[exabrial]

Right, all they're going to do is rip the concrete out and repour it, causing even more damage to the environment (concrete production and curing is unbelievably C02 intensive)

I don't disagree we shouldn't be expanding power consumption unless we've moved the vast majority (>90%) of the load off fossil fuels, but this certainly didn't help anything.

[OkayPhysicist]

Sabotage works by introducing friction into your opponents activities. Sabotaging one piece of one data center doesn't do much, but the more you do, the more outsized the impact.

Imagine I'm a factory building widgets. If I buy materials, my default assumption is that I get the materials I asked for. If 5% of the time, or even 1% of the time, my vendor sends me junk that breaks my machines, now I have to introduce a step to verify that the vendor sent me the right ingredients to every widget. That's an asymmetric cost.

The messaging for something like this wants to be "we publicly announced and took credit for this this time", because it's good publicity, and the threat of future, clandestine attacks increases costs across the board. If you can include exactly how you did it, you might even inspire copycats.

[teeray]

This is also all the sabotage the saboteurs have volunteered to tell you about. If your opsec has allowed sabotage to happen, it’s prudent to assume there’s other sabotage you don’t know about.

[inigyou]

Since the saboteurs are protesters they want to be loud and reveal everything they did (but not how, or their individual identities).

[OutOfHere]

> my vendor sends me junk

Indeed. A single bad review of a product from a user, if justified, can build the impetus to destroy a product. Three bad reviews probably will.

Insurance costs too can be affected.

[athrowaway3z]

This is too dismissive of the impact.

Datacenter builders now have to add security so it doesn't happen a second time, perhaps even add it in more places around the world, and the overall attractiveness of building a datacenter in the region go down.

The CO2 not emitted by opening a later easily offsets curing by orders of magnitude.

To fully model it you'd have to account for the demand being moved as other centers will pick up the load and try to model either the reduced output and reduced future-demand at the temporarily higher cost.

That's too much effort for me, but "concrete curing causes more CO2" is jumping to a conclusion.

[tonyarkles]

> now have to add security so it doesn't happen a second time

You assume that that cost is going to be borne by the corporation building the facility and not by the general public through lobbying to protect construction sites from mischief (mischief in the legal sense, which in many countries is an indictable offence).

In most democracies, private security generally has to defer to the police for anything that involves actual violence beyond detaining people until the police show up. From that point on, it's up to the police and the courts to deal with the matter.

> the overall attractiveness of building a datacenter in the region go down.

There are two directions this idea can go:

- a reduction in the rule of law by normalizing the idea that it is OK for citizens to damage otherwise legal and permitted construction - insurance costs go up for everyone because the country's government has demonstrated that protection of private property is not one of its priorities.

- an increased police presence / crackdown against protesters. The region remains a competitive venue.

If a country demonstrates the first option, this in turn leaves the corporation with two options:

- move on to a jurisdiction that does respect private property using the police

- move on to a jurisdiction where private security has more latitude to "deal with" protesters

The most likely bottom line impact that this will have, from my perspective: insurance premiums will go up a bit and everything else will stay pretty much the same. Most democratic countries will step in and protect property owners (yay property, sales, and income tax). Governments and courts don't generally look too favourably on protestors who do actual physical damage to people and companies going about their lawful business.

[inigyou]

The rate of somebody actually being caught and handled by police is negligible. The private security still have to watch 24/7 and that's a private cost.

[tonyarkles]

I mean, they're talking to newspapers using their real names. And they're admitting what they've done.

If this was actually about real sabotage and causing real damage, the move would be to do something similar to what they're doing (incur structural damage) but keep quiet about it. Let them continue building out the DC and then watch the floor collapse when it gets loaded with server racks. Chipping out some concrete that's been clearly marked:

> mixture of hydrogen peroxide, acetic acid, salt, and acrylic paint

Is a very minor inconvenience in a construction project of that scale compared to having the building collapse when it's partially filled with servers.

I'm not sure what the actual size of the on-site construction crew is, but one that's going up locally here is budgeted at $1.7B for the initial build-out and up to $12B for the total investment including all of the hardware that'll run inside it. A bunch of cameras, potentially perimeter radars, and a few security guards are really really minor additional costs. The facility they're building here is supposed to be 500,000 sq.ft. The cost of all of the additional security for managing this problem is probably less than a single rack of servers.

[Manuel_D]

But delaying the opening probably means that the decommissioning date is also pushed back. The total life span is probably unchanged.

[Timon3]

Doesn't that mean this was doubly effective? Since the electricity generation becomes greener over time, opening later means that the DC will cause less emissions over it's lifetime. And since DC chip TDP trends upwards, the total life span being unchanged means that newer & more power-hungry chips will be installed later, again leading to fewer emissions over the whole lifetime.

[simonsarris]

very minor nit but no CO2 is released during concrete curing. And over time (decades) the calcium hydroxide in concrete reacts with CO2 to pull it out of the air, producing calcium carbonate.

    Ca(OH)2  + CO2 → CaCO3 + H2O

(producing the concrete of course makes a ton of CO2, since its basically the reverse reaction, which is accomplished by generating a lot of heat)

[abirch]

It's similar to the people who block roadways to protest climate change. Usually it makes the commuters frustrated and doesn't change anything.

Personally I think data centers should pay a 100% fossil fuel tax. Markets respond to incentives.

[marcosdumay]

> and doesn't change anything

It does change people that don't know about your cause against it, quite reliably as long as activism results go.

For climate change, everybody probably heard about it, so yeah.

[inigyou]

"there's no such thing as bad publicity" once again.

[IAmBroom]

If ever true, it's for brand recognition.

PETA's brand recognition has probably made more people anti-vegan than all other vegans put together.

[marcosdumay]

There is pretty much bad publicity. But for causes it seems to only impact the ones you don't know about.

[plufz]

I think XR would prefer your solution as well. Still I can understand young people’s frustration when we after years and years of knowing about climate change do so little and so few laws of this type are enacted.

But I agree that their strategy is lacking. It would probably be easier to get people in general to support it if it didn’t affect them directly, sadly.

[abirch]

I understand why people are frustrated with the current system in general. You wouldn't design it this way. We need more young politicians shaping the laws and more entrepreneurs improving society.

[inigyou]

That can't happen, because political positions are basically hereditary. Do you know what happened to every other hereditary political system?

[AnimalMuppet]

I call baloney. What percentage of the US Congress and governors, say, are people whose parents were in Congress and/or governors? I have no hard data, but my gut feel is less than 25%. That's basically not hereditary.

Anyone with hard data, step right up...

[scarecrowbob]

I get that it's a single case, but Darlene Graham did just take Lindsey Graham's spot, like, yesterday.

[inigyou]

not literally parent-child hereditary but I mean the political class decides who succeeds itself

[appreciatorBus]

I think fossil fuel taxes are a great idea, but if one consumer, data centers, should pay it, shouldn't all consumers (private car owners) pay it too? That's the only way we'll be able to make good decisions about what types of fossil fuels are useful (i.e. more good than harm) and which are pointless luxuries.

[bix6]

No. Industrial vs consumer use is night and day. Industrial has much higher draw of resources and should pay more as a result especially when total capacity needs to increase specifically for them.

[appreciatorBus]

The reason an industrial use uses x times more than a consumer is because the industry is selling products and services to x consumers. You can't compare them 1:1.

[bix6]

Well the industrial should charge more to cover its costs instead of offloading the cost of its goods to consumers? Why does Walmart get to utilize food stamps or hyperscalers get to drain all the energy? Thats a massive public subsidy for a private corporation.

[inigyou]

In the end the consumer pays. Why should the consumer pay tax on the fossil fuels used to bring them AI but not on the fossil fuels used to bring them to work? That's the inconsistency.

[skeaker]

Exactly, you can't compare them and they should therefore be treated differently.

[bix6]

Data centers should just pay anything really. They get massive tax breaks, eat up huge swathes of industrial zoned land, and piss off anyone nearby. And for what? 3 permanent jobs and a penny worth of tax revenue.

[ourmandave]

I was going to say 4 permanent jobs, because they have to hire a security guard.

But they'll just use AI powered flock cameras instead, so never mind.

[maxerickson]

I think there is a good chance that they didn't throw enough balloons to warrant replacing it.

I wonder if they bothered to get high concentration vinegar.

[giardini]

"high concentration vinegar"? You mean acetic acid? You'd have to be nuts to carry balloons of concentrated acetic acid.

This is a nonsensical, stupid and fruitless symbolic act. Why should someone be crippled, blinded or killed by their foolishness?

[catigula]

The extinction threat from AI to all organic species is a little more comprehensive than a little bit of extra concrete, per the people making the AI themselves (I disavow this etc. etc).

[NoGravitas]

TrueAnon Rule #23, "Always Disavow"