New Big Oil...Meet Old Big Oil

Data-centers drive up the cost of energy consumption. And we see the re-emergence of old United States policies under the Trump regime. Coincidence? What's new is old again in this Author's Note.

I’ve been thinking a lot about oil lately. Well, oil and artificial intelligence. Maybe it’s because of all the murders in Venezuela perpetuated by our hostile regime here in the United States, or maybe it’s because of the data centers that are now popping up like hungry badgers across the Midwest, devouring all of the energy (exaggeration, but you get my point). I’ve been wondering why we’re yet again on the cusp of a manufactured war, creating a fake crisis, to obtain more oil. Again. Here’s what I’ve come up with.

Artificial intelligence. For the rest of society, we see artificial intelligence from the outside, looking in. For generative artificial intelligence, we type our prompt into a little text box, and out pops that image we lack the skillset or time to create ourselves, for a fraction of the direct cost. If you’ve ever tried commissioning artwork, a common practice in the independent author realm, you can have some idea of how much simpler (and cheaper) it is to drop an idea into a prompt and generate…say…an entire book cover. I like to believe, as I did somewhat during the big Napster debacle of the late nineties, that the people who are stealing the music would likely not otherwise access the music. Or…like when Pirate Bay was getting attacked in the news, that people who were stealing software on Pirate’s Bay (remember them?), aren’t really stealing because they wouldn’t have bought it anyway.

But during all of my considerations of younger days, I’d never considered the secondary costs. The now-obvious fallacy that only those who can’t afford something otherwise will use the, for lack of a better analogy, black market to acquire what they think they need falls short immediately if we think about corporate welfare. If we consider how many United States companies pay less than a living wage, then we see that a large portion of humans, at least in this country, will always pay as little as possible, down to and including nothing, for software or music, or the creation of original and unique artwork for their marketing purposes.

When you have a mindset like mine, or perhaps yours, who are reading this, it’s hard to believe that people would make that conscious choice, consequences for others be damned, but it happens all the time, right? Each corporation that pays less than a living wage is a system based on the idea that humans don’t deserve full compensation for their craft or work. And there are far too many of them (ahem, Wal-Mart). And that’s just one type of secondary cost: the cost of human dignity when people who should be able to afford to eat find themselves in bread lines or on the receiving end of government hand-outs.

There’s another secondary cost too, especially for software stuff: the cost of energy. This, I think, is where oil comes in. See, all of this software “cloud-based” stuff, like Napster was before the term “cloud” was invented, requires massive amounts of energy. Blockchain was the first big energy spender, notorious for driving up emissions. What’s worse than that? Artificial Intelligence. Especially unfettered artificial intelligence. All these data centers are massive electricity hogs and are driving up costs nationwide. According to that article by Yahoo Finance, data centers will consume 6.7% to 12% of all US energy by 2028. They do this by adding to the energy burden that already exists. In other words, it’s not energy being redirected to AI datacenters from other areas, so that there’s no net increase. It’s a net increase. This means that overall energy consumption is guaranteed to rise.

Now back to oil. The United States, thanks to Democrats more so than Republicans, has a fledgling and growing renewable energy market. But here’s the problem: renewable energy can get people off of the power grid and reduce the use of oil. That’s kind of the whole point. So why would a nation that is reducing its use of oil care about oil from Venezuela?

To answer that question, we’d have to remember that the executive branch, at least, is in the process of undoing clean energy policies and is championing oil. Why? Because if they can slow the rise of renewables enough and flood the market with cheap oil from Venezuela, then the cost-benefit equation becomes less clear. Renewable, at least where I live, is still more expensive than oil-based electricity. Drive the cost down, and you can keep more people in oil longer. Then, when you drive consumption up, that turns directly into dollars.

In other words, our gross over-consumption of electricity is the flip side of the “drill, baby, drill” coin! The incentive to overthrow nations seems based on the United States consumer and business heady embrace of all things A.I., without a net. So in a very real way, big tech is, let’s be generous, 6-12% responsible for the attempt to topple Venezuela. But, like Wal-Mart, they’ve dispersed this cost to the communities in which they’ve built these data centers, and our own energy bills, so we’re funding these acts. Holding that perspective, it looks like big tech is basically the new big oil, but intertwined with the old. And the government seems, under Republican leadership at least, quite willing to cater to both industries.

Here’s to hoping we come to our senses and at least vote in leaders, Republicans or Democrats, that start to rein in corporate welfare. Government intervention is the only way to disentangle ourselves from the big oil/tech-based decisions that make our nation and the world less safe.