Gregg Russell

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by The New York Times.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

There are 197 million square miles of land on Earth, and the outbreak happened within a few miles of the lab where they were conducting gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses. I wonder what happened.

[Bill Gurley @bgurley]

Great summary of where we are on Covid origins from @KatherineEban. Useful detail for all.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@damnang2 I guess you mean me.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

This is insane.

[CNBC @CNBC]

Trump tells Fed to slash rates or he'll end trade with countries with U.S. surpluses https://t.co/L59gR79NtZ

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@GavinSBaker @MollyJongFast Can we get data centers to contribute to local kids' Invest America accounts? That would be helpful.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@GavinSBaker @MollyJongFast Because her tribe tells her to.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@altcap Two birds, one stone: data centers could improve PR by contributing to Invest America accounts where they build.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@danielnewmanUV We don't want to be any smarter than we are! That would be terrible!

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@wesyang I blame R.E.M.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@rwang07 He seems to think other people are too stupid to see what he's doing here.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@yemisi Well you're right of course. But it's hard to be patient when so many of the objections are just plain ignorant.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

Data center opponents are reality-challenged hysterics.

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

From @WSJopinion: The surge of opposition to data centers reflects misinformation and anxiety about the future more than it does reality. President Trump is finally speaking up.
https://t.co/639FEtwLJ2

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

https://t.co/BMnOBg2862

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@DarkHelmet1984 @EricLDaugh Higher total employment, higher construction employment, more businesses, higher wages and higher adjusted gross income. (Also higher energy prices but that is changing as local governments and utilities negotiate better terms). https://t.co/NS9nG6vROX

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@firstadopter Mainstream media? Trump just killed that possibility by coming out in favor of data centers.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@CNBC

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@DarkHelmet1984 @EricLDaugh

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@RecepPerception @MattHarmon_BYB And he's really good in that Little Caesars commercial.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

People opposed to data centers are ignorant.

[Gavin Baker @GavinSBaker]

Regret the tone of my post on data centers yesterday.

What I should have said:

There were reasonable concerns about data centers 18ish months ago: water, taxes, jobs, electricity prices, the environment and what they would do to small towns. Well-structured data center projects have largely addressed these concerns today and we should be celebrating this.

On balance, data centers are awesome for America in every way.

On water: U.S. data centers use a fraction of what golf courses use. A lot of the numbers from 18 months ago were off by over 1000x. Newer data centers use closed-loop systems or recycled water. Should be required by every town approving a data center project.

On taxes: looking only at sales-tax exemptions, as Ronan Farrow did, is the wrong way to evaluate this. Data centers pay significant property taxes. Loudoun County, which is the wealthiest county in America, now collects on the order of $1 billion a year from data centers. In Quincy, WA, data centers are more than half the property-tax roll. Over time, property taxes can go to zero while government spending increases in these towns.

On jobs: this has been unambiguously awesome for blue collar Americans. Demand for electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC techs, and contractors has gone vertical, and it is not a one-time construction job. These buildings get upgraded and expanded over time. That is why the building trades are fighting for them, and why some unions are now treating opposition to data centers as a reason not to endorse politicians.

On power: the original fear was that households would pay for the incremental electricity demand in the form of higher prices. That is why the ratepayer-protection deals and the new large-load tariffs exist. The right structure is: the data center brings or pays for new generation and signs a contract long enough that existing customers are protected. Where that is happening, utilities are cutting or freezing residential rates and saying so on the record. Where it is not, people are right to object. Electricity prices are going down *today* in a number of large states because of data centers.

On the environment: data centers overwhelming use natural gas today, which is the cleanest power source outside of nuclear, solar and wind. And the companies that are building the data centers are committed to carbon neutrality such that an equivalent amount of solar will likely be built. Maybe more importantly, the data centers need batteries to function effectively and these batteries can also sell energy back into the grid (which recently prevented blackouts in Texas). Over time, data centers will run on solar plus batteries.

On the towns: Poverty in Quincy, WA fell from 29% to 6%. Data center taxes paid for a new high school, a hospital, a library, police and fire stations. This is happening in many left for dead former mill and farm towns that had no other bidder for the land.

Data centers are actually reindustrializing parts of America and creating the kind of working-class jobs both parties have spent decades claiming to support. That should not be a partisan issue. Data centers can and should be awesome for America and they increasingly, overwhelmingly are. Supporting the outsourcing of data centers to China will likely age just as well as support for the outsourcing of high quality, blue collar manufacturing jobs to China has aged.

When the facts change, I change my mind. I hope that reasonable people who had good faith reasons to oppose data centers at least consider updating their beliefs given the change in the facts over the last 18 months. This really matters for America.

I will say I also think the idea of making data centers beautiful is a good one that has yet to be implemented. Data centers should be just as beautiful as Grand Central Station. We can learn a lot from the railroad buildout. Neoclassical revival ftw.

Might write up open-weight AI tomorrow as this is equally essential to America.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

@wesyang I should think it would be exactly half as gay.

[Gregg Russell @OldGreggRussell]

Repost

[Gavin Baker @GavinSBaker]

Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, California cutting electricity prices because of data centers.