Seen a lot of posts illuding to sabotage of data centers but like, they are the last node in a chain of maintenance. We can do so much better with a simple utilities strike.
Not to discourage anyone though…
You aren’t gonna like hearing this but tons of blue collars in construction and energy love data centers because of how much money they’ve been getting from all the new contracts
Definitely the general contractors like them. For the workers themselves they’re usually the only infrastructure being built that will employ at least a couple hundred people and pay prevailing (union) wage. Which is a very decent scale to be fair, higher than average. But the work lasts about 5 years and then maybe the bubble is popping.
Around here the guys I’ve heard talk about it say that the pay and overtime is about the only good thing, they still understand that they’re building big factories that convert water/electricity into a the rs-in-strawberry machine and noise. In extreme cases the centres are one of the few projects that some union halls have for their members too.
The work itself is demeaning as well, it’s basically like building Lego. Everything is laid out in the print for you like a big IKEA bedframe,no thinking necessary (so the engineers designing them would like lol)
No one I’ve met working them specifically wants to build them. Like if there were hospitals, or schools, or solar/wind/nuclear power systems going up,.or anything actually socially useful they would prefer to work on those. But these things aren’t profitable like LLM gold rush is.
It’s like a century of union subservience to capital is coming up short. I’ve found that generally speaking at the sites that are unionized the membership is more radical than the union leadership, I’ve talked to plumbers , electricians and Ironworkers and basically explained falling rate of profit to them and they’re like wow so that’s why this piece of shit is being built.
Anyway this turned into a rant so oops my bad.
Union leaderships only goal is to take care of their members and in a way, their interests are even more aligned with capital than the members themselves since acquiring contracts like these is what gets them paid by the union, while the members have higher mobility to work elsewhere
Yes this is true and lots.of members know it. I’ve heard of some locals where the monthly meeting is basically an old boys club, no one shows up because they know leadership isnt on their side and there is very little democratic control, eg recall mechanisms.
Have a few friends in the electrical work field, they’re enjoying the pay right now for sure.
Getting housing stipends and per diem, whatever they get paid is going directly into their pockets right now. One of them had 3 car notes he’s paying for. Tried to talk sense into him that this isn’t gonna last and he should save his money and he nods and agrees with me, until the next time I see him and he shows the new toy he just bought.
We could be refitting the entire built environment for public transit, accessibility, passive solar, and longevity, but instead we’re doing… whatever this is.
Wonder how bad things will be when this LLM bubble bursts
In a just world, it only effects the investors
We can make it so if we act early and strongly enough
I try not to think about it comrade.
They will get a bail out. The AI companies are thoroughly linked to the physical data centers. The physical data centers are the internet. US govt will say the data centers are too big to fail. They will not nationalize the internet though, they will just give the companies money just like they did before
it’s the last node, but the most expensive node for these companies. right now the power is being paid and subsidized by local governments and taxpayers, and utilities are critical to everyone not just these data centers.
They also have backup generators on-hand and would be unaffected, for the most part, instead burning diesel for days on end
Most data centers don’t use these much. There are regulations on how much emissions they can make. Some data centers are not following these regulations, these are the ones that get reported on most. The one I’ve really seen reported a lot is grok’s. They run those 24/7, emissions you can verify with thermal imaging. But most data centers it’s more like a few minutes a year, most of that is just testing the systems to make sure they still work. And the fuel storage is not enough to deal with long term power loss, it’s meant to last long enough to keep running though something like a storm that knocks down power lines
They also can’t operate if a backhoe rips through the fibre optic cables outside their facilities. Hypothetically.
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The electrons refuse to cross the picket line
as capital concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, so too does it concentrate its physical investments in fewer and fewer places, placing greater load-bearing responsibilities on the nodes of the infrastructure network that do remain, making the superstructure itself more and more vulnerable to sabotage, targeted attacks, and even natural disasters
“Power Is Logistic”, but very literally.
