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The Atlantic quotes a dodgy corporate "think tank" (I routinely see them make bogus claims on broadband) that insists that people should love having an AI data center in their backyard, because the low latency means innovators will flock to the neighborhood, which is an outright lie

innovators aren't moving to the middle of nowhere to develop new innovations because an additional 5ms of latency is irrelevant. And once they've built a giant fenced off energy hoovering campus they'll distance themselves from the community and the only jobs will be outsourced janitorial

I don't know how you could look at U.S. corporate history and determine any of this works out particularly well for blue collar human beings (especially in tribal territories), yet once again here we are

the "progressive policy institute" cited by the Atlantic (unchallenged) claims to be a "center left" pro-competition think tank, but they're covertly funded by a lot of shitty companies (like AT&T) and routinely argue against stuff like corporate oversight or community-owned broadband

I live in NM. This state is very poor. There are very few well paying jobs. (Even jobs that should pay well are far below industry average). There are many people who are buying into the promise that data centers will bring them jobs and it's horrible to watch.

and like cruise ships there's nothing stopping them from shipping in even cheaper overseas labor to do the few jobs that are required once the data center is built, especially in a country with no working regulators

The thing is, in the areas where these things are being built, there aren't hardly any people qualified to do those jobs. We don't have nearly enough tech people in my state.