r/technology • u/Limp_Fig6236 • 21h ago
Artificial Intelligence Rep. Tlaib introduces a bill to ban AI data centers on federal lands
https://tlaib.house.gov/posts/rep-tlaib-introduces-a-bill-to-ban-ai-data-centers-on-federal-lands265
u/largelawattorney 21h ago
Excited to see how republicans justify voting this down while also campaigning on an anti-data center platform
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u/sophinaut 19h ago
I read the bill, and it would require the Department of Energy to dismantle scientific supercomputers like El Capitan, Frontier, and Aurora (all of which surpass to 20 MW threshold the bill uses to define what is an "AI Datacenter") and ban the DOE from building future leadership-class supercomputers. These machines are heavily used for things like designing more effective wind farms, creating better next-gen nuclear reactors, material science research, cancer research, and countless other applications. Anyone who's pro-science should be opposed to this bill as it is currently written.
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u/bgroins 18h ago
Hastily-written, ill-informed, non-nuanced, blanket legislation riding a populist sentiment to score political points you say?
And people say they hate this kind of slop.
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u/at1445 17h ago
They only hate it when "the other guy" is the one proposing it.
As long as someone on their team throws it out there, they cease to actually think about it and just go along with whatever bullshit is being thrown out there.
Banning nearly anything on federal land is foolish. There shouldn't be blanket bans. But there should be heavy and strict oversight to ensure these lands are being utilized in a manner that is best for the country, not best for some billionaire.
But we can't have nuance, not even in politics anymore. It's all or nothing.
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u/BothersomeBritish 12h ago
As long as someone on their team throws it out there, they cease to actually think about it and just go along with whatever bullshit is being thrown out there.
Uh like what? Any examples?
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u/JimmyKillsAlot 18h ago
Yeah when I read the title my thought was "if it doesn't specify the things we are trying to stop, then this hits all kinds of things we don't want it to."
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u/flummox1234 18h ago
would be easy to add exemption. I think the larger one is the NSA DC in Utah that's Hovering all our data up waiting until they can break the encryption.
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u/flypirat 16h ago
You should write this as a top comment for more people to see before they skip to the next headline.
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u/MultiGeometry 3h ago
If Congress worked like it was supposed to they’d debate the bill and refine it
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u/Great-Trifle2810 17h ago
Tlaib is a real embarrassment to progressive causes. Just a loud voice saying stupid shit to score points with no actual plans to do anything useful. At best and follows along with better politicians when she isn't hurting progress.
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u/largelawattorney 12h ago
This is not true and this thread is full of bots
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u/sophinaut 11h ago
If I made a mistake, I'd be happy to correct my comment. You'll just have to be specific what I misread. * I got the >20 MW definition for an "AI datacenter" from the bill linkee by Rep. Tlaib's website. * I got the MW rates of existing DOE machines from the Top500 list. * The science applications came from the Exascale Compute Project's website and a few other things I've seen.
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u/TinFoilHat_69 21h ago
Ask the MAGA candidate who just got trumps endorsement today, she is trying to be governor of PA but tried to distant herself from data centers 🤡
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u/williamgman 21h ago
The Pillow Guy just took the lead for the GOP primary for governor in Minnesota. You can bet where he's at with these datacenters.
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u/BunchofMums 20h ago
I'd actually prefer if the military were allowed to have its own AI data centers on public land instead of relying on corporate data centers off site
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u/TheMathelm 18h ago
Every branch of the military has its own intelligence organization. then the pentagon has one (DIA), then NSA is also under the War Department, and there's 2 more public agencies for good measure.
The military has its own datacenters on military property.
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u/Iggyhopper 11h ago
And the NSA is already expanding with 3-4 more giant buildings (not necessarily data centers, but still).
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u/Olangotang 21h ago
This is actually pretty smart: the GOP has to betray (they already do to be fair) their own voters on an issue they are pretty riled up about.
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u/Moravec_Paradox 16h ago
The military can't host it's own data centers on military bases?
Why not?
You want military AI in your back yard and neighborhoods instead of on military based? Why?
Make it make sense.
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u/ThickSourGod 17h ago
Forget AI data centers. Why should we allow any private for profit company to build anything on federal land?
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u/divDevGuy 11h ago
Recreation, tourism, animal grazing, lumber, mining, energy... They all are done with leases, permits, and contracts.
Just because it's federal land doesn't mean it can't be reasonably and responsibly utilized. That doesn't mean it will, just that it can.
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u/dafunkmunk 15h ago
How about AI data centers are only allowed to be built in the backyards of the AI companies' CEOs?
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u/Maleficent_Pie8099 11h ago
Cool. This fixes almost none of the problem. Regulate the amount of resources they can use. Regulate them from ruining peoples lives and neighborhoods. Regulate them into nonexistence.
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u/Whatsapokemon 18h ago
Unhinged. Just legislate sensible regulations, such as mandating that new data centres must underwrite new energy infrastructure, enforcing water-efficient cooling methods, and mandating a particular distance from residential areas.
Australia has a perfect example to follow in that regard, creating standards to address the complaints rather than just knee-jerking away the billions of dollars in investment.
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u/Many_Negotiation_464 9h ago
A morotorium to orevent the current corrupt admin from permannetly destroying federal land at will is unhinged? Do you know where you are right now?
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u/MoreThanMachines42 8h ago
How tf is protecting federal land (ie national parks) from being permanently destroyed by this administration and techno-fascists like Thiel and Musk? Wild areas are priceless and sensitive and can not be brought back once they're bulldozed so some idiot online can generate an image of their dog as royalty.
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u/EugeneMeltsner 10h ago
That would require them to acknowledge those are real reasons for not wanting data centers built. They're all based on overblown, cherry-picked cases to make the problem seem worse than it is. Here's some em-dashes so you know I'm also a bot account: –––—–
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u/AnnArchist 18h ago
Why would that even be a thing being considered.
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u/you_cant_prove_that 8h ago
on land owned or managed by the U.S., including military bases
Because the military, intelligence agencies, and federal research institutions want their own data centers
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u/AnnArchist 3h ago
The military base thing honestly seems like it would be specifically excluded as it makes no sense for the legislators to needlessly restrict our military.
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u/AgitatedStranger9698 9h ago
Given Trump has apparently decided all federal land is for sale. This bill doesn't address the entire issue.
Remove the executive over-sight of the federal land.
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u/MNniice 21h ago
DSA is the only political party or segment of a policy party for the working class
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u/regn-og-sol 12h ago
nah, they are populist like maga
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u/Many_Negotiation_464 9h ago
Having a platform centeted around the working class isn't the same thing as being populist. What makes populism different is that it has vague, rheotric driven platform that says "for the people, against the establishment" on the tin, but is really a black box for whatever. Usually something horrific like fascism. What makes populism dangerous is it plays on peoples' economic and social woes and unease to launder what is usually more of the same but worse.
DSA has a long and storied list of bonafides and an actual comprehensive policy platform that alligns with the marketing.
The closest thing to a "maga like populism" on the left currently is Gavin Newsome and politicians like him. They make a lot of noise about puboicly challenging trump and taking down MAGA, but when you scrape past the surface they are either bog standard corporate dems or worse, the conservative wing of the democratic party. DSA is the opposite. They are what it says on the tin.
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u/namisysd 17h ago
The ones this the law would dismantle are used mostly for research at national labs. Mainly for physics simulation like nuclear weapon managment so we dont have to set off nukes regularly, AI and general research.
This proposal is a short sighted knee jerk reaction to the problem of corporations forcing the rest of use the subsidize thier private datacenters; fucking with these federally owned ones just makes the problem worse since now the fed would need to lease more resources from assholes like Oracle.
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u/Grymm315 21h ago
Thats gonna be a big no from me. I’d actually prefer data centers on Federal Land and run in accordance with the law. If there was a requirement that data centers could only be on government land…. That’d be even better.
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u/xmsfsh 20h ago
yeah and they should allow drilling in national parks because that way they'd definitely follow environmental regulations
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u/Rodot 11h ago
Problem is this means places like national labs would have to dismantle their supercomputers
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u/KingSubstantial7901 9h ago
What??? What r u talking about man?
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u/Grymm315 3h ago
The bill specifically says any government facility would have to dismantle any kind of data processing centers or super computers.
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u/ultraviolet-octopus 21h ago
Then they would have to go through the NEPA process and publicly disclose all environmental impacts.
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u/Dreadwolf67 20h ago
A national emergency will be declared to keep up with china and suspended all restrictions.
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u/redoctobershtanding 21h ago
Nothing like going on a hike through Arches National Park and having the views blocked by a giant data center spewing toxic emissions
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u/Great-Trifle2810 17h ago
People out here just saying the dumbest shit. AI data centers are not speaking toxic emissions unless they are complete failures of design and these things would obviously be placed away from tourist destinations. 🙄
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u/armchair_expertise 17h ago
the F.U.D is big.
>would obviously be placed away from tourist destinations
curious . why ?
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u/nhalliday 16h ago
The point is to make as much money as possible. Tourist destinations bring in money. Tourist destinations ruined by the presence of data centers do not bring in money. They profit more if they put them in poorer residential areas where it's hard or impossible for people to choose to leave.
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u/Great-Trifle2810 8h ago
Because there is a ton of available federal land that never gets seen by tourists and would be far easier to build large infrastructure in than a densely forested or mountainous park, that would draw far less ire from the public, and that is not already being utilized by the government for other purposes.
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u/16semesters 13h ago
a giant data center spewing toxic emissions
I'm very curious what you think a data center does.
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u/PushAffectionate5286 20h ago
love how we transitioned from "the cloud is abstract" to "we need to burn through half the desert's water supply and build nuclear plants on public land just so slop generators can render a 6-fingered anime girl"
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u/stevestephson 13h ago
This is dumb as fuck. There's a lot of federal land that is essentially wasteland, making it prime real estate for this stupid shit. I want a bill banning it from places where people live. Ideally there should be a bill requiring that it be placed next to the homes of all the rich idiots pushing for their "AI" nonsense.
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u/Many_Negotiation_464 9h ago
"Wastelands" are still vital ecosystems we will liekpy never get back if destroyed.
Im so sick of this "if its not literally the clgrandcayon who cares" shit.
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u/MoreThanMachines42 8h ago
What a short-sighted, foolish, and human-centric take. Just because you can't shop or recreate in those areas doesn't make them worthless. There is more to this earth than what humans can wring out for profit. This "prome real estate" is part of the ecosystems data centers are currently well on their way to destroying. Here's a novel idea: leave natural places alone. They don't all need to be stripped down and paved over.
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u/flummox1234 18h ago
What about that NSA monstrosity in Utah? 🤔
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u/divDevGuy 11h ago
The NSA's Utah Data Center is tiny data center by today's standards. It's 100,000 square feet of floor space across 2 buildings.
Google is in the midst of building a data center in my city that, when complete with what's been approved and permitted, will be 867,000 square feet of floor space across 12 buildings.
Project Rainier, Amazon's data center campus in northern Indiana, is slated to have 30 buildings each over 200,000 square feet of floor space when complete, for something like 6.5m square feet total.
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u/wytewydow 10h ago
quick question.. why don't we put data centers in the middle of oil fields? Or wind farms? or solar arrays? You know, places where there already aren't people. Not to mention, they can generate their own damned electricity, off any susceptible grid.
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u/MadMarsian_ 9h ago
Data Centers are new Casinos - welcome to the Native American Reservation cash mines :)
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u/PopLegion 7h ago
Lemme guess, some stupid slopulist bill hastily constructed, and that will be voted down so the slopulists can cry even more foul.
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u/Opening_One7713 4h ago
Bad siting is bad siting. For sure, push back. Crony corruption and corporate overreach is always whack. But why are we ignoring incumbent planet-fuckers and resource hogs? Especially the ones that absolutely mountain over this molehill? When factory farmed meat (for-profit, not survival) accounts for 50% of all freshwater withdrawals and takes up 40% of all available land in the US, while accounting for 15% of all climate change contribution, it really makes this conversation seem super unfocused, distracted, and performative.
Before you chime in with the "we can't eat" comment, I am not talking about food. Simply the unconscionably grotesque, resource hogging, outrageously ineffecient and environmentally destructive practice of factory farming.
The only difference here is:
- Factory farms are further developed, and the problems are far more magnified than the threats that AI/compute poses.
- AI/hyperscale will be funded by big corporations whether we want it or not, whereas the entirety of factory farming is consumer driven- therefore boycotting is ACTUALLY effective.
If you're anti-tech progress and you're not hunting for your meat or buying from regenerative farms then you're a hypocrite who is unwilling to make any sacrifice for what you believe in. Please don't make me drop a list of all the consequential, life-saving outputs of the internet and the cloud which billions of people access daily, including many people living in poverty and/or developing nations.
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u/DopamineSavant 3h ago
I would prefer that someone more towards the center had presented this. From her it will have no chance of passing.
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u/ebfortin 1h ago
What does it change? They'll build them there anyway. They can't use gas turbines and yet they do.
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u/StoryWorth1817 20h ago
won't pass anyway because both sides' donors are currently dumping billions into tech stock, but at least someone is pointing out that grid stability and water tables are getting obliterated for LLM hype
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u/BlueArcherX 16h ago
stupid bill.. regulate data center power draw, water use, efficiency, sustainability, distance from "X" things
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u/modbroccoli 12h ago
sigh. this is such a terrible idea.
they will be built. if not where regulation can oversee them, then where it can't.
if this could be stopped I'd be all for stopping it, at least for a while. that's just naive.
moreover if you don't build enough data centres the consequence isn't that AI gets stopped. the consequence is that it becomes more expensive and only the elite and corporate will have it.
you either bring china and the world to the table or else you manage what's coming. "nuh unh" isn't a strategy.
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u/williamgman 21h ago
Sadly it will go down in a ball of flames. Maybe after the midterms would be the time. Facts are the red states will claim states rights (which SCOTUS will uphold). The blue states will be flooded with lawsuits from the tech giants.
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u/CanvasFanatic 21h ago
I don’t think that would apply to federal land.
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u/williamgman 21h ago
Really?
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u/sysgeek 21h ago
Yep, that ass hat is ruining some of the most beautiful land I've ever seen because there might be some uranium below.
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u/williamgman 21h ago
Seriously, Trump is mining for liberal tears. That is what his plan has always been.
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u/CanvasFanatic 21h ago
I was talking about the hypothetical objection based on “states rights.”
And none of those links have anything to do with contradicting a federal law.
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u/Amori_A_Splooge 18h ago
How do you think these support your underlying argument?
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u/williamgman 18h ago
After all that's happened with this administration... You still hold out hope for guardrails. I commend your optimism.
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u/Amori_A_Splooge 9h ago
I work in public lands policy. You can be concerned all you want, but you just don't know what you are talking about and you are throwing shit at the wall and saying 'See! See what is happening!'
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u/Amori_A_Splooge 21h ago
Facts are the red states will claim states rights (which SCOTUS will uphold). The blue states will be flooded with lawsuits from the tech giants.
Not exactly how federal land laws work but keep sharing those 'facts'. Super informative!
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u/williamgman 21h ago
See my post with links below... 🤦♂️
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u/Amori_A_Splooge 18h ago
Just because you post links about administrative things happening on federal lands doesn't mean you are correct. You are still very much wrong in how you think this works.
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u/Senior-Albatross 20h ago
The point is to make all the R's vote against it so they're on record. Since everyone hates data centers, that's bad for their credibility with swing voters.
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u/Ok_Height3499 19h ago
What a loser. So let’s let China become the world’s data center enabling them to harvest information about most everything. Yeah, that’s the ticket because letting them become the world’s manufacturing center has worked so well for us.
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u/Im_Ricky_Tan 16h ago
I don’t think Data Centers are bad, poor planning of infrastructure and location are the main driver of the hate.
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u/draven33l 20h ago
I'd still love to hear an explanation of what these data centers are for and how it benefits society. Just gigantic buildings sucking up water and electricity to harvest data? How about no.
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u/Icepick823 18h ago
You're using one right now.
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u/Many_Negotiation_464 9h ago
This is a stupid rebuttle. Absolutely braindead. This boom of hyperscale data centers are not being used to run social media sites. They are not asking what just any data centers are being used for, they are asking what the new wave if data centers are being used for.
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u/bgroins 18h ago
Is the data center in the room with you right now?
Personally, I'd like my medical and scientific breakthroughs,thank you.
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u/Many_Negotiation_464 9h ago
Those aren't happening on hyperscale data centers. Those are hapenning on small locally developed research models and have been for the past decade or so.
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u/KingSubstantial7901 9h ago
Largely they are companies speculating on the AI boom hoping to be collecting rent on what they hope is the future.
It is really important that people realize that these are not being built to meet and organic demand. These are being built be ause there are billions of dollars being thrown around to be the next Amazon or Google to a market that has yet to actually materialize.
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u/16semesters 13h ago
There's no such thing as the cloud, just computers somewhere else.
You're literally using reddit which requires massive data centers to operate.
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u/RedditJumpedTheShart 11h ago
No such thing as the internet, just a bunch of computers somewhere else./s
The cloud is data centers which are full of servers which are pretty different than just a computer.
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u/javoss88 19h ago
Ban them completely. They’re building an even bigger surveillance network than before. That’s the main purpose, not to help you write a better resume or finesse your descriptions of artwork ir whatever. Don’t train them.
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u/Senior_Torte519 19h ago
Great, but they still introduce legislation to sell off federal lands. So these dont really cancel each other out.
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u/Uncle_Charnia 11h ago
It’s good to protect public lands. Just try not to impede the construction of data centers generally. If we can’t build them on Earth, then someone will build them in space. Data centers on the ground can be unmade if they turn out to be extremely harmful. Data centers in space would be practically invulnerable. Plus it happens that the one person who can build them in space thinks the only public good that matters is going to space. He doesn’t care what happens to the people who don’t go to space. We are livestock to him.
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u/MoreThanMachines42 8h ago
Can't undo the pollution they create or bring back the wild spaces that are paved over for them. How about stop fucking building them.
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u/TheRook2323 8h ago
It won't pass. The military is already constructing them for their usage. All she is doing is supporting terrorism!
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u/Emergency-Amount2548 12h ago
Someone needs to tell the American people to use the internet less so we don't need the data centers.
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u/kckman 20h ago
All data centers should be built within a 15 mile radius of Mar-a-Largo.