Christopher Wright

Oh great! Now we have a Vice-Provost of AI implementation! Seriously how crazy is the university embrace of the AI Kool-Aid. Perhaps the powers that be should read this article: theconversation.com/friday-essay...

as a long time fan of paris's work i absolutely loved HYPERSCALE, his new book, which really pulls together so many disparate threads of the data center convo—past, present, in the us and abroad—into a ripping narrative caught up with him about it for my latest power play newsletter!

“Large AI firms are shopping around the world trying to sell their snake oil and the price is copyright reform. International creative businesses are looking at Australia and cannot believe the government has been duped.” The Albanese govt isn’t just risking Australian IP. It is exposing the world.

"The report found Israeli authorities and forces had continued to 'commit genocidal acts' even after the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, 'with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people'." No surprise that this got hardly any mainstream coverage. #GazaGenocide www.nine.com.au/world-news/m...

“The principal purpose of Carbon Capture & Storage has never been to tackle the climate crisis. Instead, CCS serves to align public opinion & government policies with the fossil fuel industry’s plans for unrestricted expansion under the cover of “net-zero". www.nationalobserver.com/2022/04/06/o...

Australia's data centre mania and how communities are rising up in resistance (plus the bigger questions we’re not asking!): thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spin...

😂😂🤣🤣👍🏾

And what an excellent analysis it is!

Shame we demolished it for a quick buck.

I have refused many invitations to be interviewed by Piers Morgan over the years. This time I made an exception, on the condition that it be one-on-one, not a scream fest, and that it actually be about the book Astra and I wrote. It was... an experience. youtu.be/SMFQBQx-qSU

I really hate the way Meta has just decided to scrape everyone's IP for their wretched AI slop without permission. The sheer arrogance of Big Tech that they can steal everyone's intellectual property to further enrich their bottom lines is galling - time to finally give up on social media perhaps?

This sounds like a plan Australia

The relevant section from the report wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/cor...

Australia is a leading global ‘petrostate’ We aren’t a renewable energy superpower & nor is the government legislating the sorts of policies which would ‘make us one’. The PM is lying when he uses this term. We should be boycotted condemned and shamed #auspol johnmenadue.com/post/2026/10...

Let's briefly take a moment to observe what running a dataslopfactory biz does to a mofo (*before* shedding $3B value in 40 minutes)

For decades we were told that this plant could exist because “carbon capture and storage” was going to sequester carbon in bedrock — Dear Reader, they told that lie so they could sell gas.

If pollution laws meant anything (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) then both Canberra and the WA government would immediately move to shut down Chevron’s Gorgon plant

“Severe heat killed more than 50,000 people in European cities and towns this summer, according to peer-reviewed estimates released by scientists in London on Friday.” www.nytimes.com/2026/10/22/c...

Kudos to NBC New York for saying it without equivocation: "The US is to blame for the world falling behind in the fight against climate change."

The first genuinely honest ad for generative AI I've ever seen, from Microsoft / CoPilot A mediocre white guy sees his non-white colleague getting praised for good work, he asks AI to *literally copy it*, and then he gets all the praise instead: www.ispot.tv/ad/SoDi/micr...

Solid metaphor for the entire administration, honestly

I write books and I endorse this message.

‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre www.theguardian.com/environment/ng…

'In a statement, Chevron said satellite monitoring came with "a wide range of uncertainty".'

Interesting thought here - but I think counter to Kevin's thread, 3 is more of a concern than 2 Desperation is the keyword for the data centre buildout: unlocking more clean wouldn't reduce the gas buildout. The additional clean would just be used to enable greater total consumption.

Does this metaphor work? how data centre development in its current form is....like a gas It just fills every single space it can creep into. Every resource, every unit of grid capacity and power generation, ever acre of land. There's no plan, no goal, it's just...thoughtless expansion

How the fossil fuel industry ‘captured’ Australia and maintains its political dominance thefifthestate.com.au/360info/how-...

Just a reminder

A new Bloomberg analysis shows ~3,000 MTCO2-e of extra US power pollution between 2025-2035 thanks to data centre growth. That is: = 84 new coal plants /yr = 33k lost jobs globally = 1.2m more ppl pushed into unlivable climate

Microsoft and NextDC threaten Australians with terrifying prospect of cleaner air, lower climate impacts, lower power bills and less noise in urban communities www.afr.com/companies/in...

Yep! @ketanjoshi.co on the ridiculous university embrace of genAI: "purportedly clean higher education institutions doing dirty deals with methane-slurping chatslop peddlers": www.crikey.com.au/2026/10/22/u...

What began as a community protest over giant electricity poles being installed on quiet residential streets has now rocked the nation’s highest-profile data centre developer, as it scrambles to find a new way to supply energy to its flagship facility. www.theage.com.au/politics/fed...

Far out. These financials are dire. Quick, let’s override every legal, moral, regulatory and environmental objection and hitch our economy to it…

A pretty big win for anti-data centre activists in Melbourne: protests over huge new power lines for Nextdc’s M3 project forced Jemena to pause works in Sept. Nextdc says that delayed power to the site. Today it cut FY27 earnings guidance by about a third and halted new projects and land buys.

How fossil fuel interests keep Australia locked into coal and gas: johnmenadue.com/post/2026/10...

Very nice new paper by @benzevgreen.bsky.social @shreyachowdhary.bsky.social @tisjune.bsky.social on the actual appropriate response to AI hype (resistance, not "AI literacy") ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AI...

@albomp.bsky.social @australianlabor.bsky.social

Anthropic outlines its approach to "responsible data centre development", and........explicitly promises to carpet bomb communities with massive, polluting new fossil gas plants. This is what your Claude subscription is enabling: web.archive.org/web/20261016...

You can't dismiss this as "NIMBYISM". Bb's own article shows ~3,000 MTCO2 of extra US power pollution 2025-2035 = 84 new coal plants /yr = 33k lost jobs globally = 1.2m more ppl pushed into unlivable climate That is **everyone's backyard** that those emissions destroy. The whole world's backyard.

"Business schools have a divided mission: They seek to legitimize an economic system focused on private gain while also developing guardrails to tame it." I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/18/o...

Surprise, surprise data centre developers playing the old 'capital flight' card. A game as old as capitalism: "Data centre giants sound alarm as building backlash, headwinds grow" www.afr.com/companies/in...

Just saw NAZA at a packed theatre. A devastating account of a technologically enabled genocide and the moral disengagement underpinning it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIBR...

Right - gas turbines are so expensive right now that it's unbelievable. But tech companies are also rich beyond belief and if gas gets them online quicker they'll happily do it. We know a clean grid is cheaper for everyone - data centre developers are thinking about themselves, not everyone

Seems even the AI boosters are now starting to wake up! AI is the world's biggest lose-lose bet (and let's not even mention the environmental toll)!: www.afr.com/chanticleer/...

This is what I saying before about former "clean tech" people just immediately ditching the industry and jumping directly into data centres This whole piece is amazing bc the author gets so close to a revelation but in the end just shrugs it off as weird feelings www.ctvc.co/inside-the-f...

To the eternal shame of the Minns Laberal govt: "No new wind farms have begun construction in NSW, or even secured a power purchase agreement, since the state govt approved & underwrote an extension of the country’s biggest coal generator Eraring in..2025." reneweconomy.com.au/australian-w...

Even the tech industry's own polling shows that data centres are the absolute rock bottom priority for public infrastructure. We want healthcare, education, public housing, clean energy, water and sanitation. static1.squarespace.com/static/5e42e...