From national politics down to local neighborhood discussion, America seems to be in full-blown moral panic about data centers.

The two main concerns voiced by both politicians and my neighbors boil down to arguments that the increasing number and size (due to the push toward resource-intensive artificial intelligence in pretty much everything) of data centers requires “too much” electricity and “too much” water.

That may be true … right now.  But will it be true a few years from now? Not likely. Why? Well, let’s look at some history.

When Henry Ford introduced his “Quadricycle” — a gasoline powered automobile mounted on bicycle wheels — in 1896, most American roads were just dirt paths. By the early 1900s, Ford and others were pumping out thousands of the new-fangled “horseless carriages.”

With the cars came the complaints: Dirt roads turned into perpetual dust clouds as “rolling firetraps” careened dangerously down them, loudly and with frequent exhaust backfires, scaring the horses which drew the “traditional” wagons and carriages. A hue and cry arose against the dangers and inconveniences of the “devil wagons.”

But then cars got quieter (as inventors introduced mufflers), their brakes got improved, and the roads got paved. Over time, people ended up with cheaper, safer, faster, and more reliable transportation. And the streets and roads stopped being large-scale dumping grounds for animal feces, arguably improving health conditions.

That process of improvement hasn’t ended yet. My wife’s 2006 SUV gets about three times as many miles per gallon (in town) as the Oldsmobile coupe I drove in my youth, and is probably a lot safer, even correcting for her “mature woman” driving skills versus my “crazy male teen” habits.

Getting a little more modern, consider computers: My Linux Mini PC, like the Commodore VIC-20 I got for Christmas in 1983, runs on 20-25 watts of electricity. But the mini PC — which cost about 1/3 as much as the Commodore after accounting for inflation — boasts three million times as much RAM and runs about 3,000 times as fast.

Yes, data centers use a lot of water.

Yes, data centers use a lot of electricity.

But the builders of those data centers are constantly working to reduce water and electrical requirements because supplying those requirements is costly.

Unless there’s some really bizarre change to the historical arc of invention and innovation, we are at the peak, not the low point, of data center resource usage.

In fact, shortly before I began writing this column, Wired ran an article on a recent innovation by Amazon that “delivers 33 percent higher data throughput, cuts network power consumption by 40 percent, and lowers operating costs by 27 percent.”

Future CPUS and their associated equipment will run faster (meaning fewer are needed for the same jobs), cooler (meaning less water is needed to cool them), and on less electricity.

Those innovations won’t just benefit the operators of data centers. Regular consumers will also see cheaper, faster, better products at the retail level — and lower utility bills to boot.

The future is always scary … until it actually gets here.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On May 25, US president Donald Trump went back to war with Iran, launching strikes in the southern part of that country on a laughable claim of “self-defense.”

The previous phase of the war was stupid, evil, and illegal, as is this phase.

It was and is stupid because even given Trump’s constantly shifting (and mostly themselves stupid) objectives, there was no way to “win” it other than nuking all of Iran’s major cities and sending in a massive occupation force for the foreseeable future.

It was and is evil because war is always evil. Noncombatants are killed, injured, and impoverished, purposely or accidentally. There are seldom any “good guys” on the “leadership” level of any side — it’s merely a street gang turf rumble writ large, with regular people caught in the violent middle.

It was and is illegal because here was no declaration of war, and the attack didn’t even meet the minimal  requirements of the War Powers Resolution. Additionally, even if that resolution was constitutional (it wasn’t), Trump had 60 days to get congressional approval for continuing the operations (he didn’t — and no, the clock did not magically “reset” just because he took a brief break).

Wars usually aren’t really “won” in any meaningful sense of the word, but in this war the US regime — and the American people — have clearly lost, no matter the military outcome. It’s already impoverishing us considerably, and we’re only seeing the early impact of a situation which will drag on for a long time regardless of what happens next.

The most obvious indicator, of course, is the price of gasoline at the pump, but the shortages of petroleum products and fertilizer components that usually pass through the Strait of Hormuz will soon become very real in the prices we pay for consumer goods and groceries.

So, here we are: Instead of taking his lumps, letting the war end, and hoping for an economic upturn before the midterm elections mangle his party’s present projects and future prospects, Trump is doubling down.

There are three, and only three, plausible explanations:

Explanation One is that he’s evil, hates America, and is doing his damnedest to destroy the US economy. If that’s the  case the US House of Representatives should impeach him and the US Senate should convict and remove him. His illegal war clearly meets the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Explanation Two is that he’s stupid — whether by nature or due to his obvious cognitive decline — and just doesn’t know what he’s doing or understand its moral, political, or economic implications. If that’s the case, the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet should, per the 25th Amendment, “transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” after which the vice-president can become “acting president” and put a stop to this nonsense.

Explanation Three is that Trump — again, possibly due to the obvious cognitive decline he’s publicly and frequently displayed since before his second inauguration — isn’t in charge; the presidency is effectively controlled by other people who happen to be evildoers. If that’s the case, and if the 25th Amendment isn’t invoked because those evildoers also control — or consist of — the vice-president and cabinet, then it’s the public’s job to shut the war machine, and the regime controlling it, down.

That might look like a general strike, or even a revolution. It wouldn’t be pretty. But Trump clearly must be removed from power, and a popular uprising would likely be less ugly than the alternative, which is that US military commanders cease obeying Trump’s unlawful orders and depose him themselves. A junta is a lateral move on the evil and stupidity metrics, not an improvement on either.

There’s no question of “winning” the war. The war is lost, and lost it shall remain. The questions are about how much longer it lasts, how many more people are killed, maimed, displaced, and impoverished, what the terms of the US surrender look like, and what comes after. The sooner Trump loses the power to babble non-answers and act on them, the better.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Last July, then US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the formation of a “strike force” to investigate former president Barack Obama and members of his administration, based on claims from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard of a “treasonous conspiracy” to prevent the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

The alleged conspiracy involved falsifying intelligence findings to support claims that the Russian regime assisted, and possibly controlled, Trump.

Nearly a year later, no charges seem to have been filed regarding the “treasonous conspiracy,” unless we count the indictment of former FBI director James Comey for the crime of publishing a photo of seashells on the Internet, but Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wonders (at his Substack) “Is Trump’s Justice Department Pursuing Obama” himself?

My read of Hersh’s piece suggests that the long arm of the law won’t extend that far, although others (such as former CIA director John Brennan) may end up fighting criminal charges.

That’s my prediction as well, and I consider it unfortunate. I’d love to see Barack Obama charged with, tried for, and convicted of crimes that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt he’s guilty of. For example:

Obama ordered the murders of at least two American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki  (Donald Trump later ordered the murder of eight-year-old Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki, also a US citizen).

Obama also illegally took the US to war in Libya, never even seeking the constitutionally required declaration of war.

For those crimes, and many others, I’d very much like to see Obama face legal consequences.

But there’s a problem with the idea:

In 2024, the US Supreme Court ruled that presidents — in the particular case, Donald Trump — enjoy substantial immunity for their “official acts” despite the US Constitution neither saying nor implying any such immunity.

The “official acts” at issue involved Trump’s attempt to rig the 2020 presidential election, in ways far less obviously “official” than those cited in the Obama investigation.

And Trump has since attempted to stretch the definition of “official acts” enjoying immunity to cover such things as unrelatd to the presidency per se as defaming a woman he sexually assaulted, the assault having occurred when he wasn’t even president.

A successful prosecution of Obama himself  for the actions laid out in the “treasonous conspiracy” claims would irrefutably place a number of Trump’s own acts  outside the “official acts” protection awarded by SCOTUS.

Since Trump probably doesn’t want to go to prison, it seems unlikely that he’ll try very hard to send Obama there either.

Obama’s underlings may take a fall … unless Obama says he pardoned them just by thinking about it, in much the same way that Trump declassified secret documents he was unsuccessfully prosecuted for stealing. But Obama himself will likely live out his life in freedom despite his crimes.

It’s a shame, really. All living American presidents, current and former, should be wearing orange jumpsuits and leg irons right now, and the dead ones should faced the music too.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY