The AI Curse
Every sanction that ordinary citizens have ever possessed—the ability to withhold labor, taxes, sons, or votes—presupposes someone who needs what you can withhold. As AI infrastructure encroaches on Americans, they are learning the lesson of many resource-rich states: where there is no need, there is no democracy.
NEW YORK—In a county in northern Virginia, a family’s electricity bill has doubled. A few miles away, a windowless building the size of a shopping mall hums through the night—yet another AI data center, consuming more power than the town it was built beside. The dispute will be conducted in the language of rate structures, zoning variances, and transmission corridors. But a non-technical political question drives it: Are the people who live in the county still needed by the people who constructed the building?
NEW YORK—In a county in northern Virginia, a family’s electricity bill has doubled. A few miles away, a windowless building the size of a shopping mall hums through the night—yet another AI data center, consuming more power than the town it was built beside. The dispute will be conducted in the language of rate structures, zoning variances, and transmission corridors. But a non-technical political question drives it: Are the people who live in the county still needed by the people who constructed the building?
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