[mrngld]

I have some degree of sympathy for data centers, and anyone else that needs power, only because of how broken our regulatory state is on approving new transmission.

To be clear, it's not just data centers that have this problem. Journalists have been spilling digital ink on this topic as it relates to solar and wind farms as well. It's also part of the thing that'd hold back rapid deployment of nuclear.

If there's a strong enough economic incentive then yeah people are going to try to optimize around broken government.

[saturn8601]

The country first and foremost should serve all its citizens. Not just wealthy people and not just people of the dominant ethnic background. The xAI data centers sits right next to a poor african american community and Musk used emergency turbines that were not designed for continuous daily use. He utilized a loophole to get past those restrictions. Those turbines are burning gasses inefficiently and producing a lot of pollution that is directly harming those residents who likely don't even materially benefit from all this effort.

These people likely had nothing to do with the delay in solar installs, or decades of nuclear NIMBYism yet now because Musk cannot fall behind, they now have to suffer with no one in government caring about them.

Its a real life hell, they cannot physically resist or cause any trouble or else the government will come and kill them where they stand, they cannot afford to move away because who would buy their houses (and why should they abandon their life's community for something they had no part in?) so they sit and suffer day after day with declining health for their family. Framed like this, Musk is like a locust who has come to devour whatever good there was and then move onto the next prey.