Why America Can Excel in A.I. Without Massive Data Centers
They say America loses the AI race unless we cover farmland with mall-sized warehouses, give them tax breaks, and let them take power and water.
John Valentine told a Texas Senate committee that story is a fraud. His team took a job that needed 92 hours inside a data center and finished it in nine minutes on a computer you can hold, plugged into a wall, using less power than a microwave.
In sworn testimony he went further:
From 2021 through 2024, I personally gave over 350 live demonstrations of entire government 15 databases, each currently requiring a full data center, to citizen groups, legislators, and political 16 candidates, demonstrating that each database could run on a computer the size of a shoebox 17 using less energy than a table lamp.
Longer Sworn testimony filing: https://interchange.puc.texas.gov/Documents/59475_4548_1643486.PDF
He Built the Systems. Then He Called the Warehouses a Fraud:
My name is John Valentine and I’m from Salado, and I’m here because I am a landowner. But I’m also an AI guy.
I led the team that built the eBay fraud detection engine. I led the team that built the TSA No Fly List. I led the team that built the automobile insurance-fraud systems for 70% of the property-casualty industry.
My partners and I run a software company. One of my partners built the system for the CIA and the NSA. And in every case, we were able to do this without a data center.
There is no need today for hyperscaler data centers for AI. We have them because companies, Palantir, Oracle, and others, are still selling 1980s technology. That old technology needs data centers.
Weeks ago we took an application that takes 92 hours in a data center and ran it on a computer you can hold in your hand in nine minutes. Plug it into the wall and it uses less power than a microwave.
Only America is doing this craziness. China and Europe are using distributed systems. The fraud being perpetrated on the American people is that we need data centers for AI. We can prove we do not.
Short Clip: https://x.com/MAGACult2/status/2101004564501553434
This Is Not a Protester. This Is One of the Builders.
Valentine has worked with computers since the 1970s. That is the man telling lawmakers these giant campuses are not required. They are a business choice sold as the only option. Old software was built to drag every record to one giant central machine. That design needs a warehouse. A lot of today’s work does not. It can run closer to where the data already lives, on machines that already exist, for a fraction of the power and money.
Your Bill Pays for the Warehouse.
Data centers never sleep. A federal lab put them at about 4.7% of U.S. electricity in 2024, heading toward 12%, possibly 15%, by 2030. New plants and lines get built. Households pay part of it.
Water is the same story. Evaporative cooling can use 1 to 5 million gallons a day, a small town. Closed-loop and dry systems use less on site. They are not zero. They still need a huge first fill and top-offs, and the extra electricity often uses water at the power plant instead. They need to be filled back up after cleaning/dumping the build up. Northern Virginia already has the proof. Data-center water use there jumped from about 1.13 billion gallons in 2019 to at least 1.85 billion in 2023.
Texas still hands Big Tech a sales-tax exemption written in 2013, now projected to cost billions in a single budget cycle, while towns pay for substations, pipes, and roads. Construction jobs leave. A handful of technicians stay. The citizens pay higher electric bills their aquifers and waterways are being drained and polluted, their beautiful farmland is taken, constant hum of the generators creates noise pollution and more.
Build or Lose Is the Sales Pitch. The Work Often Does Not Need the Building.
The scare line is that if we do not build another giant campus, America loses the AI race. A lot of the work does not need the campus. It needs smarter programs. If even part of Valentine’s claim is true, every new warehouse on farmland is a bet that 1980s software stays in charge, a bet that helps the vendors whose products only work in a warehouse. Everyone else pays for the land, the power, and the water.
Make Them Prove It Before They Get the Land.
Before the next subsidy and the next water permit, make them prove the job cannot run on machines already in the county, or on a box that draws less power than a household appliance. If they cannot, America is not short of warehouses. America is being sold warehouses it does not need.
Longer case: https://datacentermadness.com/
Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erkuakBRpiM
Data Centers are Surveillance Centers
I have a question I still cannot answer as I write this. We know the main purpose of data centers is to surveil, track, and store our every move and purchase. They will also be used for a worldwide digital currency system. Will shoebox data centers be able to do that? If they can, it is puzzling why hyperscale centers are still being built, unless the whole story is the 1980s software issue. I only just became aware of this shoebox technology, so I do not have the answer yet.
source www.theburningplatform.com