Exclusive – Wynton Hall on Arrogance of Big Tech Elite: Locals Have Every Right to Question Data Centers

Locals have every right to question data centers, Breitbart News social media director and Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI author Wynton Hall said during an interview on Breitbart News Daily.

Hall spoke about the debate over data centers and pointed out that the vast majority of Americans are already using AI, even if they do not realize it, as it is “baked into the algorithms that power everything from our our streaming services to our GPS and the rest.”

He explained that there are about 4,000 data centers in America, with thousands more to come as America must beat China in the AI race. However, Hall said Big Tech’s messaging on this has been terrible at addressing the concerns of communities.

“As I say in Code Red, we we want to beat China without becoming China. You know, we don’t want to live in a techno authoritarian CCP surveillance state. But I’ve never seen worse messaging. I’ve been doing, you know, very high-level ghostwriting and speechwriting and every other kind of thing for, you know, almost two decades. I’ve never seen worse corporate communication than we’ve seen around this issue, and I think it is quite frankly sort of a disaster for the AI titans, the industry, and it’s causing a lot of panic, a lot of of concern, and I think we’ve got to get clarity around this right away,” Hall said, walking through some of the main reasons Americans do not want AI data centers in their backyards.

“The reason 71 percent of Americans don’t want an AI data center in their backyard is really, you know, their electric, the water, and the noise. I mean, there are other existential issues, but those are sort of the bigger slices of the pie. And the concern for people, particularly in water-constrained areas, is the amount of water that you know these data centers will consume now,” he said.

“Berkeley Labs is projecting that by 2028, U.S. data centers could directly consume you know roughly between, they say, between 38 to 73 billion gallons annually, and that sounds enormous. That is enormous, but I think the thing that’s missing is some context because you know most people say, well, 38 billion, you know, 73 billion gallons of water for data center cooling to cool these, you know, systems. But just to put that [into] a little perspective, you know, American golf courses use 1.5 billion gallons of water every day, right? So, so even at that high end, if you’re talking about the future data center estimate, you know, golf course irrigation is roughly seven times that,” he said, explaining that this does not mean it is not an important conversation. This means, for starters, that data centers are probably not ideal for water-restrained communities, but there are other solutions as well.

He talked about the “closed loop direct chip cooling with the zero water evaporation for cooling during operations that can radically reduce the water consumption,” noting that there have already been solutions for the thousands of data centers that already exist. However, there has been terrible communication from the Big Tech elite, allowing others to sow seeds of fear around this technology.

“You have a closed loop system that you want to be built, and it — and it’s almost like a radiator in a sense, right? You’re not constantly pumping new fresh water in; you’re circulating, but not all systems are closed loop. And so, look, local people have a right to be concerned about these things, and this arrogance that we’re getting from the the Big Tech elite, you know — ‘Listen, peasants. You know, we know what’s best for you. Shut up and mind your betters,'” is “absolutely wrong approach,” Hall said.

“We need to get into the room, have a good old-fashioned debate, determine which communities it will benefit, which ones it won’t, and everyday people should be able to have a say. It’s not unreasonable to want to make sure that, you know, my electric bill is not going up. My water is not going to get drained, and I’m not going to listen to a hum all night,” he said. “I think that’s a very reasonable concern, and so I don’t think it has to be this zero-sum game.”

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