Shut up and take our money: Amazon plows $1B+ into quashing datacenter dissent

Faced with growing opposition to datacenters from residents who don't want the bit barns in their backyards, Amazon plans to invest more than $1 billion over the next five years to indoctrinate the public. The company announced the investment in a whataboutism-packed blog post aimed at convincing readers datacenters are not as …

[Excused Boots]

Hmm, Amazon and ‘paying appropriate taxes’, not things you often see in the same sentence.

[DS999]

The funniest thing about this

Is how late Amazon is in trying to head this off. People's opinions are already formed, it is REALLY hard to change people's minds once they are made up. If they had started this 12 to 18 months ago before the major backlash begun, their propaganda may have had a chance.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: The funniest thing about this

I don't think public backlash matters in today's corporate driven politics. If anything, it gives politicians and civil servants the basis to ask for larger portion of steak at the dinner.

What corporation wants, corporation gets.

[ecofeco]

Re: The funniest thing about this

This.

[DS999]

Golf courses don't use potable water

Outside of deserts they are typically sited near streams, creeks, ponds, etc. or create their own when building the course so have their own water to draw from. Few if any are using treated municipal water like datacenters do. Golf courses also typically irrigate at night to minimize evaporation, so most of the water flows down into the ground to be taken up by the roots of grass and trees, and if there's any excess it will end up in the water table and thus slowly move to creeks or aquifers.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Win-Win

Build the DC at the Golf course. For extra environmental credits, add a wind turbine at each hole. Get the man in the Oval Office to sign an Executive Order mandating it

[Michael Hoffmann]

Re: Win-Win

Why stop there? I was thinking building one right on top of Mar-a-lago!

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Golf courses don't use potable water

I guess that's why so many of Trump's Golf things fail public health inspections....

[cyberdemon]

I'd like to ask them

How much Diesel is used by datacentres, especially those that have been built without a functioning grid connection because they use more power than existing networks can cope with, and because they have exacerbated a global shortage of HV transformers

[bernmeister]

Re: I'd like to ask them

The shortage of HV transformers is subject not often raised. Its possibly worse than RAM. Last time I checked a 10 megawatt transformer was quoted 2 years delivery in USA. Buying from China looked like the best option.

[cookiecutter]

Re: I'd like to ask them

the diesel thing is interesting. I was installing at a "eco friendly" DC over several months and one day drove into the car park into what I thought was fog but turned out to be the old diesel being burnt off from the generators before refuelling.

And I mean there were a LOT of fumes, probably took a year off my life breathing that shite in...I feel for the people who live near the Grok DC that's pumping this stuff out continuously

[collinsl]

Re: I'd like to ask them

At least the musk from the Musk-A-Centres is usually gas turbine fumes rather than diesel.

A lot of datacentres these days use HVO in their DCs or some other green alternative to actual diesel - not only is it better for the environment and wins them environmental accreditations and credits, it lasts longer without gelling and is generally cheaper too on a TCO basis because of that.

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of the tobacco adverts from the 1930/40/50's where they had stuff like a cigarette a day keeps the doctor away and got a cough? Camel can help.

Whoever funds it controls it. All the claims that Amazon are making are coming from Amazon. To start off with this is obvious to everyone and not many if any will fall for it but as it's over 5 years we have reinforcement. 1 billion doesn't hurt either. What they will do is keep throwing this at people. They will reword it, they will put the same message across over and over again on all media platforms. Eventually many people will start questioning themselves. Especially the "we will fall behind" bit because America has to be number 1 no matter what the cost.

Sadly, this will most likely succeed.

[elsergiovolador]

It's toasted.

Labour already has plans to toast working class using datacentres heat.

[Steve Davies 3]

re: Labour already has plans...

Rhetoric is cheap. Building all that infrastructure is very, very expensive. Never gonna happen apart from one or two show sites.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: re: Labour already has plans...

I forgot those mega corporations are destitute. Most barely have a trillion to their name.

[Michael Strorm]

Re: re: Labour already has plans...

Whether they do or don't, doesn't mean they're going to be willing to spend it on the "heating houses with excess AI heat" scheme. Particularly if it's likely to cost more than it'll make and (they think) that money can be better used elsewhere.

The "pure AI" companies- i.e. the newcomers that don't have massive reserves of cash from existing business divisions- don't have "trillions" in reserve. They've always operated deeply in the red and been dependent upon a continued stream of investor cash to keep up the spending required just to stay in the race. If that gets turned off (e.g. investors lose confidence, the bubble bursts), they're toast.

And even those that *do* have masses of cash in the bank (e.g. MS, Google) aren't going to spend it on something that's going to cost more on infrastructure than it's likely to make.

One might rightly argue that this is likely to be the case with the AI infrastructure they *are* building at present anyway. But the question is whether or not *they* (and their investors) see it that way, or whether they're throwing good money after bad because it's assumed that the last man standing takes all.

But regardless, as there's increasing pressure on that cash flow and a need to show results in order to continue it, they're going to focus that on the "core" infrastructure and less likely to be inclined to spend it on "secondary" schemes beyond a few token PR examples. Particularly if it's going to be a lossmaker anyway.

[retiredFool]

Re: re: Labour already has plans...

I think it is starting to filter out. Oracle/Ellison backstopping the Paramount/WB deal may have over-extended himself with the DC capital spend for Oracle. Oracle has good credit and lots of cash, well did have. The bond market has taken notice in this case and is tying the oracle credit worthiness to the Paramount/WB deal. And how can we not forget, UST 10/30 year bonds have skyrocketed in september. And no end in sight. Hilarious somewhat as that idiot Bessent thought he could buy a trivial amount of long dated bonds and "fix" the interest rate problem. Well idiot, it did not. Please go fall on a sword somewhere for donnie. Any sword. It is only somewhat hilarious as the US debt bill is growing daily. The credit cards are max'ed so the solution is to go down to the payday lender for quick cash.

[Winkypop]

The Time Machine

The Morlocks are playing the ‘seek protection’ siren.

The innocents are wandering to the huge steel doors…

[Uh, Mike]

Data Centers Are Your Friends and Harmless -- Trustworthy :-)

There is no need to be alarmed, or to watch your words, when talking about a big, nice, powerful datacenter.

Please report any messages saying otherwise.

BTW, Birds Aren't Real ;-)

[Gary Stewart]

Data centers in Spaaaaaaaace

Problem solved? Just how big will those space bound data centers be since the Earth bound ones are coming in at ~3000 to 4000 hectares (7500 to 10000 acres)? Due mainly to power needs they have to share a dawn–dusk sun-synchronous LEO orbit at 600 to 800 kilometers (~370 to 497 miles) with others such as RADAR imaging (again power requirements), weather monitoring, environmental tracking and space tracking satellites. Sounds like it's going to get crowded up there, relatively speaking of course especially when important factors such as minimum spacing distances are enforced.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Data centers in Spaaaaaaaace

SpaceX have published most of the numbers you need on their website.

AI1 satellite: Size = 30x75m, Power=175kW, mass=(1/75)kg/W

Terrafab: 10million tons/year launched to orbit

The AI1 satellite numbers are reasonably credible*. Lets pretend Terrafab is not pure fantasy. Also pretend Starship payload to SSO700 reaches 200tons so 6 Starship launches per day. Assume a 5 year life span, constellation size is 21million x AI1 satellites. That is 0.016% of the total area of SSO600 to SSO800.

Earth current meteor flux is around 50tons/day. What goes up mush come down so Terrafab promises 27000tons/day.

* I would like to hear from someone who understands supercomputers what effect latency would have when nodes are at least 75m apart instead of the width of a rack.

[doublelayer]

Re: Data centers in Spaaaaaaaace

None of that matters. AI satellites, regardless of whether you can make them work, are expensive compared to datacenters down here. Datacenter operators are getting most of the rejection they're displeased with because they are deliberately doing things the cheapest way. If they were willing to use satellite DCs, they could get the same benefit without them.

Consider the complaints from people near suggested DC sites. They're concerned that power infrastructure will be built, but not by the DC people, and then they'll have to pay for it. They're also concerned that generation will use polluting generation methods. Satellites fix both with all the solar panels they need. You could use solar and storage down here too, but DCs are unwilling. People are concerned about excessive use of water for cooling. Satellites are self-contained units that can't evaporate water away. DCs could use the same methods here, but they don't want to because it's expensive. People dislike that DCs are too close to their houses. Satellites fix this by being up there in the sky. If DC creators were willing to accept the minor latency problems from DC to user that this distance brings, they could easily build their buildings away from residential areas in industrial or deserted ones. They don't because it makes the power and water expenses even more their problem. This self-contained, self-powered DC in an isolated area also gets to skip the problem of inter-sat latency since it could be much larger than a single satellite.

[cookiecutter]

Re: Data centers in Spaaaaaaaace

any gcse physics student will tell you that you can't cool a space based DC -

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Data centers in Spaaaaaaaace

Earth is in space and is heated by about 170PW of solar power. To a first approximation it is made of molten iron. With all that heat and no cooling Earth would take half a million years to reach boiling point. Are you perhaps a young Earth creationist?

[cyberdemon]

Re: Data centers in Spaaaaaaaace

Earth doesn't concentrate all of its solar power onto a chip the size of a credit card and expect that chip to remain below 125 degrees celsius, though!

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Data centers in Spaaaaaaaace

If you do not account for Earth's radiative cooling into space then it starts boiling after about half a million years in sunlight whether you build data centres on it or not. Any spacecraft in Earth's orbit would suffer exactly the same problem. In real life both Earth and its satellites do have radiative cooling. I am too old to know if the StefaniBoltzmann law is included in GCSE physics but it works fine so my planet/satellite boiling scenario does not apply. It is how current planets/satellites can be in space without overheating - even ones with low area high power chips (on Earth that detail is handled by a lump of metal called a heat spreader and that solution works just as well in space).

SpaceX's proposed AI1 satellites do step it up a notch. The plan is to use a pumped liquid to transport the heat to large radiators. So far satellite designers have avoided that solution if at all possible*. Expecting pumps to work and pipe connections to not leak after all the vibration of launch is really ambitious. Expecting this to work in space for years with no servicing is really ambitious. The physics is perfectly sound. The engineering will be a nightmare. The business case wouldn't even make sense to the underpants gnomes.

* (Pumped liquid + radiators are used to cool the ISS. I am fairly sure the same technology is used for Soyuz capsules and Dragon. ISS is maintained by humans and the capsules do not spend years in space.)

I double down on my ridicule. Any GCSE physics student would know about specific heat capacity and that objects must have some way to reject heat even in vacuum. They may not know the mechanism is radiative cooling but they should be able to calculate the absurd consequences of its absence and infer they are missing something.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Data centers in Spaaaaaaaace

And when your -gargantuan- radiator array gets turned into swiss cheese by micrometeorites and bits of other spacejunk, and vents all of its coolant fluid into space, I will be doing my best Nelson Muntz impression.

[StewartWhite]

Haiyah!

Are they to be operated by "Pigs in Space"?

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Haiyah!

Excuse me sir, do you know why I pulled you over? You were going 390,000km/hr in a 350,000km/hr zone. License and registration please.

[Blue Screen of Bleurgh]

I had the pleasure of watching "All the President's Men" a few days ago, and was struck by a comment that seems pertinent today, some 50 years on.

"When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow" - Charles Colson, "Special" advisor to Tricky Dicky Nixon

[Flocke Kroes]

Look on the bright side

Compare the promise of a billion over five years to the previous figure, a billion over three years. Next year they could promise a billion over eight years! As they are spending $220 billion a year on data centres they might even extend the promise to a billion over fifteen years. How about that for commitment?

[munnoch]

"the nation could be left in the dust."

Maybe spend a bit of money articulating what you think it is we (as in you and I, Joe Public) will be missing out on. What problems has it actually solved so far to society's benefit? What problems is it likely to solve in the near future? Not hand wavey, it *could* do this, or it *could* do that. Show us a clear pathway to useful goals. And preferably not goals measured in terms of how much we pay out each month in rent to the tech-kleptocracy.

[AVR]

Dunno about Amazons claims of great tax benefits to local gov't

Don't big companies in America usually end up paying much less than the expected taxes, between sweetheart deals to get them to set operations up, cunning accountants at the company, and plans which don't match the advertising/lobbying which the expected taxes were based on?

[StewartWhite]

Re: Dunno about Amazons claims of great tax benefits to local gov't

The claim that "Datacenter operators are often the single largest taxpayer in a community, with upfront payments routinely exceeding entire annual municipal budgets in the first year of construction," is delibeately mendacious as an example.

They MIGHT (but probably won't as they hate paying taxes so much) pay the most in the 1st year of construction but after that forget it - when it's up and running there will just be Jim Bob the Data Center Janitor paying his taxes.

[Richard 12]

Re: Dunno about Amazons claims of great tax benefits to local gov't

It's just the equivalent of Section 106 or Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) payments.

A one-off payment. Sometimes paid in two or three installments at construction milestones.

Then it's over and done.

A lot of local authorities have fallen into the trap of spending it assuming there will be more - when there isn't.

[Excused Boots]

Re: Dunno about Amazons claims of great tax benefits to local gov't

Indeed, they claim that they will ‘bring jobs into the local community’. And maybe they will - 500-600 people for a while, while they are being built and commissioned 1-2 years max. Afterwards 20 jobs max.

[Michael Strorm]

Propaganda used to justify the need for propaganda

> "This build out is so important geopolitically that there are widespread reports of various countries intentionally seeding misinformation in the US about datacenters to trick us into slowing down"

Ironically, I've no doubt that the "[rival countries are] intentionally seeding misinformation in the US about datacenters to trick us into slowing down" line being used to justify the need for Amazon's propaganda campaign is itself an intentional part of that propaganda.

[Excused Boots]

I seem to vaguely recall a similar situation in the first Trump administration about the ‘race to 5G’. The US absolutely had to beat China to deploy 5G otherwise..... although the consequences of not winning the race were never really spelt out.

So again, many, many average US citizens are going to be inconvenienced, pay higher costs for water and electricity; for exactly what gain?

[Winkypop]

Let them eat data

The French had the right idea back in the day.

I’m going into the tumbrel cart business. Mon Dieu!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Let them eat data

That's just a ludicrous comparison.

There is no way the USA is going to follow in the footsteps of the French Revolution and adopt the Metric system

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Let them eat data

No need for the metric system when you're ahead

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Let them eat data

How many BTU is your data center ?

[VoiceOfTruth]

Hah!

>> transform the US economy much like the buildout of the highway system did in the '50s.

Well I know a thing or two about this subject as I have an interest in urban planning, and mistakes made by the planners. Who knows, maybe I can learn a thing or two about thinking things through.

It is true that the highway system gave a huge boost to the economy. However it also had numerous social downsides:

1. Urban decline. Wealthier people moved to the suburbs, which drained cities of tax revenue.

2. Lower income homes, particularly in minority areas, were destroyed to build these highways.

3. Rural communities were bypassed. A case in point: Little Falls, NY. It used to be a bottleneck for transport in the Mohawk Valley. I-90, built in the 50s, bypassed the town completely, and there was no dedicated exit to the town until 1973. I completely concede that deindustrialisation was the major cause of the decline of Little Falls. But this hardly helped.

It's funny how the highway cheerleaders never mentioned these things. Though there is no doubt they knew about them. Instead it is build, build, build. Oh, and Joe Public will have to pay for the extra gas they now need to use.

Bezos has enough money. What race is he trying to win?

[Is there anybody out there?]

How much?

"using just 13,000 gallons a day, the equivalent of 42 US households".

Have all of those households got their own golf courses? What are they doing with it all? That's 3x what we use in the UK. And it rains all the time but we still always seem to have a drought.

[Del Varner]

Counter Force

Amazon is just trying to counter all the Chinese mony funding data center opposition.