Big Tech companies helped censor Americans during COVID. Now many of the same interests pillaging rural America for surveillance data centers want to suppress debate over their next great project. This time, they are not merely trying to censor speech. They are helping create the pretext to criminalize it.

Federal and state law enforcement should have their hands full with real threats: jihadist networks, political assassinations, attacks against ICE, and the growing culture of left-wing violence that led to Charlie Kirk’s murder. Yet last week, Wired obtained documents showing a coordinated effort among the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and roughly 80 regional fusion centers to monitor supposed anti-tech and anti-data-center violence.

It is disgraceful to watch law enforcement silence Americans on behalf of Big Tech.

More than 1,000 pages of internal DHS, FBI, and fusion-center reports describe “anti-technology extremism” as an emerging domestic threat based largely on a handful of unverified threats against politicians. No one should excuse genuine threats or violence. But the idea that data-center opponents have created a domestic threat requiring this level of federal coordination is absurd. It is gaslighting dressed up as intelligence work.

This is the same logic behind the Trump administration’s decision to station marshals with surveyors for data-center transmission lines in Carroll County, Maryland. The point was not to respond to credible threats. The point was to frame opposition — especially in one of Maryland’s most conservative counties — as dangerous before the debate even began.

Which brings us to Dixon, Illinois.

Last week, resident Harley Delander organized a Facebook protest outside the home of former state Rep. Tom Demmer (R), who is now promoting a 387-acre data-center site through the Lee County Industrial Development Association. People can debate the prudence of protesting at an official’s residence, though such protests have become common in local disputes. But police produced no credible evidence that Delander or his friends planned violence.

Delander was arrested outside his home 12 hours later and charged with two felonies: intimidation and stalking. Police said his communications “knowingly and willfully” caused fear for Demmer and his family’s safety. Delander recorded the arrest.

This reflects a growing trend: criminalizing sharp public debate based on how a public official claims to feel rather than what a citizen actually did.

A Massachusetts resident was sentenced to prison and spent a full year behind bars before trial for writing angry emails to a local Michigan politician. The emails were ugly — the sort of language elected officials receive every day — but they contained no personal threats or even veiled threats. He was extradited to Oakland County, Michigan, in December 2023 and charged under Michigan’s law against intimidating public officials, which hinges on whether the “victim” felt “terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested.”

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We have reached the point where heated political debate — a tradition as old as Adams and Jefferson — can become grounds for abridging the First Amendment. What a way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence!

The crackdown is not limited to nasty emails or home protests. Across the country, law-abiding rural residents, many of them seniors, are getting roughed up or arrested for speaking too long or objecting too loudly at data-center hearings.

On February 17, Oklahoma farmer Darren Blanchard exceeded his three-minute speaking limit by a few seconds at a Claremore City Council town hall on “Project Mustang,” a proposed AI data center backed by Beale Infrastructure. Once his time expired, he stopped speaking and walked to the rostrum to give the city manager a written copy of his remarks. For that, police handcuffed and removed him, transported him to Rogers County Jail, and booked him on criminal trespassing charges.

In April, Imperial County, California, resident Ismael Arvizu was arrested and charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and threatening a public official. Did he attack an official? No. After speaking during his allotted time at an Imperial County Board of Supervisors meeting, Arvizu applauded when another resident threatened to start a recall petition against the supervisors. The Los Angeles Times reported that an officer led him out and arrested him, and prosecutors charged him with threatening a public official.

In Midland, Texas, video shows a resident calmly calling for a point of order under meeting rules at a data-center meeting. He was immediately grabbed and removed from the room. He does not appear to have been arrested or charged, but the point remains: Police increasingly seem prepared to remove data-center opponents before their speech, outbursts, or objections would traditionally qualify as disrupting a meeting.

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This is happening in deep-red counties across America. It is disgraceful to watch law enforcement silence Americans on behalf of Big Tech.

Recently, the Intercept obtained a law-enforcement bulletin from a fusion center housed within the Philadelphia Police Department showing that federal authorities were monitoring anti-data-center social media posts for “domestic violent extremists.” The bulletin warned that “domestic violent extremists” were “likely interested in targeting artificial intelligence data centers,” posing physical and cyber threats to infrastructure in the Philadelphia region. Then it conceded that authorities lacked “specific information on plans to target AI data centers in the Philadelphia area.”

That is the whole game. Invent a vague threat, inflate it into a domestic extremism category, and use it to justify surveillance, intimidation, and arrests. Then pretend ordinary citizens are dangerous because they object to surrendering their land, power, and communities to Big Tech.

The irony is hard to miss. Governments at every level are deploying censorship, surveillance, and criminal enforcement to service an agenda built on surveillance, data extraction, and control.

Talk about paying for the rope to hang ourselves!

Car prices are about to skyrocket — and the reason is in the palm of your hand

If you think car prices are already out of control, brace yourself. The next spike is coming, and it has nothing to do with supply-chain excuses, dealer markups, or government mandates.

In fact, it has nothing to do with the car industry at all.

Automakers have limited options here. They can delay production, strip out features, or pass the cost directly to buyers.

It is being driven by Big Tech’s race to dominate artificial intelligence, and no matter who wins, the American car buyer will pay the price.

Bidding war

Behind the scenes, a quiet bidding war is underway for one of the most critical components in modern vehicles: memory chips. These are not exotic, cutting-edge parts reserved for luxury cars. They are the backbone of everything from your backup camera to center screens to your safety systems. And right now, they are getting sucked up by massive AI data centers at a pace the auto industry simply cannot match.

Companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are spending billions building out AI infrastructure. These operations require enormous volumes of high-performance memory, the same category of chips used throughout today’s vehicles. The difference is they are willing to pay more, lock in longer contracts, and move faster than any automaker.

Chip manufacturers, including Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, are shifting production toward AI demand because that is where the profits are strongest. That leaves fewer chips available for automakers, and the ones that are available are getting more expensive by the day.

Winter is coming

Automakers are already feeling it. Executives at Ford Motor Company have acknowledged rising costs tied to memory chips, even as they try to reassure investors that supply remains stable for now. But that stability is fragile, and industry analysts are warning that shortages could begin to impact production as soon as late 2026.

Some companies are more exposed than others. EV-focused brands like Tesla and Rivian face added risk because their vehicles rely even more heavily on advanced computing systems. Traditional automakers like General Motors and Ford Motor Company may have slightly more flexibility, but they are still tied to the same supply chain realities.

What does that mean for you?

It means the car you want may cost more, take longer to arrive, or come with fewer features than expected. We’ve seen this before.

Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Computers on wheels

Modern vehicles are essentially computers on wheels. A typical car today uses large amounts of memory to manage safety systems, navigation, infotainment, and driver-assistance technology. In higher-end or electric models, that number climbs even further. Remove or limit those chips, and something has to give. Which means fewer features.

Automakers have limited options here. They can delay production, strip out features, or pass the cost directly to buyers. If history is any guide, they will do some combination of all three.

We saw it during the last chip shortage, due to COVID-related supply-chain disruption. Vehicles were shipped without features that customers had already paid for, with vague promises they might be added later. In many cases, those features never came back.

Now imagine that scenario again, only this time driven by a long-term shift in how chips are allocated globally. In other words, no end in sight.

Back to basics?

Some automakers are trying to get ahead of the problem. Toyota Motor Corporation and Honda Motor Company are working more closely with semiconductor suppliers to secure long-term agreements. It is a smart strategy, but it also highlights a bigger issue: The auto industry is no longer in control of its own destiny when it comes to critical technology.

It is competing with Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley has deeper pockets.

There is also a lesson here that automakers would rather not admit. For years, they pushed more screens, more software, and more complexity into vehicles, selling it as innovation. But that strategy came with a cost, and now that cost is showing up in the form of supply vulnerability.

Many drivers today are asking for less tech and just the basics. But with added technology that collects your data, car brands are going to be forced to cut corners somewhere. And we know they will give up features and still collect data and track your every move. All of this takes chips that are getting more expensive.

The more technology you pack into a car, the more exposed you are when those components become scarce.

New approach

For consumers, this may force a shift in thinking. Simpler vehicles could become more attractive, not just because they are easier to use, but because they are less dependent on volatile supply chains. At the same time, the used car market could see renewed demand as buyers look for alternatives to increasingly expensive new models. This happened during the last chip shortage where used cars ballooned in price. That makes it a good time to sell and a bad time to buy.

The push for AI is not slowing down. If anything, it is accelerating. That means the competition for memory chips is only going to intensify, and the auto industry will continue to be caught in the middle.

So the next time you see a higher price tag on a new vehicle, do not assume it is just inflation or dealer markup. There's a good chance it's tied to a data center somewhere, running thousands of servers, training the next generation of AI models.

There may be a big opportunity here: a growing market for affordable cars not encumbered with expensive, invasive, and bug-prone tech. But first, car makers will have to ditch the endless tech arms race and listen to their customers.

Five standout denunciations and warnings in Pope Leo XIV's new papal encyclical

Pope Leo XIII issued a papal encyclical in 1891 titled "Rerum Novarum," which the Vatican notes "became the document inspiring Christian activity in the social sphere and the point of reference for this activity."

In that groundbreaking document about the just ordering of society, Leo XIII applied Catholic doctrines to the modern conditions that manifested as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

Besides rejecting socialism as a means of remedying social ills and setting the stage for localism, the late pope expounded on the Church's doctrine on work, private property, the rights of workers, the obligations of the rich, the dignity of the poor, and other timely terms and issues.

'It can only bring about conflict more quickly and render it more impersonal.'

The current pope, Leo XIV, has set out in his first encyclical, "Magnifica Humanitas," to do for his era what his predecessor did 135 years ago.

The Roman pontiff has, accordingly, scrutinized "the great trends of our time, particularly technological advances," through the lens of the Church’s Scripture- and tradition-based social doctrine — that living "legacy of wisdom, where we find principles for thought, criteria for discernment and judgment, and concrete guidelines for action."

While the pope covers a great deal of ground in his encyclical, five remarks stand out as especially provocative and/or memorable.

1. The two cities

At the outset, Pope Leo XIV raises the questions of where man is going and toward which goal does he wish to orient himself.

Leo XIV notes that in the era of AI, mankind is faced with a choice — not whether or not to embrace technology, which he does not regard as a force intrinsically antagonistic to humanity — but of whether to "construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together."

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The American pope suggested that the choice will inevitably dictate how the transformative technology of the age is employed, given that this technology takes on the "characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it."

Following in the footsteps of Nimrod and choosing the first option would mean giving way to an ancient temptation and pursuing "a single language, a single technology, a single direction"; building a society "on pride and the claim to self-sufficiency"; and working toward a "future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means."

The second option would similarly mean dominating the heavens but rather patiently cultivating a "space in which humanity rediscovers its solid foundations and its final end" — a place "less visible and less spectacular" that is founded on the common good and has for its bedrock a firm relationship with the Almighty.

Building for the common good necessitates resisting the "Babel syndrome" that animates transhumanism and other vainglorious efforts to correct what God has created and instead "accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected," said the pope.

2. Falling victim to achievement

Leo XIV observed that within the ascendant technocratic paradigm previously denounced by Pope Francis, there is a "tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control, and profit alone shape personal, social, and economic decisions."

'Speed and efficiency should never be the supreme motivating force for the irreversible decisions.'

This contagious way of looking at the world — which threatens to reduce "creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency" — has spread in concert with "the expansion of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology," said the pope.

Pope Leo XIV warns that unless technological progress advances with corresponding ethical and social progress, "the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity: 'having more' without 'being more.'"

3. More dehumanization on the battlefield

Sensitive to the increasing ease of war-making, "tragically marginal" efforts to prevent conflicts, and the "perpetuation of conflict as a source of power and income," the pope discussed the need to rein in and regulate the use of AI where the battlefield is concerned.

Leo XIV noted that moral judgments of a lethal or irreversible nature cannot be reduced to calculation and should not be entrusted to artificial systems.

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Leaving the work of killing and ruination to machines neither makes war more morally acceptable nor removes the intrinsic inhumanity of conflict, said the pope; rather "it can only bring about conflict more quickly and render it more impersonal, lowering the threshold for resorting to violence, transforming defense into threat prediction and thus reducing victims to data."

'Decisions now seem to be driven almost exclusively by economic calculations, justified through media distortions.'

Where AI and automated systems are involved, the pope advocates for:

holding those who design, train, authorize, and employ the technology used in strikes accountable;
ensuring that "speed and efficiency should never be the supreme motivating force for the irreversible decisions made in the context of war";
requiring technology that facilitates attacks to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants and factor in the impact on defenseless populations;
requiring weapons systems to retrace and reconstruct their decision-making processes "so that accountability and blame are not collapsed into 'the machine'";
keeping decisions to use lethal force under human control; and
avoiding an international AI arms race.

Leo XIV notes, "While AI can enhance the defense and protection of civilians, it can also lower the threshold for the use of force, shield people from responsibility, and foster a culture in which the enemy is reduced to a statistic and the victim to 'collateral damage.'"

4. The new colonialism

After noting that the "Church renews her firm condemnation of all forms of slavery, trafficking, and the commodification of persons," Leo XIV discussed a novel form of colonialism incubated in the digital economy that "appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information."

The pope railed against the mining, aggregation, and analysis of individuals' data — especially information about their health and genetics — noting that such information affords the powers that be "structural leverage over the future, for they can shape needs and markets. They can also decide, before others, to whom medicines, investments, and protections will be allocated."

The remedy, according to the pope: restore "to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom, and for whose benefit."

5. A false realism

The pope rails in his encyclical against realpolitik — politics based on doing what is regarded as expedient rather than what is understood as morally or ethically right — particularly as it relates to war.

Leo XIV, certain that "we live at a time of significant spiritual and cultural blindness," characterized realpolitik as a "truly irresponsible" form of false realism that "sows in consciences and in society an attitude of resignation to the inevitability of war and dismisses peace and dialogue as utopian or irrational positions that ignore the risks at stake."

While stressing that "peace is neither a naïve hope nor merely the absence of war" and is "always possible as the fruit of justice and charity," the pope recognized that the prevailing climate of pragmatism and nihilism has nevertheless set the stage for "new wars that are perhaps even more dangerous than those of the past, since they tend to disregard all ethical limits."

"Decisions now seem to be driven almost exclusively by economic calculations, justified through media distortions, manufactured enthusiasm, and 'dreams' that inevitably shatter, generating frustration and further violence," wrote the pope. "When people come to believe that nothing is genuinely true and that principles are hollow words, then the fuse in their hearts is lit for new eruptions of intolerance and aggression."

Just as he rejects this "false realism," the pope rejects the encompassing "culture of power," highlighting an alternative: the "civilization of love."

"Christians see the darkness and acknowledge it for what it is, yet they do not merely gaze upon it passively, for they know the light and understand that the darkness has not overcome it and cannot defeat it (cf. Jn 1:5)," wrote the pope. "For this reason, even when suffering seems to have the last word, Christians serve the good and are sustained by a theological hope that gives reality both meaning and direction."

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Republicans should fight affordability battles locally

As the Trump administration and congressional Republicans work to lower Americans’ cost of living this year, they should be guided by a simple principle: All affordability is local.

Democrats and too many establishment Republicans still think they create jobs, economic growth, and opportunity. Whenever high prices pinch consumers, lawmakers huddle up with K Street lobbyists to see what big business, big tech, and big banks want ... and give it to them.

Yet they scratch their heads as corporate profits surge while working families’ monthly bills only climb higher.

Corporate consolidation makes life easier for lawyers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians. But it makes life much more expensive for everyone else.

We’ve seen this pattern again and again. Obamacare. Federal student loans. Subsidized mortgages. The Build Back Better inflation bomb. These policies doled out billions to insiders and middlemen but left everyday Americans holding the bag.

Instead of writing more checks this time, congressional Republicans should focus on rewriting the rules that are contributing to our affordability crisis. Federal regulations — mostly imposed by deep-state bureaucrats, not elected legislators — cost the U.S. economy more than $2 trillion per year. That’s five times the size of last year’s Working Families Tax Cuts legislation.

Reforming these regulations would lower prices, spur job-creating investment, and produce the broadly shared prosperity Republicans promised on the campaign trail.

Their first priority should be to reform the federal permitting process, an issue the White House and Congress have been working on together. However, despite real progress to improve efficiency and remove unnecessary red tape, the response has yet to match the urgency of the moment.

The permitting process has become a punchline — it’s wasteful, corrupt, and self-defeating. Federal agencies are blocking massive, urgent infrastructure investments in energy, mining, defense, transportation, AI computing, and manufacturing. Sometimes it seems like the U.S. economy’s greatest rival is not China, but our own government.

Our energy needs alone warrant wholesale regulatory reform. The United States today has neither the energy production nor transmission capacity we need to keep up with AI-driven electricity demand. New rules should be streamlined, transparent, and, most of all, fair. Our economic competitiveness and national security depend on these investments. A more prosperous, more secure future is not going to build itself.

The second priority, related to the first, is housing. President Trump has already signed executive orders to reform regulations that are holding back new home construction. Congress needs to follow his lead. The inability of working families to afford homes today has metastasized into more than an economic drag — it’s becoming a social crisis.

Current housing regulations seem intentionally designed to drive up home prices. This is great for well-off Boomers who see their homes primarily as 401(k)s with finished basements. But it’s catastrophic for young couples hoping to get married and start families.

By some estimates, the U.S. housing shortage is already more than 4 million units. Federal regulations should not stand in the way of new home building — nor should Washington subsidize state and local governments’ regulatory obstruction.

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Federal rules drive up costs in every sector of our economy. Health care, education, business, and occupational licensure all present golden opportunities to reform-minded policy entrepreneurs in the House and Senate.

And while they’re fixing regulations in those industries, Congress should also key in on the industry that ties them all together: banking. Right now, federal banking regulations are tilted in favor of the big banks, unfairly hamstringing some community banks and forcing many others to merge or close.

Industries dominated by huge corporations always seem robust. But as we saw during the financial crisis — and as we see every time an artificial bubble bursts — healthy, consumer-friendly markets are diverse and decentralized.

While outright bank failures have remained relatively limited in recent years, community banks are steadily disappearing through mergers, consolidations, and voluntary closures. In 1990, there were around 12,000 community banks scattered across the U.S. Today, only around 4,000 remain.

According to the FDIC, the number of community banks continues to decline each quarter, with 44 of them either closing or being absorbed by larger institutions in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone. That trend matters because community banks are not interchangeable with Wall Street giants.

Corporate consolidation makes life easier for lawyers, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians. But it makes life much more expensive for everyone else.

Too many federal regulations treat all banks the same, putting compliance burdens on small lenders that only megabanks can afford.

These regulations squeeze resources out of the local financial institutions that growing communities rely on. Especially in the AI era, the real-world human economy will depend more than ever on personal relationships, community solidarity, and interpersonal trust. Right now, Washington disadvantages those things and the community banks defined by them.

The American people are ready to make our economy affordable again — as soon as Washington lets them. Streamlining federal rules will allow Americans to build, drill, mine, invest and lend, and compute and compete as never before.

Lawmakers must remember that a more affordable economy is a more local, more cooperative, and more human economy. Regulatory reform — from national infrastructure to community banking — is an investment in America’s most powerful and undervalued resource: our people.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at The American Mind.

How the H-1B visa replaces American workers

Mary, a veteran Silicon Valley marketer who can’t find a job, considers herself a victim of an H-1B visa program run amok.

Her story, a U.S. native replaced by a foreign-born employee who is willing to work at a significantly lower wage, has become commonplace, particularly in the tech industry. Adding insult to injury, she says, her CEO, who hails from India, told her to train the man he selected to replace her before laying her off.

Despite stints at Google and Cisco and two years of job-hunting, Mary can no longer compete in a job market saturated with foreign-born H-1B visa holders. “I had experience. I should have walked right into these corporate jobs, but I didn't. Why? Because Silicon Valley is flooded with people who work for two-thirds of the price, or even half price,” said Mary, who asked to be identified only by her first name.

Companies, on average, save nearly $100,000 per worker over six years by hiring an H-1B worker rather than an American.

U.S. tech workers like Mary are at the center of a battle brewing in Washington, D.C., over reforming the troubled H-1B visa program, which is designed to fill highly skilled positions when qualified American workers can’t be found. The controversy pits tough-on-immigration Republicans and some Democrats against the most formidable of opponents — Big Tech, the primary beneficiary of a program considered by critics to be little more than a pipeline of cheap labor.

In the last few decades, the California dream has gone global, as U.S. tech firms have filled their ranks and C-suites with employees born abroad. Intel is no longer the company of its founders, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, but of Malaysian-born Lip-Bu Tan, its CEO since March 2025. Microsoft is led by Satya Nadella; Alphabet Inc. by Sundar Pichai; Adobe by Shantanu Narayen; IBM by Arvind Krishna; and T-Mobile US by Srinivas Gopalan — all of whom were born in India.

All told, a remarkable two-thirds of the Valley’s nearly 400,000 tech jobs are now held by those born abroad, according to a 2025 report from the think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley. Today, more tech workers were born in India (23%) and China (18%) combined than in the U.S. (34%).

Low-cost talent

The influx of low-cost Asian talent has clearly helped fuel profits in one of America’s most influential sectors. But there is a downside to this tech boom — the sidelining of U.S. workers thanks to the H-1B visa program. Created in 1990, the federal program has morphed into a vehicle for employers, particularly in the nation’s tech centers, to recruit much cheaper foreign labor at the expense of U.S. tech workers, according to Harvard economist George J. Borjas.

While the H-1B program spans multiple industries, it is overwhelmingly concentrated in tech. Last year, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Tata Consultancy, and Google were the biggest visa users, with Amazon alone recording more than 13,000 applications. These companies find the savings from hiring foreign workers hard to resist. The job of software developer, for instance, accounts for 38% of all H-1B visa workers, according to a 2026 paper by Borjas. And these foreign software developers earn about 30% less than their U.S. counterparts, the economist estimates.

Since many of these tech jobs pay six figures, the savings quickly add up. Borjas estimates that companies, on average, save nearly $100,000 per worker over six years by hiring an H-1B worker rather than an American. The arrangement “redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants,” Borjas wrote in 2016. That, in turn, helps account for the soaring stock prices of Big Tech since the 2008 financial crash.

El Nuevo Herald/Getty Images

False rationale

The vaguely written H-1B law has been easy for companies to exploit. Hassan Abdullah, an immigration attorney and H-1B advocate, said the supposed congressional basis of the law — to fill highly skilled jobs with foreigners if Americans aren’t available — has always been a fiction. “The actual regulations don’t necessarily say that's required,” said Abdullah, who helps companies get the visas. “Throughout all my years, I’ve never had to even consider that as a factor.”

One of the most glaring weaknesses of the law, critics say, is that most companies applying for these visas are not required to demonstrate that they were unable to find qualified American workers. Only companies with more than 15% of their workforce on H-1Bs must make small efforts to recruit U.S. citizens.

Companies are required to pay foreign workers at least the “prevailing wage” for the occupation and region, a provision that should theoretically reduce the incentive to hire employees from Asia. But the process relies on self-reporting and has been easy to manipulate because salaries are calculated using broad regional averages that often fail to reflect real market wages in the technology sector.

As a result, the number of H-1B visa workers has skyrocketed. 2025 was a banner year, with 406,348 approved visas, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Seventy percent of those visas were issued to Indians. That compares with a total of 275,317 visa approvals in 2015.

Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, who is part of the MAGA wing of the GOP, reacted to these numbers on X, calling the program “a national security nightmare. Enough. No more flooding the market with 400k+ H-1B visas while our people and our sovereignty gets screwed."

After foreign-born employees take on leadership roles, including CEO, they attract and hire more foreigners by tapping their own professional and social networks.

With criticism of the visas dovetailing with broader anti-immigration sentiments, the Trump administration has made the most serious move yet to restrict the program. Six months ago, USCIS announced a new $100,000 fee that companies must pay per new H-1B worker living outside the U.S. While official figures have not yet been released, some immigration experts estimate that the fee may lead to a 30% to 50% decline in new visa applications.

“This is the first year we have not filed any H-1B visas for people outside the U.S. because tech companies don’t want to pay the $100,000 fee,” said immigration attorney Navdeep Meamber, who is based in Silicon Valley.

But companies have found a work-around. Meamber said she has seen an increase in the number of clients filing for the visas for workers already in the U.S., particularly those such as students who transferred from other visa types to H-1Bs.

“The $100,000 fee is discouraging some employers from bringing in brand-new H-1B workers, but it is not reducing the numbers, because foreign students, especially those who get on the Optional Practical Training program, can move into the H-1B pipeline without paying that fee,” said attorney Rosemary Jenks, a campaigner for immigration reform with the Immigration Accountability Project. “So there are still plenty of H-1B visas being issued every year.”

American ingenuity

Silicon Valley wasn’t always dominated by foreigners. Some claim the true birthplace of Silicon Valley can be found in a garage at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto. It was there that David Packard, a native of Colorado, and Bill Hewlett of Michigan founded Hewlett-Packard in 1939. Robert Noyce, a native son of Iowa and co-inventor of the integrated circuit, critically made from silicon, gave name to the valley after the substance. With his colleague, Gordon Moore of San Francisco, they founded Intel in 1968.

Throughout the postwar years, America’s booming tech industry was largely pioneered by natives. By the 1980s, however, concerns were raised about the dwindling number of young people available to fill STEM jobs in the future. Erich Bloch, director of the National Science Foundation, told the American Council on Education in 1985: “The pool of potential students from U.S. schools will become smaller. Demographic projections, of which you are all aware, show the number of 18- to 24-year-olds declining by about 20% over the next decade.”

The 1990 Immigration Act created the H-1B visa, a temporary work visa lasting a few years aimed at filling the labor shortages Bloch had warned about. Since then, tech firms have sometimes struggled to find employees, particularly specialized engineers, during times of rapid growth. But whether the industry faces a persistent shortage of American workers is a matter of debate among economists and labor analysts.

Major technology companies reject the criticism that the H-1B system is primarily a source of cheap labor. Executives stress that the program allows American firms to recruit engineers and researchers with advanced technical expertise in areas where qualified talent can be scarce.

They also contend that many H-1B workers are paid high salaries and that access to global talent helps keep American companies competitive against rivals.

Critics of the visas point to waves of layoffs accompanied by the growth in H-1Bs as evidence that a labor shortage is nothing more than a fig leaf. Michael Capuano of the Federation for American Immigration Reform wrote in a blog post last year,

Google laid off 951 U.S. employees in 2024, but found room for 1,058 new H-1B workers. Apple laid off 735 people in 2024, but signed on 864 new H-1B employees. Microsoft laid off 3,426 workers from 2022 to 2024 and hired 3,259 new H-1Bs during that same period.

A 2023 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute similarly found that the top 30 H-1B employers hired more than 34,000 new H-1B workers in 2022 while laying off at least 85,000 employees during the same period.

In addition to cheaper talent, critics say H-1B visas also provide a captive workforce. Because employers can sponsor visa holders for permanent residency, many workers become heavily reliant on keeping their jobs in order to remain in the United States. Critics argue that this dynamic discourages employees from changing companies or demanding higher wages, with some likening the system to a form of indentured servitude.

Tribalism at play

Critics say favoritism has also contributed to foreign dominance of the tech sector. After foreign-born employees take on leadership roles, including CEO, they attract and hire more foreigners by tapping their own professional and social networks.

Kevin Lynn, executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy, argues that “professionalism doesn’t exist in these IT departments any more,” adding that “when you look at the hiring, it gets very tribal. It’s really India versus the rest of the world.”

Microsoft saw the number of decisions on H-1B applications rise from 2,983 in 2014, when Nadella became CEO, to 6,258 in 2025. Google’s numbers jumped from 2,309 in 2015, when Pichai took the top job, to 7,868 in 2025. During these years, these companies also grew, making it hard to know if the percentage of foreign workers increased. At IBM, H-1B decisions have remained consistent since Arvind Krishna was named the leader.

Meamber, the immigration lawyer, disputes the idea that companies run by foreign-born leaders are more likely to rely on labor from their home countries. “The CEO doesn’t even know who is being hired. ... These decisions are being taken at a lower level by the HR team and by the recruiters,” she said.

Stephen Vivien, an engineer, said he witnessed Indian employees helping each other get hired by sharing interview questions when he worked at Google. “There were a lot of H-1B workers ... there's a network.” he said.

“When one Indian guy would be coming up for his interview; the other Indian guys who had [already] gotten hired would call and share the questions.”

Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In April, a New York jury found New Jersey-based Cognizant Technology Solutions liable for $8.4 million after a former executive sued the company, which was founded in India, for discrimination against non-Indian and non-South Asian workers. The executive argued he was passed over for a promotion and was later fired for raising concerns about bias against non-Indian employees.

The decision follows a separate successful lawsuit brought by three other employees against Cognizant in 2017, all similarly claiming discrimination against non-Indian workers, though the company is appealing and denies all allegations. In both lawsuits, juries found in favor of claims that Cognizant had used the H-1B program as a tool to discriminate against American workers. Since 2009, the company has received tens of thousands of H-1B visa approvals.

Reformers vs. Big Tech

While restrictions to the program have yet to meaningfully slow its growth, some Republicans have called to abolish it. In February, Florida Rep. Greg Steube (R) introduced the EXILE Act, which would end the H-1B visa program entirely.

A proposed reform that might gain more bipartisan support targets the ineffective prevailing wage requirement that allows firms to underpay foreign workers. One idea floated by Republicans would create a minimum salary requirement for H-1B workers that is much higher than the current pay scale, thus removing the financial incentive to replace U.S.-born workers.

Ro Khanna, the Democrat congressman representing much of Silicon Valley, said on the "All-In" podcast last year that “there’s definitely abuse. ... It needs to be corrected” in the H-1B program. Khanna said a new prevailing wage standard would be a reform he could support.

But legislation that would raise labor costs would be opposed by Big Tech, armed with its war chest of money and influence in Washington. Jenks, the lawyer, said H-1B reformers face a tough fight. “The donors on this issue include all of the high-tech companies, whether it’s Microsoft, Facebook, all of them,” she said. “They put millions and millions of dollars every year into lobbying.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire. The article was reported in conjunction with a GB News documentary, which can be viewed here.

FINALLY: Republicans agree on a landmark bill to stop Big Tech from hoarding your data

Internet companies are perfectly happy to gobble up as much user data as possible so that they can sell it to third-party data brokers, monetize targeted ad networks, and even feed large language models that power the next generation of AI. For decades, this mass data grab went on with little legal regulation to rein in the worst offenders. However, House Republicans recently unveiled a new federal privacy bill that will change the way Big Tech handles personal and private data for good.

What is the SECURE Data Act?

Short for “Securing and Establishing Consumer Uniform Rights and Enforcement,” the SECURE Data Act directly gives users more control over the way companies access and use their personal information on the web. The bill establishes two major frameworks — one outlining the rights of consumers and the other to limit the actions of corporations.

Users get full control over the collection and monetization of their data.

Consumer rights under the SECURE Data Act

Access: Users have a right to know when a company accesses or processes their personal data, as long as this knowledge doesn’t violate company trade secrets.

Pro: Users gain a full understanding of how their information is applied to the websites they visit, the apps they use, and the services they subscribe to. This, in turn, empowers them to make informed decisions on which companies they choose to support based on their data collection practices.
Con: Companies will have to invest in expensive resources to document and report on the data of every user, costing the company time and money that lead to potential reporting delays.

Corrections: Users can contact a company to correct inaccurate details saved in their personal data. This can include user names, email addresses, home addresses, and other markers.

Pro: Users ensure that any information a company uses is current and accurate to prevent errors.
Con: Companies can use the updated information to build optimized profiles of its users for even more targeted online tracking.

Deletion: If the user no longer wants a company to access their data, they can request to have their information deleted from a company’s servers entirely. This includes data that the user provides themselves, as well as information the company gathers on its own.

Pro: Users get full control over the collection and monetization of their data, and they can revoke access if the company abuses that power. This can also be used as a tool to boycott companies if/when companies take a stance that opposes the views and beliefs of their users.
Con: Companies will miss out on vital data that they would use to build better products and services for their customers, potentially leading to the stagnation of future apps, products, and services.

RELATED: Democrat bill would force you to give Big Tech your ID just to use your phone — or the internet

Man_Half-tube/Getty Images

Transferability: User data must be stored in a format that can be exported and transferred to another company, such as in the case of switching from an app, service, or operating system to another.

Pro: Instead of being locked into a certain platform or app, users can freely take their data to a competitor as they see fit. As an example, this will be especially useful for users who want to switch from iPhone to Android and vice versa.
Con: Without an encrypted data standard across all platforms and services, converting data into an easily transferable format could weaken encryption and lead to potential data security risks.

Control: Users reserve the right to opt out of selling their personal data to third-party partners or participating in targeted advertising.

Pro: Users can actively prevent companies and data brokers from building digital profiles that track users’ buying habits, online interests, and more.
Con: A lack of user data could cause economic damage to the marketing and digital ad industries.

Company limits under the SECURE Data Act

In order to supply consumers with the rights above, companies must adhere to these key mandates:

Minimization: Companies are limited from collecting user data en masse, instead restricting them to gather only what is considered “adequate” for their business.

Pro: Companies are ultimately barred from spying on their customers' online habits, a huge win for the sake of user privacy.
Con: This restriction is too vague without any real hard limits, leaving it open to interpretation. For instance, a company like Google may insist that large amounts of user data are necessary to support its free services and ad business, while competitors are barred from gathering to the same degree.

Limitations: Gathered data can only be used for the expressed reason it was collected, and companies can’t save or repurpose data for other projects without users’ consent.

Pro: Users can feel confident that their data isn’t being used in secret projects or private moneymaking schemes.
Con: This may limit a company’s ability to conduct research and development with users’ data, potentially slowing down the creation of future products and limiting innovation.

Discrimination: Data cannot be collected or processed based on race, ethnicity, or other identifying factors. Furthermore, companies can’t use these factors to deny goods and services, offer dynamic prices, or alter their products’ quality of service.

Pro: Companies would essentially be barred from punishing users who don’t align with their own ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Con: The bill doesn't strictly protect religious beliefs and political affiliations, leaving companies a pathway to oppose users who don’t think or vote in favor of their values.

Notice: Companies must educate users on how their data is processed, saved, sold, and applied to their business. At this point, users will also have the option to make changes as part of their protected rights.

Pro: Companies can no longer hide how they make money from their users’ private data.
Con: Similar to the GDPR-compliant cookie notices that pop on the websites you visit, users may receive so many data notices from the services they use that they either accept without reading the terms or ignore them entirely.

Sale: Companies must notify users when their data is about to be sold and why, giving them the chance to opt out before the sale takes place.

Pro: Consumers can ultimately prevent companies from making money by selling their information to data brokers and third-party partners.
Con: If a user doesn’t intervene before their data is sold, it may become difficult to trace where the data goes and how it’s utilized by brokers and third-party partners down the line.

Sensitive data under the SECURE Data Act

Lastly, the bill provides special protections for “sensitive data,” especially for underage users, noting that parents must consent before companies can collect information on minors. The most important part here is that unlike many of the age-verification bills coming from both sides of the aisle right now, the SECURE Data Act doesn’t require a user to prove their age through any form of identification. Instead, the responsibility to declare underage data is left in the hands of parents, not the government.

A win for consumers

Internet companies have gathered user data for decades with very little legal oversight. As usual, the government is late to legislate, and yet, the SECURE Data Act couldn’t come at a better time. AI companies, like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, have shifted their data collection practices into overdrive, all bent on gorging their LLMs before President Trump’s AI framework ends their plight. The SECURE Data Act is just another piece of the puzzle that will finally give users robust protection over their digital footprint on the internet.

Democrat bill would force you to give Big Tech your ID just to use your phone — or the internet

Politicians are progressively pushing for harsher age verification legislation. Some lawmakers think certain apps should require an ID to sign in, while others want to limit the reach of AI chatbots under the guise of child protection.

Now, a new bill proposed by Democrat Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.) would require operating system developers — including Apple, Google, and Microsoft — to verify the ages of their users when setting up a new device.

The bill is actually a Trojan horse for mass data collection.

This is the Parents Decide Act

The new bill, unassumingly named the Parents Decide Act, includes several key requirements that all platform holders would have to recognize if the bill passes. These include:

Strict guidelines that state OS platform holders must verify the age of every user when they set up a new device. The bill is clear that it’s not enough to have users self-report their date of birth and age; hard-proof verification is required.
Custom content controls that let parents set age-appropriate parameters on their children’s devices. This includes the ability to limit access to social media, apps, and even AI platforms.
A pathway to ensure that all apps installed on a device are tuned to adhere to the custom controls in the previous point. No workarounds or exceptions will be allowed.
A trusted multi-platform standard that bans children from accessing what the government labels “harmful” or “explicit” content on any device made by any OEM on any software platform. On the surface, this can include adult content and conversations with AI chatbots, although “harmful” or “hateful” speech has taken on different meanings to the left over the years, usually to describe speech that doesn’t align with their views.

To be clear, the Parents Decide Act would require these protections to be built directly into the software of every device — it would become a core feature within iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. There are questions as to how the government would enforce the bill on open-source Linux, but it will certainly try.

The quiet part of the bill

The piece that’s missing from the bill announcement is how platform holders will verify the ages of their users. At this time, a government-issued ID is the only valid method on the table. Essentially, the government is asking Big Tech platform holders to create a system that stores and verifies the digital IDs of their users — a database filled with users’ names, dates of birth, heights, weights, and, of course, a recent photo.

Glenn Beck has spoken enough about the dangers of digital IDs to know this is a very bad idea.

Blaze Media

The irony is palpable

This bill proposal couldn’t come at a better time as leftist politicians argue the faux injustice of the SAVE America Act, which would require American citizens to show a valid ID at the voting booth to participate in our elections.

Of course, there’s a reason Rep. Gottheimer doesn’t outright admit that a valid ID is necessary to make the Parents Decide Act work. That would expose the absolute hypocrisy of the left that wants to leave voting rights open to noncitizens but limit the access of digital technology and the internet to everyday Americans unwilling to give their ID to Big Tech or the government.

What’s in a name?

Democrats love to misname bills — like the Inflation Reduction Act, which weaponized the IRS against the American people.

Keeping the tradition alive, the “Parents Decide Act” is less about parental control and more about government control. It requires all users — namely adults (since children rarely have valid forms of identification) — to submit their photo IDs to verify their ages. Parents don’t get to opt their children out of this process, so that’s clearly not the decision parents get to make as part of the bill. Parents don’t get to protect their kids from government overreach, so that’s not a decision either.

In fact, if the bill did what its title suggests, it wouldn’t exist at all! Instead, parents would have the freedom to decide whether their children have access to an internet-connected device on their own terms. Right?

While the Parents Decide Act may be disguised as a benevolent way to protect children, the bill is actually a Trojan horse for mass data collection, digital ID databases, and a power grab to control young users’ access to information. Why? I’m going out on a limb, but since Democrats are finally losing control over the education system, they have to find new ways to keep children from learning things they don’t want them to know, and restricting internet access is one of the best ways to do it.

Bad problem, worse ‘solution’

If there’s any grace worth throwing at the Parents Decide Act, it’s this: It’s true that many places online aren’t meant for children (they’re not meant for adults either, if we’re being honest). But legislation isn’t the answer. Parents should have complete control over their children’s access to devices and the internet from inside their home. Not the government. Adult users also shouldn’t be forced to provide an ID to use their devices and the internet.

This is complete, authoritarian-level control over device and internet access that affects all Americans.

Rep. Gottheimer isn’t the only Democrat fighting for age verification either. California is already initiating its own state-level bill titled Digital Age Assurance Act. However, we expect these kinds of restrictions in a left-wing hub. If passed, the federal Parents Decide Act would make age verification mandatory for the entire country, and once it’s signed into law, none of us are exempt. You will comply, or you will lose access to your phone, your laptop, your tablet, and the internet.

Colorado's speed-camera traps just got way more aggressive

There’s enforcing the law — and then there’s building a system that treats every driver like a suspect the moment they turn the key. Colorado isn’t flirting with that line anymore. It’s driving straight past it.

For years, speed cameras were a minor annoyance. You knew where they were, your navigation app warned you, and if you were paying attention, you adjusted. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it was transparent. Colorado has now scrapped that model in favor of something far more aggressive — and far less accountable.

Meanwhile, the state continues issuing tickets at scale, backed by a system that never sleeps, never questions itself, and never exercises judgment.

The state’s new Automated Vehicle Identification Systems don’t just clock your speed at a single point. They track your vehicle across multiple cameras, calculate your average speed over distance, and automatically issue a ticket if you’re 10 miles per hour or more over the limit. No warning. No discretion. No human judgment. Just a system quietly watching, calculating, and penalizing.

Let’s call this what it is: not smarter enforcement, but broader surveillance.

Highway robbery

The rollout followed a 2023 change in state law, and what started as warnings has quickly turned into active ticketing. One of the newest stretches under this system is Interstate 25 north of Denver, where drivers moving through construction zones are now monitored continuously. The state says it’s about safety. That’s the headline. But the fine print tells a different story.

The penalty is $75 and carries zero points on your license. That’s not an accident. If this were truly about cracking down on dangerous driving, there would be meaningful consequences tied to your driving record. Instead, this looks like a volume business model — low enough fines to keep people from fighting, high enough frequency to generate serious revenue.

And then there’s the part that should concern every driver in America: The ticket goes to the registered owner of the vehicle, not necessarily the person who was driving.

That’s where this stops being about traffic enforcement and starts colliding with the Constitution.

Horacio Villalobos/Getty Images

Blank check

The burden of proof in this country is supposed to be on the state. That’s not optional. That’s foundational. Yet Colorado’s system leans on the assumption that if your name is on the registration, you’re responsible — unless you can prove otherwise. That flips due process on its head.

Colorado Revised Statute 42-4-110.5 does not give the state a blank check to assign liability to vehicle owners in every situation. In fact, it explicitly acknowledges that the owner may not have been the driver. And long-standing legal precedent — at both the federal and state level — makes it clear that the government must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Relying on a license plate and a database isn’t proof. It’s a shortcut.

And let’s be honest: The system counts on the fact that most people won’t push back. They’ll see the fine, weigh the hassle of fighting it, and just pay up. That’s not justice. That’s compliance by inconvenience.

Legal maze

If you do challenge it, you’re stepping into a legal maze that most drivers aren’t equipped to navigate. Meanwhile, the state continues issuing tickets at scale, backed by a system that never sleeps, never questions itself, and never exercises judgment.

This is what happens when enforcement becomes automated: Accountability disappears.

A police officer can assess a situation. A camera cannot. It doesn’t care if traffic flow made it safer to keep pace. It doesn’t account for conditions. It doesn’t apply discretion. It simply records, calculates, and penalizes. That might be efficient, but it’s not fair — and it’s certainly not nuanced.

Mile-high spies

Then there’s the bigger picture, the one few officials seem eager to talk about.

These systems don’t just measure speed. They track movement. They log where your vehicle enters a zone, where it exits, and how it behaves in between. Expand that across highways, cities, and eventually entire states, and you’re looking at a real-time network that monitors how Americans move.

And if you think it stops at speeding, you haven’t been paying attention to how quickly technology evolves.

Today, it’s average speed enforcement. Tomorrow, it could be automated citations for rolling stops, lane usage, or anything else that can be digitized. Add artificial intelligence into the mix, and the potential scope grows exponentially. This isn’t science fiction — it’s the natural progression of a system that’s already in place.

Colorado isn’t just testing a traffic tool. It’s piloting a framework.

Stealer's wheel

Supporters will argue this is about protecting construction workers, and that’s a legitimate concern. No one is arguing against safety. But safety cannot become the catch-all justification for systems that erode fundamental legal protections. You don’t preserve public safety by undermining due process.

And let’s not ignore the tone coming from officials who promote these programs. There’s an almost casual acceptance — sometimes even pride — in the idea of constant monitoring. As if a 24/7 enforcement net is something drivers should simply accept as the cost of modern transportation.

That’s not how this is supposed to work.

Government answers to the people, not the other way around. Policies like this deserve scrutiny, debate, and — when necessary — pushback. Because once a system like this is normalized, it doesn’t get scaled back. It expands. Quietly. Incrementally. Permanently.

Colorado may frame this as innovation. But from behind the wheel, it looks a lot more like overreach.

And if other states decide to follow this blueprint — and they will — drivers across the country may soon find themselves in the same position: tracked, ticketed, and told to prove their innocence after the fact.

That’s not better enforcement.

That’s a fundamental shift in how the rules are applied — and who they’re really serving.

The terrifying scale of the data center land-grab

From the time of one’s childhood, a person learns a sense of proportion in addition to a sense of right and wrong. Even good things must be measured in the right proportion. It is this lack of proportionality that is missing from advocates of Big Tech seeking to build hyperscale AI data centers — often multiple facilities — in nearly every region of the country.

A recent Washington Post exposé of the data center fight in Archbald, Pennsylvania, exemplifies why the data center agenda is unprecedented, is unsustainable, and makes the entire generative AI concept economically insolvent.

We have never asked so many communities to give so much for abstract and speculative promises of return.

Tucked into the Pocono Mountains northeast of Scranton, Archbald is a mountain town of 7,000. Now, town council leaders have sold out to Big Tech and plan to build six sprawlinghyperscale data centers covering about 14% of the town’s land.

Those campuses would include 51 data warehouses — each about the size of a Walmartsupercenter — including seven buildings encompassing more than 1 million square feet. If all the data centers were built, they would occupy about 2.5 miles of land.

We have simply never done this before. And remember, this is playing out to varying degrees in thousands of places throughout the country. And of course, these campuses offer locals nothing but surveillance and slop relative to what edge computing can do with an infinitesimal footprint.

Over the past month,most members of theseven-person Archbald Borough Council, along with several planning board members, have resigned.

Keep in mind that Big Tech wants to rezone and buy up land that is exponentially larger than anything ever done before. Apologists for the industry within the GOP accuse some of us of being anti-growth and anti-infrastructure, but there is an obvious difference between this and every other infrastructure project: namely, the return on investment.

For a fraction of the space, a gas-powered plant supplies the power to an entire region and is a universal need. These behemoths, on the other hand, require exponentially more land, and rather than offering power, they suck it out — not to mention treating the neighbors to a constant 90 decibel humming. It is all being done on the promise of “artificial general intelligence,” which is nothing more than a scam.

It would be one thing if the scaling of large language models required that one region of our country get turned into a parking lot, such as what is being proposed in Archbald. But they are trying to do this with mega-hyperscale facilities in thousands of places across the country.

To provide some sense of proportion, let’s just take eight of the proposed hyperscales under contract in Indiana. Taken together, these data centers that will power cloud computing for Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon will consume 8,300 MWs of power. That is the usage equivalent of twice the number of households in the entire state.

Nathan Howard/Washington Post/Getty Images

If not for opposition from locals, Prince William County, which is already saturated with data centers, was going to permit a 2,100-acre, 37-building campus that would have been one of the largest in the world. To put that size in perspective, one could probably build well over 50 gas-powered plants in that footprint.

The Box Elder County, Utah, Commission is about to sign off on a mega data center project on 40,000 acres of private and DOD lands that, when completed, will eventually use nine GWs of power. To put that in perspective, the entire state of Utah uses four GWs.

The sheer unprecedented amount of power these leviathans would need also necessitates an unnatural and inordinate number of transmission lines that will cut through, distort, and disturb private property. For example, Dominion Power is proposing a $1 billion 765 kV high-voltage transmission line project that would span from Lynchburg to Culpeper County, Virginia. The project would impact nine counties with the most powerful lines, standing 135-165 feet tall.

It’s even worse in West Virginia, where the residents are being forced to fund projects that cut up their land with transmission lines to fund the Northern Virginia “Data Center Alley” that is not even in the same state!

Is it any wonder why there is a national bipartisan revolt against the ruling class of both parties on the sheer insanity of this model? We have never asked so many communities to give so much for abstract and speculative promises of return.

It’s more likely that we will be stuck with the surveillance state, a degraded quality of life, and a decrepit internet full of slop than that we will achieve any greatness in human progress from such sacrifice of land, power, and continuity of communities.

Never before have we had a technology that is supposedly so progressive and futuristic, yet its resource-stripping is so cloddish, archaic, and draconian.

Everyone knows the industry lacks the power and money to actually operate thousands of hyperscale data centers. Everyone recognizes that the scaling model of LLMs is unsustainable and is not the future of AI. But will we stop this madness before so much of our land is rezoned and re-owned by a centralized monopoly?

Remember, the land-grab is not the side effect, but the main point.