[constantcrying]

They say this will include hundreds of thousands of jobs. I have little doubt that dedicated power generation and storage is included in their plans.

Also I have no doubt that the timing is deliberate and that this is not happening without government endorsement. If I had to guess the US military also is involved in this and sees this initiative as important for national security.

[cmdli]

Is there really any government involvement here? I only see Softbank, Oracle, and OpenAI pledging to invest $500B (over some timescale), but no real support on the government end outside of moral support. This isn't some infrastructure investment package like the IRA, it's just a unilateral promise by a few companies to invest in data centers (which I'm sure they are doing anyway).

[diggan]

> but no real support on the government end outside of moral support

The venture was announced at the White House, by the President, who has committed to help it by using executive orders to speed things up.

It might not have been voted by congress or whatever, but just those things makes it pretty clear the government provides more than just "moral support".

[malcolmgreaves]

It's just trump positioning himself for the eventual corrupt kickback.

[seanmcdirmid]

I thought all the big corps had projects for the military already, if not DARPA directly, which is the org responsible for lots of university research (the counterpart to the NSF, which is the nice one that isn't funded by the military)?

[timschmidt]

Funding for DARPA and NSF ultimately comes from the same place. DARPA funds military research. NSF funds dual use[1] research. All of it is organized around long term research goals. I maintained some of the software involved in research funding decision making.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology

[tsujamin]

It’s light on details, but from The Guardian’s reporting:

> The president indicated he would use emergency declarations to expedite the project’s development, particularly regarding energy infrastructure.

> “We have to get this stuff built,” Trump said. “They have to produce a lot of electricity and we’ll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily at their own plants.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/21/trump-ai-joi...

[beezle]

hundreds of thousands of jobs? I'll wait for the postmortem on that prediction. Sounds a lot like Foxconn in Wisconsin but with more players.

[bruce511]

On the one hand the number is a political thumb-suck which sounds good. It's not based in any kind of actual reality.

Yes, the data center itself will create some permanent jobs (I have no real feel for this, but guessing less than 1000).

There'll be some work for construction folk of course. But again seems like a small number.

I presume though they're counting jobs related to the existence of a data center. As in, if I make use of it do I count that as a "job"?

What if we create a new post to leverage AI generally? Kinda like the way we have a marketing post, and a chunk of the daily work there is Adwords.

Once we start gustimamating the jobs created by the existence of an AI data center, we're in full speculation mode. Any number really can be justified.

Of course ultimately the number is meaningless. It won't create that many "local jobs" - indeed most of those jobs, to the degree they exist at all, will likely be outside the US.

So you don't need to wait for a post-mortem. The number is sucked out of thin air with no basis in reality for the point of making a good political sound bite.

[PeeMcGee]

> I presume though they're counting jobs related to the existence of a data center. As in, if I make use of it do I count that as a "job"?

Seeing how Elon deceives advertisers with false impressions, I could see him giving the same strategy a strong vote of confidence (with the bullshit metrics to back it!)

[seanmcdirmid]

> hundreds of thousands of jobs?

I'm sure this will easily be true if you count AI as entities capable of doing jobs. Actually, they don't really touch that (if AI develops too quickly, there will be a lot of unemployment to contend with!) but I get the national security aspect (China is full speed ahead on AI, and by some measurements, they are winning ATM).

[visarga]

only $5M/job

[SoftTalker]

They plan to have 100,000s of people employed to run on treadmills to generate the power.

[HPMOR]

Well I currently pay to do this work for free. More than happy to __get__ paid doing it.

Edit: Hey we can solve the obesity crisis AND preserve jobs during the singularity!! Win win!

[rad_gruchalski]

Wow. What an idea you guys have there. Look - you maybe could sit homeless and mentally disabled on such power-generating bicycles, hmmm... what about convicts! Let them contribute to society, no free lunch! What an innovation!

[jajko]

Plus its ecological, which for trump is not by intention but still a win.

There is this pesky detail about manufacturing 100k treadmills but lets not get bothered by details now, the current must flow

[hrfister]

"solve the obesity crisis" ? what exactly do you mean by this?

[shigawire]

Probably referring to how many Americans are obese to an unhealthy degree as part of the joke.

[bsnsxd]

Damn, 6 hours too slow to make this comment

[nejsjsjsbsb]

A hamster wheel would work better?

[n2d4]

Yes, Trump announced this as a massive foreign investment coming into the US: https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1881832899852542082

[shrubble]

Just as there is an AWS for the public, with something similar but only for Federal use, so it could be possible that there is AI cloud services available to the public and then a separate cloud service for Federal use. I am sure that military intelligence agencies etc. would like to buy such a service.

[szvsw]

AWS GovCloud already exists FYI (as you hinted) and it is absolutely used by the DoD extensively already.