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by vrganj 17 days ago
> The oil is on Alaska/Norway's land

These AI companies are on American land.

2 comments

In the case of Alaska, the oil is literally on land owned by the State of Alaska (as in, the titleholder of the land is the state itself), and the rights to oil extraction is leased by the state to oil companies.

By contrast, data centers are generally going to be on land owned by the operator, and corporate offices are either owned by the company or leased to the company by some commercial real estate operator you've probably never heard of. In neither sense are they on land owned by any local, state, or federal government.

The sovereign entity granting said private ownership is the state. It is privately owned only insofar as the state wills it.
> It is privately owned only insofar as the state wills it.

you mean as the people/voters wills it. Private ownership of land is pretty sacred law in the US, I don't see those laws being changed any time soon. Even logical things like the concept of eminent domain is very controversial.

Holy shit a realpolitiker. There is a God called "state" that WILLS the laws. Only by the power of prayer can one communicate with the sovereign, who whimsically discards centuries long legal traditions because a midwit read Schmitt or something.
The funny thing about data is... it can move across borders a lot better than oil deposits...
Data can.

Data centers at scale, less so.

But I suppose that's why Altman and Musk have been cozying up to autocratic Middle Eastern regimes and dreaming about AI in space...