Big Tech and National Security in AI

Obviously, it's fair to say that

the network behind the data center push

is extremely large and influential,

obviously spearheaded by big tech companies

that at this point have

for all intents and purposes fused

with the national security state.

And this has been ongoing for some time.

So a good example is

to look back at the 2018

National Security Commission on AI that

was chaired by Eric Schmidt,

the former Google CEO,

and a close associate of Schmidt who

had previously held a top position at

what is now the Department of War.

And basically everyone on that commission was either,

you know, a major executive at

one of these big tech companies

that is behind the data center push,

or figures that had

previously worked for the military,

to establish basically the the US roadmap on AI,

and what needed to be done

for quote unquote, national security purposes.

And it's fair to say that

even beyond that,

you can see how these these two groups

have become so intertwined by the fact that

the intelligence community,

as well as the military and other major aspects

of the federal government contract extensively

with the same the same big tech companies

and are arguably largely dependent on them,

while at the same time,

a lot of these big tech oligarchs,

you know, are major donors to our politicians.

So on various levels,

they have much more influence than arguably

any other group right now.

And I think as a very visual example

that people will be familiar with,

that's a testament to this is

after Trump's inauguration, or during Trump's inauguration, last year,

you have big tech CEOs like Jeff Bezos,

and other figures like him,

a testament to their role and importance

in getting him elected for a second term.

And he has obviously,

so far been generously repaying their patronage.

But there's important people to look at, too,

in the build of this AI,

you know, the data center deluge.

as you called it, that aren't such public figures at this point.

So there's a lot of AI infrastructure companies

that are becoming increasingly important to this

but they largely stay out of the news.

So one good example, I think,

for this would be a company called Crusoe AI,

which is,

for example, building the Stargate project for OpenAI

and Larry Ellison's Oracle,

which was announced in the early days of,

I think, one of the first announcements actually

of Trump soon after his inauguration this time around.

And they're basically building a lot of the data centers

and working as sort of a middleman

between these big tech companies and

the actual creation and infrastructure that they rely on.

And so those companies are an important part

of this constellation of actors as well.

And it's also something that's happening well beyond the US.

So one of the founders of Crusoe AI,

for example, is named Cully Cavnes.

And he accompanied Peter Thiel,

the co-founder of Palantir,

on his recent trip to Argentina

to meet with Javier Millet.

Later, they also met with Chilean politicians,

apparently including the president of Chile,

though it wasn't publicly announced,

and also the president of Paraguay.

And not long after that,

at least in the case of Millet,

there have been these proposals of allowing companies

with no human employees that are run by AI

to operate in the country,

an announcement of Stargate Argentina on behalf of OpenAI,

run by Sam Altman,

who's closely affiliated with Peter Thiel.

So these people are looking to build data centers

really all over the world.

And why are they doing it?

Why data centers?

It's essential to basically their various plans from AI,

which include not just their plans for AI-related businesses,

but also a lot of these people subscribe

to specific ideologies that

see that extreme investments in AI and AI compute capability

are necessary in order to further the development of

what they call artificial general intelligence,

or an AI superintelligence.

And some of them hold an almost religious fervor,

you could say,

for having that come to fruition,

and are openly transhumanist,

and think that the end goal of humanity is

to have humanity merge with AI in some capacity.