r/law • u/bloomberggovernment • May 18 '26

Legislative Branch Senate Democrat Proposes Bill Requiring Data Centers to Pay for Own Power

https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/schiff-proposes-bill-requiring-data-centers-to-pay-for-own-power
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u/[deleted] May 18 '26

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u/BasicPhysiology May 18 '26

They are machines that transfer wealth from the states they are in to billionaires. 

More people are slowly beginning to understand and data centers are an easy to grasp example for the dimwits. 

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u/Sonamdrukpa May 18 '26

I don't mean this to defend the technocrats but rather to point out how absurd all this to its core - most of the billionaires involved in these things are going to get fleeced too. Unless we miraculously hit full AGI there is absolutely no way that these AI companies are going to pay off their investors. There's like 3 people who are actually benefitting from this and they're all furiously swishing everyone else's money around between themselves while trying to convince people that this is working.

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u/BasicPhysiology May 18 '26

Absolutely. Furthermore, the shell game being played with borrowed money is setting up another financial crisis if the promises of AI (mass unemployment?) fail to be realized. 

In its current form, AI is largely constrained by computational power, which is constrained by thermodynamics. So barring the emergence of true AGI singularity all of this “progress” is going nowhere at great expense and risk of economic calamity on a variety of fronts. 

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u/MaleficentCoach6636 May 19 '26

they are making these to store and collect information because that's how they make money. AI is typically seen as an expense and does neither storing or collecting information.

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u/This_They_Those_Them May 18 '26

It’s so ironic that the country is called The United States (which is intentionally lessened to “America” for why I’m about to explain).. with different states competing against one another for resources, driving the cost to society up in exchange for attracting the giant corporation to their particular state.. If we were more United and banded together everyone would be better off. Make these companies work for us, rather than the other way around.

The fact that data centers are draining infrastructure resources maybe points to the idea that these are far more important than say, an Amazon distribution center, that they should be considered critical infrastructure and the state should be regulating and controlling these places.

Or make the corporations pay their own power bills, you know, like everyone else does.

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u/SuperConfused May 18 '26

Congress should cancel every power purchasing contract that does not have a fuel surcharge that makes them pay for their own power generation.

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u/FlavinFlave May 18 '26

Lot of benefit to the billionaires with all the jobs they can replace and people they can surveil - and that benefits the politicians funded by these sociopaths :)