Thread by @DataRepublican

LONG RANT ALERT:

I've worked in Big Tech my entire career. So let me say something that will confuse people: Big Tech is not left-wing. The default posture of Silicon Valley is center-right and technocratic. My first Big Tech job was with Amazon in 2005. I heard plenty of stories about Jeff Bezos rolling his eyes at Obama's antics. This is not a secret among people who've been inside.

And yet Big Tech was among the loudest cheerleaders for BLM and DEI. How?

I'll tell you how, though it requires me to be honest about something personal. I am diagnosed ASD. You know the experience: you make a factual point in a room. Ten people tell you you're evil. The "logical" structure of ASD leads you to start accepting you might be broken, not the room. You're more susceptible to believing you're the problem than believing consensus is wrong. I've watched this play out across Big Tech repeatedly. Not a prescription I give out lightly, and I acknowledge it might be projection. But I've seen too many brilliant engineers fold under social pressure that had no factual basis.

So Big Tech leans right, but gets captured easily by DEI virtue signaling, and pays enormous amounts to prove it. Mark Zuckerberg... believe it or not, another closet conservative I've heard many rumors about — donated $400 million to influence 2020 election administration. In 2024, he explicitly committed to neutrality and spent nothing comparable. He learned. Slowly. But he learned.

Here's where it gets complicated on China.

Big Tech says: build data centers in America, not China. But I've worked inside China directly. I have never, not once, witnessed a Big Tech company put real protections on their IP in Chinese partnerships. ASD-adjacent minds tend to extend trust where cultures signal openness. China does this masterfully. So when anti-data-center people question whether "built in America" actually protects anything... they're not wrong. The rhetoric exceeds the practice.

Now to Box Elder specifically.

The Stratos Hyperscale project — 7.5 gigawatts, 40,000 acres, approved by Box Elder County Commission this month — is developed by O'Leary Digital. Kevin O'Leary, who along with Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen has "come out" as a staunch conservative. I respect that. It takes something to do that publicly. But I'm going to hold them accountable the same way I'd hold anyone else.

O'Leary and others point to Arabella Advisors money funding data center opposition. That's true and I'll get into it. But they need to be honest that the vast majority of opposition in communities like Box Elder is organic conservative opposition... people worried about the Great Salt Lake, about water, about being near Utah's largest earthquake epicenter. Dismissing them by pointing to dark money is a way of avoiding the harder conversation.

Here's what I actually want from people with the power to put 7.5 gigawatts in the Utah desert:

If you have the capital and political leverage to pull this off, you have the capital and leverage to finance power plants. You have the leverage to fund serious water reclamation infrastructure. And you have the leverage to institutionally push back on the NGO network that is genuinely coordinating against you; groups like Mormon Women for Ethical Government, which I've written on at length, and which does not represent organic conservative sentiment despite the branding.

Go all the way or don't make the argument.

And one more thing: if a company wants to be a customer of these data centers, they need to commit to real, auditable IP protections regarding China. If O'Leary wants to make the "America first" argument for data centers, make it mean something.

https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/2055697475541869040