Vaguely Related Good News August 23, 2026August 23, 2026 IT’S THE DATA CENTERS, STUPID Or so argues Ryan Busse here. What Democrats should do, he says (in effect) is demagog this issue. That might certainly work in specific districts where voters — quite reasonably — oppose data centers. But as a nation we are surely going to need them, because artificial intelligence is the future, scary though that is in many ways — I’m an apocaloptimist, as you may recall — and ceding the future to China is probably not the best idea. So, no: it’s not the data centers, at least as a national policy plank. (Vaguely related good news: China will not be invading Taiwan any time soon. For more, ask your A.I. Which is why we need data centers.) (More vaguely related good news: the harder it is to find sites for data centers, the more valuable, I like to think, RNGE‘s business model of reclaiming abandoned Appalachian mine sites for use as data centers becomes. I think the stock, though up five-fold from where we bought it, could climb another ten-fold over the next few years — though a bet to be made ONLY with money you can truly afford to lose.) AI APOCALYPSE . . . NOW? A discussion on Pod Save America that might be of interest: Is AI set to destroy the world, or could it all just be a bubble? Why does Sam Altman want ChatGPT to monitor everything you do on your computer? Who is set to win the AI Game of Thrones? Casey Newton, editor of the tech newsletter Platformer and co-host of Hard Fork, joins Tommy to talk about the hype and doom surrounding the world-changing technology and to unpack what could happen to us now that AI models are learning to outsmart their creators. The two discuss the eccentric billionaires recklessly promoting the industry, how far behind the United States is when it comes to AI guardrails, and why Silicon Valley doesn’t seem to understand what Americans actually want from the technology. Have a great week. Join Indivisible! Support the opposition!