"We found another batch of really stupid and desperate people. This time in a town in Ohio. We’re going to turn that into a $500 billion win for our shareholders. Here’s how we do it. First, we show up with scale so large it compresses the decision timeline and limits realistic alternatives. Ten gigawatts. Big enough that nobody wants to be the person who said no to "the future." Then we anchor the narrative. Jobs. Growth. AI leadership. National competitiveness. You know, the usual trash language the tech bros throw at you daily, and you screen with hysteria like those girls seeing the Beatles for the first time. We keep repeating this until the town starts selling it for us. Next, we control what "we pay for" actually means. We’ll fund construction. We’ll sign power deals. We might even build some natural gas generation so it looks self-contained. What we won’t say out loud is where the real costs land. Grid upgrades? That’s a regional issue. Transmission expansion? That’s infrastructure. Stability and load balancing? That’s the system adapting. This isn’t unusual. Large-scale infrastructure projects routinely externalize system costs while internalizing revenue. Translation: system-level costs move outside our balance sheet. Cool; am I right?! Water is even better. Quiet, technical, easy to gloss over. We’ll say 'efficient cooling' and 'recycled systems'. That only works in Japan because the gubmint stated, 'it is this way or no data center'. So, they do it honestly, we don't. Meanwhile, we run continuous industrial-scale water demand tied directly to uptime requirements. Local impact becomes background noise. Then comes the best part. Lock-in. Once we’re in, the region adapts around us. Policy, infrastructure, and priorities start to align with our needs because we are now too important to fail. At that point, we’re not just a tenant. We’re the system. And the upside? It doesn’t stay there. The real value flows back to us. Compute, contracts, ecosystem control, long-term dominance. That’s where the margins live. The town gets headlines, a fraction of the jobs relative to scale, and a permanent shift in resource allocation. We get leverage. So yes, this will be great. Great for shareholder value. Great for strategic positioning. Great for long-term control of compute infrastructure. And the trade? They give up water, power flexibility, and future optionality. All because we showed up with a big number [it really was a big poster, but don't tell them] and a better story thanks to our former 3rd grade English teacher, Ms. Crabtree. We will end up being another Gary, Indiana? Time will tell. But, one thing is for sure. We didn’t find great partners. We found stupid participants." HDF https://lnkd.in/g6p_GJ-u
