The Dialectics of Data Center Mania

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It’s annoying that the journalists and academics who, not long ago, were nattering on about ‘AI’ as an ethereal force, untethered from the Earth, are now talking about data centers with the fervor of new converts. Some of us have talked for years, and from the start, about the dirty, industrial nature of what’s called ‘artificial intelligence’ (and indeed, the entire tech industry).

Better late than never, I suppose.

More than one thing can be true at a time, people say; usually while trying to appear subtle. It’s a true statement but insufficient. Not only is more than one thing true at a time but many things are true, simultaneously and in relation to each other, moving through time. This is the heart of a dialectical view which can be applied to understanding the mania of data center construction, a mad dash to a landscape, dotted with ruins.

…


Recently, as if from nowhere (but of course, not as suddenly as it seems), data center projects have been spreading across the United States. On social media, the rough consensus is that these warehouses are evidence of a plan for mass surveillance and population control that requires hyperscale computing. This is plausible, Palantir exists, after all, but not the entire, or even main mover: it is a factor among factors moving dialectically with other elements.

It’s common for US people (who vaingloriously claim the title of ‘American’ as if the rest of the hemisphere doesn’t exist or arrived from the 12th dimension) to fret about things worth fretting about while failing to see political economy. In the case of data center mania, the circular economics and failing quest for super-profits motivating the tech industry and its camp followers (the ‘Neocloud’ firms and venture capitalists waiting for investment returns).


David Gerard recently said:


“The story of the AI bubble, is setting real dollars on fire to put imaginary valuation dollars on the books”


To set those ‘real dollars’ on fire requires having something physical to show for investors’ capital; thus, a plague of data centers. Capitalism is not rational and as Ali Kadri informs us, is based on the accumulation of waste.


Another factor to consider, from Ed Zitron:

In reality, OpenAI and Anthropic are the only meaningful companies in the AI industry. They are the majority of revenue, the majority of capacity and the majority of demand. Microsoft, Google and Amazon have exploited the desperation in a tech industry that’s run out of hypergrowth ideas, and created a near-imaginary industry by propping up both companies.

The mistake that most make in measuring the circularity of OpenAI and Anthropic is to focus entirely on the money raised — $13 billion from Microsoft and up to $50 billion from Amazon for OpenAI, and as much as $80 billion from Amazon and Google for Anthropic.

The correct analysis starts with measuring infrastructure. Based on discussions with sources and analysis of multiple years of reporting, I estimate that of the roughly $700 billion in capex spent by Google, Meta and Microsoft since 2023, at least 5.5GW of capacity costing at least $300 billion has been built entirely for two companies. This has in turn inflated sales through multiple counterparties involving NVIDIA, ODMs like Quanta, Foxconn, Supermicro and Dell, and created a form of market-driven AI psychosis that inspired Meta to burn over $158 billion in three years and the entire world to convince itself that AI was the biggest thing ever.


Zitron calls what’s occurring “AI psychosis” – an apt description (though one based on an idea of the lost sanity of an inherently insane system) for a massive build-out of infrastructure for a project that has not, and will not produce profit or useful work for the organizations in the grip of this mania.


This financial ‘psychosis’ is what the (mostly liberal) doomsayers who predict a world of perfect surveillance and control are missing. Of course, elites want this but they also want to make money and, having failed to accomplish this are doubling down in a way never before seen on this scale.


Exhibit C, a story from Tom’s Hardware:


New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O’Leary’s 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved


These stories are breathlessly reported, as if, by waving a magic wand of billionaire wish fulfillment, a gigantic data center will spring from the Earth. But there are other factors (remember, think dialectically) such as the impact of hydrocarbon supply constriction on the PCB supply chain and the lack of transformers.

…


The data center ‘boom’ or, more accurately, to borrow from Zitron, ‘psychosis’ is the final act in the inflation of the greatest of all bubbles, rivaling mighty Jupiter in size. Because the US is little more than a nuclear armed used car sales lot, commanded at every level by people looking for an angle, there is no one to stop this process.


It will run its course, leaving the population to pick up the pieces and scavenge for parts when the power and water run out. One can hope that at long last, as children of the not too distant future wander the ruins of data centers, lessons will have been learned.

Return of the Old Gods

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In Greek mythology, the titans were the first gods, directly tied to the universe’s primordial forces, who arose before the Olympians people once learned about in school and who are still depicted in popular media (you know the names: Zeus, Aphrodite and other cosmic celebrities).

From the Wikipedia article:

The Titans were the former deities, the generation of gods preceding the Olympians. They were overthrown as part of the Greek succession myth, which tells how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus and ruled the cosmos with his fellow Titans before in turn being defeated and replaced as the ruling pantheon of gods by Zeus and the Olympians in a ten-year war known as the Titanomachy (‘battle of the Titans’). In the aftermath of this war, the vanquished Titans were banished from the upper world and held imprisoned under guard in Tartarus. Some Titans, such as Oceanus and Helios, were allowed to remain free.

Recently, the Titans came to mind when I read this post on Twitter:

A key quote:

“In Silicon Valley, [there’s] almost this Copernican principle — where people used to believe that the world revolved around the Earth, then realized that it revolves around the sun.”

“There’s a Silicon Valley parallel where people think that all of technology, all of industry, revolves around Silicon Valley, but it’s actually kind of the opposite.”

Typical of Americans, Sequoia Capital’s Maquire unnecessarily added, ‘kind of’ when, in fact, there’s no doubt or partial truth: the tech industry and all of its products and apparent power, are entirely dependent on a vast, complex supply chain of capital and resources commanded by older, and far more powerful sectors of the global system.

At the foundation of this system, primordially tied to the world like the Titans of myth, is oil.

For many years, we were encouraged to believe that ‘software was eating the world’. In fact, software and the software industry, were eating at the pleasure of the gods who were, from a media perspective (away from specialist circles) banished to the netherworld, outside of our thoughts as if to Tartarus. The tech industry builds (or, increasingly, pretends to build,) data centers that are supposedly temples in celebration of a glittering future. In fact, Cronus, drenched in crude, laughs in the dark recesses of the Earth at the pretensions of the tech lords who, despite all their talk of nuclear fusion and other exotic escapes, still need petroleum to function.

The US/Israel war on Iran, and all that has, quite predictably followed, has raised the reality of the old gods who never left to our consciousness. What is the United States, in its Olympian thrashing about, disrupting, perhaps even dismantling?

…

On 14 April, Twitter user ‘Victims of Capitalism Memorial Foundation’, (also known as ‘Mikey’ on various podcast appearances) posted what you see above to their account.

People who claim Marxist or, at the very least, materialist commitments should focus on how the world works and help others learn.

Unfortunately, in western Marxist circles, there’s a tendency to run from such understanding as if fleeing a ghost. This may be due to the balkanisation of Marxist thought (and inaction) in the academy, coordinated by the state (as Gabriel Rockhill compellingly argues in his book, ‘Who Paid the Pipers of Wester Marxism?‘).

Whatever the cause, as we approach a global crisis, it’s important to do what we can to correct this lack.

Below, some introductory guides. I’ll add more as I learn about them.

Key Aspects of the Global System That Will Be Disrupted by the War on Iran You Should Understand

Videos on Youtube

What is Oil Used For?

Petroleum Economics

Logistics of Natural Gas

What is Supply Chain?

Fundamentals of Supply Chain

Supply Chain Management

The Financial Market

Social Media as a Field of War

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Social Media Reply Doctrine Flowchart

I created the flowchart shown above a few years ago, while still an active Twitter user.

The purpose, was to illustrate the doctrine I applied to my social media usage to share with others as, hopefully, an aid and spark for thought.

Social media has always been terrible and has always been a field of struggle, indeed, war.

How could it be otherwise? The world we live in, a capitalist tyranny, built on mass death, has produced terrible human beings whose inhumanity is on display via electronic networks. It’s a big world and far from everyone is a monster but hard questions must be asked about a global society that openly supports and conducts genocide (shown on social media), violently suppressing dissent against mass murder.

Since October of 2023, when the genocide of Palestinians accelerated, it became clear to many of us that we were in the midst of a global war, waged by elites against all of us to reverse whatever gains had been made in the post World War Two period. In a time of war, our social media usage should become more deliberate, more disciplined and less open about our plans.

On Strategy

There are several books on war that are considered classics. The most venerable is Sun Tzu’s 5th century treatise, ‘Art of War’. In the 1980s and 90s, business idiots, inspired by the Gordon Gecko character in the 1987 film, Wall Street, imagining themselves to be generals (rather than coke addled thieves) flocked to the business section of bookstores to buy, and, mostly misunderstand the text.

Here is an excerpt from the chapter titled ‘Tactical Dispositions’ from the 1910, Lionel Giles translation:

1. Sun Tzŭ said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

2. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

4. Hence the saying: One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.

5. Security against defeat implies defensive tactics; ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive.

6. Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength.

7. The general who is skilled in defence hides in the most secret recesses of the earth…

[…]

Full at the Project Gutenberg eBook of the Art of War

Today, we lack a “superabundance of strength” and must assume an intelligent, defensive posture.

On social media, this means:

Information Discipline

Resist the urge to overshare. This only provides your enemy with information that can be used against you. Needless to say, activist groups must be especially cautious and only communicate the bare minimum on social media required.

No Study, No Right to Speak

Social media platforms are designed to encourage stupidity, such as: arguing with people you don’t know, will never meet and who may not be people at all (i.e., bots). Conversation on complex topics is not possible with people who are unfamiliar with the topic. When people respond to a post about an article, book, etc with objections based on nothing, ignore them. Argumentation is a time waster and sometimes, a psyop.

Treat Social Media as Enemy Territory

There is a difference between paranoia and intelligent movement through hostile terrain. Do not be lulled into thinking you are among friends (though you may have friends on a platform). The platform owners are your enemies and so are many of the people monitoring and responding to your posts.

The World at War

We are in an age of global war. To many of us, relatively comfortable (though increasingly less so as supposedly democratic states use escalating tactics of control, including via algorithmic means, to suppress ever more restless populations) this sounds dramatic and seems counter-intuitive. After all, bills still must be paid, children cared for and kitchens cleaned. Nevertheless, it is true.

It’s time for each of us to put away our illusions and move more intelligently, ideally in cooperation with others. A critical part of this is changing the way we understand, and use social media.

From the Department of Self Promotion

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There is neither gold nor glory to be found in challenging cultural assumptions. Particularly those shaped by propaganda.

This is all for the best. In these appearances, I chat with people I respect about the state of the ‘AI’ industry: what is happening and why.

Millennials Are Killing Capitalism: Propaganda Masked as Critique: Jacobin and ‘AI’

A Materialist Approach to the Tech Industry: From Household to Military Tech

Saturdays with Renee

July 31st, 2025 Edition of Doug Henwood’s Behind the News Radio Show:

A conversation with Mtume Gant for his ‘Within Our Gates’ podcast about ‘AI’, cinema and the history of atomic tests. There is a valence:

The Cybernetic Brain Reading Group

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I propose that cybernetics, as a practice area and way of thinking, has been hijacked by the tech industry and the military industrial complex. This has robbed us of a vital tool because we associate its use with our enemies.

To shine a light on the past, to hopefully help build a way to the future, let’s study cybernetics as it was imagined by its pioneers. To help in this effort, I suggest using ‘The Cybernetic Brain‘ by Andrew Pickering, as a grounding text.

Here’s a description from the Univ of Chicago publisher:

“The Cybernetic Brain explores a largely forgotten group of British thinkers, including Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson, R. D. Laing, Stafford Beer, and Gordon Pask, and their singular work in a dazzling array of fields. Psychiatry, engineering, management, politics, music, architecture, education, tantric yoga, the Beats, and the sixties counterculture all come into play as Pickering follows the history of cybernetics’ impact on the world, from contemporary robotics and complexity theory to the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende. What underpins this fascinating history, Pickering contends, is a shared but unconventional vision of the world as ultimately unknowable, a place where genuine novelty is always emerging.”

Participation:

To join the group:

  • Join the Patreon (it’s free)
  • Get a copy of the book (let me know if that’s a problem and I’ll try to find other ways to share the text)
  • Join the Discord for discussion (the invite will go to Patreon members once seriousness has been vetted; there are a lot of clowns out here, we need to be a good group)

When we have a ‘critical mass’ (at least five people) we can begin. The plan is to go through the book, chapter by chapter, meeting once a week to discuss what we’re learning and help each other understand and research.

Forward!

Command and Control: Capitalism and Computation

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Capitalism, a system as inescapable as breathless news items about Trump, Musk and decay, came into its own during the age of steam power, telegraphs and colonialism (first edition, we’re witnessing the attempted redux), long before the invention of digital computers. The creation of computers, initially, a tool for military purposes (ENIAC, the first programmable digital computer was immediately put to work performing calculations for then still theoretical hydrogen bombs) eventually enabled capitalists, particularly at the commanding heights, to employ what, in military circles is known as command and control at a level of sophistication and intrusiveness previously only dreamed of. 

What is command and control?

Consider this excerpt from the essay, ‘Re-conceptualizing Command and Control‘, released in 2002 for the Canadian military and co-authored by Dr. Ross Pigeau and Carol McCann which provides a succinct definition:

“…controlling involves monitoring, carrying out and adjusting processes that have already been developed. Commanding involves creating new structures and processes (i.e., plans, SOPs, etc.), establishing the conditions for initiating and terminating action, and making unanticipated changes to plans. Most acts, including decision making, involve a sophisticated amalgam of both commanding and controlling.”

Everyone who has worked in a corporate enterprise, the land of key performance indicators (or, KPIs) and other metrics gathered and analyzed to determine profit and loss, and even, in some cases, who lives and dies, understands this definition in their bones; it captures the hierarchical structure of business, which is a form of tyranny (some of these fiefdoms have pleasant break-out rooms, decent coffee and declarations of workers being in a family until, of course, restructuring and endless re-orgs casts ‘family members’ onto the street).

From the birth of the corporate era, companies have pursued operational and logistics control to ensure profit, market share and high valuation. So-called scientific management, created and promoted by mechanical engineer and early managerial consultant Frederick Taylor in the late 19th century, was the first dedicated effort of the industrial era. Sears and Roebuck, a 19th century retail and mail order behemoth, the Amazon of the pre-digital computer age, employed an army of people, scientifically managed, to run its vast enterprise. There are commonalities between the Sears of old and Amazon:

Sears and Amazon Commonalities: Diagram by Author

The primary difference between Sears in the 19th century and Amazon today is the latter’s use of digital technology to enhance command and control techniques, enhancements that make it possible for Amazon to surveil delivery drivers on their routes, among other outrages.

From Brighter than a Thousand Suns to the Office Commute

Digital computation’s first assignment was performing the subtle calculations physicists such as Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam needed to bring the thermonuclear devices of their fevered dreams to irradiated life. From that beginning, brighter than a thousand suns, the age of command and control fully took shape with the creation of systems such as the US Air Force’s Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) described in a Wikipedia article:

“The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. SAGE directed and controlled the NORAD response to a possible Soviet air attack, operating in this role from the late 1950s into the 1980s.”

SAGE System Console: Wikipedia

The SAGE system was built to create a method and infrastructure for gathering data from far flung sources and coordinating a response to what its numerous displays told people in Strategic Air Command facilities. This military purpose provided the foundation, metaphor and philosophy shaping the uses of systems that eventually came online such as commercial mainframe computers, client server architectures and what is known as ‘cloud computing.’

Note this image of SAGE system elements:

SAGE Diagram: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

In design intent and philosophy, there is a link between the vision of computation as a means of commanding people and controlling events that shaped the SAGE system and corporate methods such as business intelligence described in this Wikipedia article:

“Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, dashboard development, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, bench marking, text mining, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics.”

Microsoft, never one to miss an opportunity to simultaneously shape and profit from business requirements, real or imagined (does anyone recall the Metaverse? It disappeared, like youth, or money from your bank account) provides a visual of how a business intelligence platform can be built on their Azure platform:

Azure Business Intelligence Architecture: Microsoft

The common goal – the thematic bridge from SAGE to business intelligence – is data gathering and analysis which, as an objective in abstract, is not at all sinister. Every society and every social organization, no matter how large or small, needs to understand its environment, collect information and act upon what is learned. Just as SAGE applied that methodology to the task of nuclear war (which, outside of the insane circles running the world to ruin, is no one’s idea of a good use case) corporations apply it to maximizing profit. In the capitalist world, we are data points to be ingested, analyzed and optimized via something called KPIs.

Key Performance Indicators – the SAGE of Corporate Life

Key Performance Indicators or, KPIs, are the metric used to include our behavior and actions as workers, into a command and control schema. What, in the past, was directed without the aid of software (Taylorism being the first, formalized example of a pre software method) is now measured as data points stored in databases and spreadsheets. How ‘productive’ are you? KPIs, we’re told, are a way to ensure workers are on track from the perspective of owners. In a 2021 article titled ‘Why You Need Personal KPIs To Achieve Your Goals’, Forbes, a magazine once treated as scripture, advised ‘professionals’ (a word used to lobotomise that portion of one’s mind that is aware of your status as a precarious worker) to use KPIs to shape their careers:

“Peter Drucker famously said that “what is measured is managed, and what is managed gets improved.” Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are a staple of every business. It is the tool used to measure how effectively an organization is meeting vital business objectives. Teams, departments, and organizations initiate the KPIs so that it spreads to every level of an institution. If it’s such a prominent accountability measure in the business sector, why not use it for our professional success? Perhaps we should inculcate personal KPIs into our practice.”

This is good advice in a way not unlike the sort of contextually useful counsel you’d get on how to handle yourself in a bar fight or dealing with a cop who’s obsessed with demonstrating his authority; you contort yourself to survive. It’s useful, but its utility is a sign of a problem, of a system of artificially enforced limits whose boundaries serve others’ interests.

…

In his 2018 book, ‘Surveillance Valley’, journalist Yasha Levine details the links between the US’ intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley. From the beginning, Levine shows, companies such as Oracle and technologies we think sprung into existence on the sun blasted terrain of California like dreams were nurtured and even created by the US’ surveillance apparatus.

There is a similar link between the techniques used by the corporations who dominate our lives and the systems and thinking which shaped the US’ command and control fixated response to the Cold War. Our work lives exist in the long shadow of the computers used to determine if ICBMs should wing their way to targets.

Against Snobbery (or, on writing)

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Years ago, a man I’ve known for decades via electronic networks, started a blog.

He apologized because, to that class of people who assume a byline in the New York Times (described by Gore Vidal as always being “at the very heart of malice”) or a PhD confer a kind of omniscient expertise, starting a blog was akin to driving a Volkswagen (back when they were much cheaper) when a Mercedes was preferable as a class marker.

His blog was, indeed is, good. He ably writes about what he knows, how capital markets function, a topic he understands deeply from the inside. I suppose we could wait for a book by an academic or a series by a Columbia Journalism School trained NYT staffer on capital markets – such work is part of the fabric of what people who choose doing violence to the English language call ‘knowledge making’ but surely there is a place for information from the trenches.

My friend’s unnecessary apology was inspired by snobbery. You know what I mean. It’s snobbery that causes people to dismiss Wikipedia, even as an introductory source. Is the Wikipedia entry on magnetohydrodynamics bad? Most of us don’t know but we’ve been told it’s in a bad neighborhood, far from the tree-lined campuses where police beat pro Palestinian students or Manhattan newsrooms (or what’s left of either). To participate in the game of snobbery, a game imposed on most of us by a few nervous elites and their minions, we must turn up our nose, as if detecting the scent of a pile of dog poop, carelessly left on a sidewalk.

…

This comes to mind because of the way Microsoft and Google, in their sales propaganda, have promoted large language models as the solution to the problem of writing. I wrote ‘problem,’ because for many of us, told that only a small group of people possess the ability to write, putting ideas to paper or screen is felt to be a problem.

Consider the way Microsoft describes its product, Copilot for Word:

Copilot in Word ushers in a new era of writing, leveraging the power of AI. It can help you go from a blank page to a complete draft in a fraction of the time it would take to compose text on your own. While it may write exactly what you need, sometimes it may be “usefully wrong” thus giving you some helpful inspiration.

The ‘problem’ solved by a machine that, as it bestows upon us a new era of writing, consumes, by some estimates, terawatts of electrical power. Writing, no matter how laborious, is a problem best solved by thought. Indeed, one of the critical aspects of writing – whether it’s fiction, non fiction or even a well considered social media post – is the application of thought to the process of organizing and recording your ideas and points of view.

Dependence on word assemblers such as ChatGPT and even our new silicon frenemy, DeepSeek, regardless of how cleverly architected, interrupts this process but so does snobbery. The snob industrial complex – which promotes the idea that good writing requires a university course or attachment to a media corporation – prepared the soil for the idea of replacing writing with machinery. Of course millions, harassed, short on time but also, purposely discouraged from writing, apologize for the blogs they should make to share their knowledge. Millions who are made to feel inferior when looking up a topic on Wikipedia, are, unsurprisingly, receptive to tech industry propaganda: never mind about thinking to write, we’ll do it for you.

…

Writing is a craft; putting one sentence after another to build a tale – sometimes true, or as near as one can come, sometimes fanciful. You hone your craft by reading and writing and, by assembling for yourself what a friend of mine calls a writer’s table. When writing about the tech industry, Raymond Chandler and Karl Marx are sitting at my writer’s table alongside others – living and dead – from whom I learn to sharpen my own, yes, voice. There is decades of experience – being in the data centers – and a love of writing that goes into the work.

There’s nothing stopping you from doing the same. I want to read from people who serve food in restaurants and pilots and nuclear plant workers and people who have been cast out of the world of work. I want to hear from everyone, not just the famous or celebrated writing about everyone. 

Having reached this point in the piece it’s typical to try to create something pithy that sums up what came before. In lieu of that, I’ll say, please write if you want to. Do not surrender your creativity to snobbery or machinery. If you need encouragement, I’m here to help.

We need as many voices reporting from the various fronts as we can get. 

The F-35 Maneuver

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Bad ideas, like death, are inevitable and just as inescapable.

The US-based tech industry is a Pandora’s box of bad ideas, unleashed upon an unwilling and unwitting populace, and indeed world, with reckless abandon, scorching lives and the Earth itself. Never mind, they say, we’re building the future.

The latest bad idea to spread dark wings and take flight is that building a super massive data center for ‘AI’ called ‘Stargate’- a megamachine that will solve all our problems like a resource and real estate devouring Wizard of Oz – is not only good, but essential.

In an Associated Press article titled, ‘Trump highlights partnership investing $500 billion in AI‘ published Jan 23, 2025, the project is described:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday talked up a joint venture investing up to $500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank.

The new entity, Stargate, will start building out data centers and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast-evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House. The initial investment is expected to be $100 billion and could reach five times that sum.

“It’s big money and high quality people,” said Trump, adding that it’s “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration.

[…]

It seems like only yesterday, or more precisely, several months ago, that the same ‘Stargate’, with a still astronomically large but comparatively smaller budget, was described in a Tom’s Hardware article of March 24, 2024 titled ‘OpenAI and Microsoft reportedly planning $100 billion datacenter project for an AI supercomputer‘ –

Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly working on a massive datacenter to house an AI-focused supercomputer featuring millions of GPUs. The Information reports that the project could cost “in excess of $115 billion” and that the supercomputer, currently dubbed “Stargate” inside OpenAI, would be U.S.-based. 

The report says that Microsoft would foot the bill for the datacenter, which could be “100 times more costly” than some of the biggest operating centers today. Stargate would be the largest in a string of datacenter projects the two companies hope to build in the next six years, and executives hope to have it running by 2028.

[…]

Bad ideas are inevitable but also, apparently, subject to cost overruns.

There are many ways to think and talk about this project, which is certain to fail (and there is news of far less costly methods, making the Olympian spending even more obviously suspicious). For me, the clearest way to understand the Stargate project and in fact, the entire ‘AI’ land grab, is as an attempt to create guaranteed profit for those tech firms who’re at the commanding heights – Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, Oracle and co-conspirators. Capital will flow into these firms whether the system works as advertised or not – i.e. they are paid for both function (such as it is) and malfunction.

This isn’t a new technique. The US defense industry has a long history of stuffing its coffers with cash for delivering weapons systems that work… sometimes. The most infamous example is Lockheed’s F-35 fighter, a project that provides the company with funding for both delivery and correction as described in the US Government Accounting Office article, ‘F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: More Actions Needed to Explain Cost Growth and Support Engine Modernization Decision’ May 2023 –

The Department of Defense’s most expensive weapon system—the F-35 aircraft—is now more than a decade behind schedule and $183 billion over original cost estimates.

[…]

That’s a decade and 183 billion of sweet, steady profit, the sort of profit the tech industry has long sought. First there was ‘enterprise software’, then there was subscription-based cloud, both efforts to create ‘growth’ and dependable cash infusions. Now, with Stargate, the industry may have, at last, found its F-35. Unlike the troubled fighter plane, there won’t be any Tom Cruise films featuring the data center. Then again, perhaps there will be. Netflix, like the rest of the industry, is out of ideas.

State of Exception – Part Two: Assume Breach

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In part one of this series, I proposed that Trump’s second term, which, as we’re seeing with the rush of executive orders, has, unlike his first, a coherent agenda (centered on the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan), would be a time of increased aggression against ostracized individuals and groups, a state of exception in which the pretence of bourgeois democracy melts away.

Because of this, we should change our relationship with the technologies we’re compelled to use; a naive belief in the good will or benign neglect of tech corporations and the state should be abandoned. The correct perspective is to assume breach.

In a April, 2023 published blog post for the network equipment company, F5, systems security expert Ken Arora, described the concept of assume breach: 

Plumbers, electricians, and other professionals who operate in the physical world have long internalized the true essence of “assume breach.” Because they are tasked with creating solutions that must be robust in tangible environments, they implicitly accept and incorporate the simple fact that failures occur within the scope of their work. They also understand that failures are not an indictment of their skills, nor a reason to forgo their services. Rather, it is only the most skilled who, understanding that their creations will eventually fail, incorporate learnings from past failures and are able to anticipate likely future failures.

[…]

For the purposes of this essay, the term, failure, is re-interpreted to mean the intrusion of hostile entities into the systems and devices you use. By adopting a technology praxis based on assumed breach, you can plan for intrusion by acknowledging the possibility that your systems have, or will be penetrated.

Primarily, there are five areas of concern:

  • Phones
  • Social Media
  • Personal computers
  • Workplace platforms, such as Microsoft 365 and Google’s G-Suite
  • ‘Cloud’ platforms, such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Google Cloud Platform

It’s reasonable to think that following security best practices for each technology (links in the references section) offers a degree of protection from intrusion. Although this may be true to some extent, when contending with non-state hostiles, such as black hat hackers, state entities have direct access to the ownership of these systems, giving them the ability to circumvent standard security measures via the exercise of political power.

Phones (and tablets)

Phones are surveillance devices. No communications that require security and which, if intercepted, could lead to state harassment or worse should be done via phones. This applies to iPhones, Android phones and even niche devices such as Linux phones. Phones are a threat in two ways:

  1.  Location tracking – phones connect to cellular networks and utilize unique identifiers that enable location and geospatial tracking. This data is used to create maps of activity and associations (a technique the IDF has used in its genocidal wars)
  2.  Data seizure – phones store data that, if seized by hostiles, can be used against you and your organization. Social media account data, notes, contacts and other information

Phone use must be avoided for secure communications. If you must use a phone for your activist work, consider adopting a secure Linux-based phone such as GrapheneOS which may be more resistant to cracking if seized but not to communication interception. As an alternative, consider using old school methods, such as paper messages conveyed via trusted courier within your group. This sounds extreme and may turn out to be unnecessary depending on how conditions mutate. It is best however, to be prepared should it become necessary.

Social Media

Social media platforms such as Twitter/X, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook/Meta and even less public systems such as Discord, which enables the creation of privately managed servers, should not be used for secure communication. Not only because of posts, but because direct messages are vulnerable to surveillance and can be used to obtain pattern and association data. A comparatively secure (though not foolproof) alternative is the use of the Signal messaging platform.  (Scratch that: Yasha Levine provides a full explantation of Signal as a government op here).

Personal Computers

Like phones, personal computers -laptops and Desktops – should not be considered secure. There are several sub-categories of vulnerability:

  • Vulnerabilities caused by security flaws in the operating system (for example, issues with Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS)
  • Vulnerabilities designed into the operating systems by the companies developing, deploying and selling them for profit objectives (Windows CoPilot, is a known threat vector, for example)
  • Vulnerabilities exploited by state actors such as intelligence and law enforcement agencies (deliberate backdoors)
  • Data exposure if a computer is seized

Operating systems are the main threat vector – that is, opening to your data – when using a computer. In part one of this series, I suggested abandoning the use of Microsoft Windows, Google Chrome OS and Apple’s Mac OS for computer usage that requires security and using secure Debian Linux instead. This is covered in detail in part one.

Workplace Platforms such as Google G-Suite and Microsoft 365 and other ‘cloud’ platforms such Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services

Although convenient, and, in the case of Software as a Service offerings such as Google G-Suite and Microsoft 365, less technically demanding to manage than on-premises hosting, ‘cloud’ platforms should not be considered trustworthy for secure data storage or communications.

This is true, even when platform-specific security best practices are followed because such measures will be circumvented by the corporations that own these platforms when it suits their purposes – such as cooperating with state mandates to release customer data.

The challenge for organizations who’re concerned about state sanctioned breach is finding the equipment, technical talent, will and organizational skill (project management) to move away from these ‘cloud’ systems to on-premises platforms. This is not trivial and has so many complexities that it deserves a separate essay, which will be part three of this series.

The primary challenges are:

  • Inventorying the applications you use
  • Assessing where the organisation’s data is stored and the types of data
  • Assessing the types of communications and the levels of vulnerability (for example, how is email used? What about collaboration services such as SharePoint?)
  • Crafting an achievable strategy for moving applications, services and data off the vulnerable cloud service
  • Encrypting and deleting data

…

In part three of this series, I will describe moving your organisation’s data and applications off of cloud platforms: what are the challenges? What are the methods? What skills are required? I’ll talk about this and more.

References

Assume Breach

Project 2025

Security Best Practices – Google Workspace

Microsoft 365 Security Best Practices

Questions and Answers: Israeli Military’s Use of Digital Tools in Gaza

UK police raid home, seize devices of EI’s Asa Winstanley

Cellphone surveillance

GrapheneOS

Meta-provided Facebook chats led a woman to plead guilty to abortion-related charges

State of Exception: Part One

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In his 2005 published book, State of Exception, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (who, I feel moved to say, was an idiot on the topic of Covid 19, declaring the virus to be nonexistent) wrote:

“The state of exception is the political point at which the juridical stops, and a sovereign unaccountability begins; it is where the dam of individual liberties breaks and a society is flooded with the sovereign power of the state.”

The (apparently, merely delayed by four years) re-election of Donald Trump is certain to usher in a sustained period of domestic emergency in the United States, a state of exception when even the pretense of bourgeois democracy is dropped and state power is exercised with few restraints.

What does this mean for information technology usage by activist groups or really, anyone?

…

In Feb of 2024, I published the essay, Information Technology for Activists – What is To Be Done? In this essay, I provided an overview of the current information technology landscape, with the needs and requirements of activist groups in mind. When conditions change, our understanding should keep pace. As we enter the state of exception, the information technology practices of groups who can expect harassment, or worse, from the US state should be radically updated for a more aggressively defensive posture.

Abandon Cloud

The computer and software technology industry is the command and control apparatus of corporate and state entities. As such, its products and services should be considered enemy territory. Under the capitalist system, we are compelled to operate on this territory to live. This harsh necessity should not be confused with acceptance and is certainly not a reason to celebrate, like dupes, the system that is killing the world. 

The use of operating systems and platforms from the tech industry’s primary powers – Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, X/Twitter, Apple, Oracle – and lesser known entities, creates a threat vector through which identities, data and activities can be tracked and recorded. Moving off these platforms will be very difficult but is essential. What are the alternatives? 

There are three main areas of concern:

  • Services and platforms such as social media, cloud and related services
  • Personal computers (for example, laptops)
  • Phones

In this essay, cloud and computer usage are the focus.

By ‘cloud’, I’m referring to the platforms owned by Microsoft (Azure), Amazon (Amazon Web Services or, AWS) and Google (Google Cloud Platform or GCP) and services such as Microsoft 365 and Google’s G Suite. These services are not secure for the purposes of activist groups and individuals who can expect heightened surveillance and harassment from the state.  There are technical reasons (Azure, for example, is known for various vulnerabilities) but these are of a distant, secondary concern to the fact that, regardless of each platform’s infrastructural qualities or deficits, the corporations owning them are elements of the state apparatus.

Your data and communications are not secure. If you are using these platforms, your top priority should be abandoning usage and moving your computational resources to what are called on-premises facilities and use the Linux operating system, rather than MacOS or Microsoft Windows.  

On Computers

In brief, operating systems are a specialized type of software that makes computers useful. When you open Microsoft Excel on your computer, it’s the Microsoft Windows operating system that enables the Excel program to utilize computer hardware, such as memory and storage. You can learn more about operating systems by reading this Wikipedia article. This relationship – between software and computing machinery – applies to all the systems you use: whether it’s Windows, Mac or others.

Microsoft Windows (particularly the newest versions which include the insecure by design ‘Co-pilot plus PC’ feature) and Apple’s MacOS should be abandoned. Why? The tech industry, as outlined in Yasha Levine’s book, Surveillance Valley, works hand in glove with the surveillance state (and has done so since the industry’s infancy). If you or your organization are using computers for work that challenges the US state – for example, pro-Palestinian activism or indeed, work in support of any marginalized community, there is a possibility vital information will be compromised – either through seizure, or remote access that takes advantage of backdoors and vulnerabilities.

This was always a possibility (and for some, a harsh experience) but as the state’s apparatus is directed towards coordinated, targeted suppression, vague possibility turns into high probability (see, for example, UK police raid home, seize devices of EI’s Asa Winstanley).

The Linux operating system should be used instead, specifically, the Debian distribution, well known for its secure design. Secure by design does not mean invulnerable to attack; best practices such as those described in the article, Securing Debian Manual 3.19, on the Debian website, must be followed to make a machine a harder target.

Switching and Migration

Switching from Microsoft Windows to Debian Linux can be done in stages as described in the document ‘From Windows to Debian’. Replacing MacOS with Debian on Mac Pro computers is described in the document, ‘Macbook Pro’ on the Debian website. More recent Mac hardware (M1 Silicon) is being addressed via Debian’s Project Banana.

On software

If you’re using Microsoft Windows, it’s likely you’re also using the MS Office suite. You may also be using Microsoft’s cloud ‘productivity’ platform, Microsoft 365. Perhaps you’re using Google’s Workspace platform instead or in addition to Microsoft 365. In the section on ‘Services and Platforms’, I discuss the problems of these products from a security perspective. For now, let’s review replacements for commercial ‘productivity’ suites that are used to create documents, spreadsheets and other types of work files.

In the second installment of this essay series I will provide greater detail regarding each of the topics discussed and guidance about the use of phones which are spy devices and social media, which is insecure by design.