In China & Russia economic planning is done by political leaders
In the US it is done by crony corporate leaders.
In September, Trump hosted a task force on AI with top CEOs, where each threw out absurdly large investment pledges of data center buildout.
What’s odd about this strategy is that this data center-based strategy is not actually profitable. It’s a money sink right now, a bet on the future. And yet, Trump’s AI-first strategy has a logic. According to Paul Kedrosky, [1]investments in AI data centers now outpace the telecom boom of the dot com era, and are starting to resemble railroads in the 1880s. Without the data center buildout, the U.S. might be in a recession.
Moreover, for Trump, if data centers require lots of energy, Americans can supply it by drilling for oil and gas. If data centers require lots of capital, Wall Street can supply it by attracting capital from all over the world. If data centers keep investors buying stocks, then U.S. stock markets get to keep going up. And if data centers are so massive that they demand a substantial amount of national resources, well, the U.S. does need GDP growth that this bubble can supply.
Every morning on CNBC, Jim Cramer discusses all of the companies dependent on data center build-outs, and it’s increasingly more of the old-line industrial firms who supply various component parts, like turbines or specialty chemicals to data centers, as well as financial firms who are supplying capital and are dependent on an increasing stock market. Big tech firms are going to invest four hundred billion in data centers next year, and that’s pretty much what building trade unions are focused on. The American stock market, and increasingly the economy, depend on the AI data center buildout.
Of course short term focus corporate CEOs are salivating at the thousands of workers that can be canned to further drive profits. But who is going to buy all the cr*p they manufacture? What is going to replace the lost tax revenues from the formly employed?
Yeah I’m fully ready in on how corporations are to reap the benefits from AI implementation. That corporate productive will climb to the sky. Any bets lower prices of their products? LOL
I’m NOT read in so much on how the disruptive AI effect upon workers will be addressed.
The above from:
[1]