the inheritors after the timeline mismatch bankrupted the original players who did the investment. Even if AI turns out to be everything it promises, you can mistime the investment and lose everything.