Latest news with #industrialrevolution
Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Trump Just Triggered The Largest Data Center Buildout In History
Data Center IT Specialist and System administrator Talk, Use Tablet Computer, Wearing Safety Wests. ... More Server Clod Farm with Two Information Technology Engineers checking Cyber Security. If there's one thing I've learned after decades in the investment world, it's that government policy is a precursor to change. What's unfolding right now with artificial intelligence (AI) in the U.S. is a full-blown industrial revolution, and it's being backed and subsidized by the federal government like few things I've seen before. Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that could mark the beginning of a new era in U.S. manufacturing and energy. With the stroke of a pen, the White House declared AI data centers and their supporting infrastructure—semiconductors, transmission lines, power generation and more—a national priority. What this means is faster permitting, regulatory rollbacks, access to federal land and potentially hundreds of billions in new investment flowing into this industry over the coming decade. The Rise of the AI-Industrial Complex I believe that what's happening right now with AI is similar in scale and ambition to the defense buildout of the Reagan years or the shale revolution of the 2010s. The Trump administration's new executive order, signed on July 23, seeks to streamline the development of large-scale AI data centers that consume more than 100 megawatts of power. That's a massive amount of compute muscle, but it's necessary to train and run next-generation AI models. Trump's EO also prioritizes projects with $500 million or more in capital expenditures, fast-tracking them through what used to be a years-long regulatory slog. In short, the White House is telling the tech industry: 'Build it, and build it fast.' Trump Touts Billions in Private Investment at Energy Summit One of the more ambitious announcements so far came earlier this month during the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, where Trump unveiled more than $90 billion in new private capital pledges for AI and energy infrastructure. That includes $25 billion from Alphabet (Google's parent company) and another $25 billion from alternative investment firm Blackstone, all dedicated to developing AI data centers and natural gas facilities in the Keystone State. Why was Pennsylvania selected? The state sits atop the Marcellus Shale, one of the largest natural gas deposits in the world. These new AI centers are energy-hungry, and gas is abundant and cost-effective. A $6.7 Trillion Infrastructure Boom According to McKinsey, the global price tag to scale AI data centers could hit a staggering $6.7 trillion by 2030. Of that, $5.2 trillion would be earmarked for facilities designed to handle AI workloads. That's an unfathomably large number. To put it in perspective, that's more than twice the size of Germany's GDP. Estimated global data center capacity demand In February, Goldman Sachs projected that AI-driven data centers could push global electricity demand up 165% by 2030. That's in a world where many utilities have seen flat demand for decades. Now, they're scrambling to add new capacity, and Goldman estimates the U.S. will need over 500,000 new power-sector workers just to keep pace. Wall Street's Money Is Following Washington's Lead In many ways, it seems as if AI is eating the world. According to PitchBook, AI startups in the U.S. alone raised $104 billion in the first half of 2025, nearly matching their total for the entire year of 2024. That represents more than 60% of all venture capital raised nationwide. Elsewhere, Facebook's parent company Meta is raising $29 billion from private credit firms to build out data centers, including a new 20-year agreement to power its AI efforts with nuclear energy from Illinois. Elon Musk's xAI is reportedly on pace to burn through $13 billion this year as it builds custom AI infrastructure from scratch. Even private equity is getting in on the act. The American Investment Council (AIC) reports that over $1 trillion has been invested in AI infrastructure since 2020, from data center buildouts to semiconductor fabs to clean energy projects. AI Adoption Still in the Early Innings A recent survey conducted by the Census Bureau found that just 9.2% of American companies are using artificial intelligence today. That's up from 7.4% in the first quarter of this year and 5.7% at the end of 2024. AI adoption rate among U.S. firms continues to rise To put that in perspective, it took e-commerce nearly a quarter of a century to cross the 10% adoption threshold. AI is about to do it in just a few years. This tells me we're still in the early innings. While Wall Street may have already priced in some of the hype around AI, the actual adoption across the economy is just beginning. The American AI Century I believe we've entered a new industrial age—one where data is the new oil, and compute is the new horsepower. Washington is signaling that America's future competitiveness depends on winning the AI race, and they're laying the legal and financial groundwork to do just that. I'm paying attention to policy. The last time we saw this kind of coordinated push was during the Space Race and the Reagan defense expansion. Both were followed by generational investment opportunities. The AI revolution won't be built overnight, but it's already under construction. As always, the early movers stand to reap the biggest rewards.
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
This outrageous new climate change scam will bankrupt Britain
Rachel Reeves, beware. Britain could soon be facing yet more eye-watering demands for reparations. But not just because of all the slaves our distant ancestors owned. Now we could be sued for all the coal they burned. That's because, according to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), countries could potentially be entitled to seek damages from other countries for their historic contributions to climate change. Which is particularly bad news for the British. Nowadays we're responsible for less than one per cent of the world's carbon emissions. Two hundred and fifty years ago, however, we were responsible for practically all of them. Effectively, therefore, we could be sued for starting the industrial revolution. Following this logic, of course, you might ask: why stop at the 18th century? Why not go back further? Mankind is believed to have originated in Kenya, and all pollution is caused by mankind, ergo it's all Kenya's fault. So let's sue it. And if Kenya tells the ICJ that it's too poor to pay up, not to worry, because there are other juicy targets we could fleece. As soon as we've tracked down the descendants of whichever caveman invented the wheel, we can sue them for all the world's car exhaust fumes. At present, however, it would seem that Britain is the nation likeliest to fall victim to this brazen legal opportunism. But in the event that other countries do try to sue us, I hope we'll politely explain something. We don't owe them. They owe us. This is because the industrial revolution and its countless associated benefits didn't just make the world richer. They caused people to live longer. In the mid 1700s, just before the industrial revolution began, life expectancy in this country alone was about 40. Now it's double that. And after other countries joined the industrial revolution, the life expectancy of their populations shot up, too. Of course, this increase wasn't due solely to greater prosperity. It was also due to revolutionary medical advances: for example, antibiotics. And which country does the world have to thank for discovering the very first antibiotic? Oh yes: Britain. Which also happens to be the country responsible for coming up with the smallpox vaccine: a breakthrough that is said to have saved more than 200 million lives worldwide. Overall, then, it seems perfectly clear that our forefathers did the world vastly more good than harm. Which is why, if any countries have the brass neck to sue us, we should respond by billing them. 'Dear Sirs, 'But for the dazzling historic ingenuity of this nation, half your people would never have been born, and the other half would have died by their 30th birthday. We therefore enclose an invoice for your quarterly GDP. Kind regards, Britain.' Why millennial women are sick of men Have you heard about the dramatic new trend that has apparently gripped the millennial generation? It's called 'heterofatalism'. And it describes the decision by growing numbers of straight women to give up on romantic relationships – because they've concluded that all men are rubbish. In the past week, upmarket liberal newspapers have been bursting with articles by women setting out the reasons for their disillusionment. In the New York Times, for example, a female author accused prospective male partners of 'not wanting me badly enough, not communicating with me clearly enough, not devoting themselves to me… Men are what is rotten in the state of straightness.' Meanwhile, a young woman writing for the London Times revealed that many of her single female friends feel equally disenchanted. 'I just don't think the men out there are good enough,' said one. 'I hate them all,' said another. Of course, since I myself am a man, you might expect me to be scandalised by these sweeping generalisations about members of my sex. You might also expect me to speculate as to how upmarket liberal newspapers would respond to single men declaring, 'I just don't think the women out there are good enough' and 'I hate them all'. Would such men be treated sympathetically? Or would they be recognised as embittered, sexist incels who are simply attempting to blame others for their own romantic failures? As a matter of fact, however, I'm not put out at all. Far from it. Indeed, I'm strongly supportive of these women's 'heterofatalist' stance – for one very simple reason. It will take the Western world's whiniest, most melodramatic and most insufferably self-absorbed young people out of the gene pool. After all, if they permanently abstain from relationships, they'll never have children, and thus won't pass on their self-pitying, navel-gazing narcissism to the next generation. Instead, the task of human reproduction will be left to people who are likeable, self-aware and emotionally well-adjusted. In the long term, therefore, millennial heterofatalism will result in enormous benefits to humanity. So, to all the 30-something singles featured in these articles, I say: you're absolutely right. Men are awful. Every last one. So please do stick to your vow of abstinence. The world is right behind you, all the way.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA)'s Going To Have A Good Quarter, Says Jim Cramer
We recently published . NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) has become the most valuable company in the world once again as we enter the year's second half. The firm has benefited from long-term investor optimism about AI and a relatively benign impact of US GPU restrictions on China. Cramer is a believer in NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) and holds the opinion that apart from AI, the firm can benefit from robotics as well. This time, he commented on NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)'s upcoming quarter and a report from The Information: 'NVIDIA's going to have a good quarter. There's an article today, from The Information saying they're gonna have problems with meeting the new Chinese chips. They went into quiet period this weekend. So when I did my check. . . Look, I started the and I said to people, you know what, it's a free fire zone when companies are going into quiet. Free fire zone. You have something? We're like gonna sell subs.' Earlier, he maintained that NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is ushering in a new industrial revolution: 'NVIDIA, own it, don't trade it. That's been my advice for about $3.7 trillion in market capitalization. Today. NVIDIA became the first $4 trillion company, and it's hard not to celebrate the success of this business or the man behind it… Now let's talk about this $4 trillion achievement. Let's put it in perspective. In the last 25 years, only four companies have earned the title of the biggest public company in America: Microsoft, General Electric, Exxon Mobil, and Apple. While we acknowledge the potential of NVDA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the . READ NEXT: 30 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 11 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Right Now. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Khaleej Times
17-07-2025
- Khaleej Times
UAE: Can digital detox be the new norm with Gen-Z?
The digital detox is coming, and I know it both anecdotally and personally. Personally, it sucks. Social media, staring at a screen for most of my work and entertainment, or dealing with some AI nonsense. Whatever it may be, the time is coming where the wide use of cell phones and digital networks overall will decline. Maybe it's that large language models and so-called AI are already messing with peoples' heads by delivering them delusions of grandeur and false information that perpetuates all sorts of stereotypes, prejudices, racism and inhumane thinking, but I struggle to believe this globalised society, less than 200 years after the industrial revolution, has at all contended with what all this tech is doing to humanity. From our collective well-being to our individual health, it seems as if though we never moved on from the economic boom-seeking culture of the 1980s, we did our utmost to hold up the enthusiasm for ever-more complex gadgets and systems. On the surface, and in many early cases, these advancements were good; cell phones and personal computers freed us of work, the internet showed us we could build a truly global society, and advancements in AI offered a glimpse at a post-work, post-scarcity society. Unfettered by race, religion, culture and even our own bodies, what was to stop us? The Gutenberg press was a similar revolution; a wine press, some stamps, some ink and paper – and Europe and Christianity were changed forever. Are we as flawed for believing our species and society could remain the same after so many advancements in such a short period of time, or is it new, 21st century hubris for believing we were better than our ancestors? We fight the same wars, commit the same genocides, and rob the same people of liberty and opportunity when it's someone else's turn at the top of the geopolitical wheel? I don't know the solution, just that it needs to start with pulling back. Healthy use of all technology is not at all on peoples' radars, and I accept that, I'm no Luddite. But as a species we have to contend with living in a world where billionaires can ride rockets like space cowboys, while children are starved to death in Gaza. When I think about it, I shut off. Outside of work, I'm cursing myself if I go on social media, I'm annoyed if I open a streaming service, and I'm uncomfortable when I have to write another form email to ask the same query of a person weathering 1,001 questions from people just like me. Now, I don't subscribe to the theories which proclaim anxiety, depression and suicide are on the rise only because of social media – I'm convinced this is a case of correlation not equalling causation and gathering data on mental health is just easier as the stigma declines – but we do know for certain that how false information spreads and can be manipulated or suppressed by those in the control seat. I am still looking, but we all must find a way to split the difference between those community 'it takes a village'-type ties, and broader solidarity around the world that travels by respecting other cultures while not giving ground where it matters most.
The Sun
13-07-2025
- Business
- The Sun
Inside Amazon's new AI megacity building machine as powerful as human brain – and why it's bad news for Britain
IT was once sprawling fields, but now a 1,200-acre stretch of fertile farmland is home to a single gigantic AI data centre. The former cornfields outside New Carlisle, Indiana, have been transformed by Amazon's latest megabucks tech investment. 4 4 Inside seven massive buildings are hundreds of thousands of specialised computer chips and miles of fibre optic cable, connecting every chip and computer to create a giant machine ready for artificial intelligence. And by the time the site is finished, it will be home to 30 gigantic warehouses, all for AI start-up Anthropic. With Amazon investment, it hopes to build an AI machine that matches the power of the human brain. And the company claims it will be 'the world's largest AI compute cluster'. The beast, spanning the entire plot, will use 2.2gigawatts of electricity and millions of gallons of water to keep the chips from overheating. To put that into perspective, it is estimated that a single request to ChatGPT requires the equivalent of a small bottle of water to keep the chips cool. And this is just the beginning of the AI industrial revolution, which is leaving the UK scratching around in the USA's and China's dust. The global data centre market is set to be worth $517billion by 2030, according to Barclays Research. But are we in danger of missing the boat? AI expert Tom Edwards told The Sun: 'AI is the next industrial revolution and is likely to be bigger than the last one. 'The biggest problem the UK has in getting involved is the energy infrastructure. 'We're playing catch- up to the US because we're switching off North Sea oil and gas. 'We should be building more data centres, but we'd have to build the energy infrastructure to support them, which is a huge challenge in itself. 'These centres require so much energy because they are running thousands of computations in parallel to create AI and that needs a huge amount of energy. 'It's much more energy-intensive than using a traditional computer. 'The UK has some of the best minds coming out of Oxford and Cambridge when it comes to computing, but we're woefully behind China and the US as it stands. 'Without these data centres, we're just going to keep falling behind. 'Just to get up to speed with China and the US, we would need to do a huge amount of work, and we aren't doing that fast enough.' As it stands, the UK government is keen to support AI development, and has plans for a 176-hectare site in Scunthorpe, Lincs, and one in Watford that would be the size of 17 football pitches. But neither have yet been given a green light, and would require billions of pounds in investment to build. Number Ten has vowed to use AI to turbo-charge its Plan For Change. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle insisted the UK was just in the 'foothills' of the AI revolution and that investing in the new technology would inject billions of pounds into the economy. He told The Sun: 'Data centres are the lifeblood of the AI revolution and we're determined that the UK will seize this incredible opportunity. 'This government is boosting our AI capability, bringing investment to former industrial heartlands for this new Industrial Revolution. 'With more than £6billion of private investment into data centres committed in the last year, we are cementing Britain's place as a global AI leader.' Back in America, Amazon's Project Rainer — the site in Indiana — is so large it can only be fully viewed from above. 'I can't live in my home' And the building work does not stop here. There are plans for facilities in Mississippi and potentially North Carolina and Pennsylvania. It's a bid from Jeff Bezos's company to become a heavyweight in the AI sphere which, until now, has been dominated by Facebook's parent company Meta and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Not to be left out, OpenAI is building a 1.2-gigawatt facility in Texas and another, nearly as large, in the United Arab Emirates. These new sites are miles bigger than the data centres built before the AI boom in 2022 sparked by ChatGPT. And the huge change does not only create work for computer geniuses. AI guru Tom added: 'These sites bring loads of construction jobs.' For the Indiana site, Amazon has four different construction crews working simultaneously. The New York Times was told by Bill Schalliol, a community economic development official, that there are 4,000 workers on the plant each day. 'I don't know if they're competing for cash or steak dinner, but it's crazy how much they're getting up,' he said. 'Steel starts to go up here, the next day it's going up over there.' Nearby hotels have been filled with the workers, and there has been such a rise in traffic accidents and congestion that Amazon agreed to pay £90,000 to cover overtime for traffic enforcement. They also threw in an additional £5.5million for local road improvements. But the investment and jobs are not sitting well with all the locals. In order to bury the fibre optic cables to connect the warehouses, and install other buried infrastructure, Amazon had to pump water out of the wet ground nearby. According to one permit, the company pumped 2.2million gallons of water per hour for 730 days. The process, known as dewatering, is now being investigated as locals report wells drying up. 'You can see the mountain of dirt they are ready to shove on those wetlands,' Dan Caruso, a retired mail carrier from New Carlisle, told The New York Times. 'Wildlife depends on those wetlands.' It's not the first time a data centre has been investigated for causing environmental damage. One built in the US state of Georgia for Meta has faced allegations it is making the area uninhabitable due to contaminated water. Beverly Morris told The BBC: 'I can't live in my home with half of my home functioning and no water.' Meta denied being to blame for Beverly's private well drying up, saying the water issues were not connected to their data centre. Objections to the huge projects by locals have cost £47billion in projects delayed or blocked nationwide, according to Data Center Watch. But with AI use booming, there are sure to be more plants built worldwide. And it's one revolution we will need to be part of — or risk being left behind. 4
