Nvidia CEO Apology on AI Data Centers Unacceptable
Host governments should step in to protect their citizens by promulgating laws and regulatory procedures to control this type of blind foreign arrogance and ‘invasion.’
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Host governments should step in to protect their citizens by promulgating laws and regulatory procedures to control this type of blind foreign arrogance and ‘invasion.’
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning regarding complaints of target host nations that have stressed: “We don’t want you [AI data centers] in our neighborhood.”
He replied apologetically, “We are sorry we didn’t come to talk to you sooner. We need to engage the communities long before we set up the data centers. All of this happened so quickly, and it happened so quickly all over America, and we didn’t realize, and we didn’t get a chance to be polite, to be a visitor in some new town. However, I would like to say that the (AI) data centers are improving tremendously.”
Yes, they are improving tremendously but sweeping its evil effects under the rug.
Huang thus admitted the essential problem — the blind insensitivity of the builders of AI data centers in their eagerness to get ahead in a situation of extreme competition. Huang’s apology on behalf of the culprits is not acceptable. The apology should come from the culprits themselves. Their silence is plain insensitivity and arrogance, and there is a big chance that they, in their silence, do not care, and they will do it again.
Host governments should step in to protect their citizens by promulgating laws and regulatory procedures to control this type of blind foreign arrogance and “invasion.”
Actually, there is an existing Philippine law requiring any corporation with a development project to first submit an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) to the government’s Environment Management Bureau (EMB), an attached agency of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), to ensure sound environmental activities. This law covers both foreign and local corporations in the setup of AI data centers.
The EIA is a bible-thick report, normally completed in around a year. The gung-ho AI data center builders cannot wait that long in their state of extreme competition. It is like a Formula 1 auto race; whoever finishes first gets the trophy. There is a big chance bribes will be offered to fast-track EIA approval, which may induce many gaps created and requirements missed.
American AI firms do not want to set up AI data centers in the US for two reasons: 1) they fear violent objections from local residents on obvious concerns over environment and energy issues competing with other community and industry interests; 2) they would rather keep America clean and export the problem to poor countries that they can entice with visions of “windfall profits,” real or imagined, and which countries they can easily bribe. So they articulate the “benefits” and are silent on the evils.
The Kuwait and Bahrain incidents
Iranian drones and missiles damaged Amazon Web Service (AWS) and Oracle data centers in the UAE and Bahrain in response to the escalation of the US war on Iran, as reported by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (Source: AI).
In other words, AI data centers are a magnet for missile and drone attacks in a war situation. In a US-China war over Taiwan and the West Philippine Sea, the nine US EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) bases scattered all over the Philippine archipelago are easy targets for China missiles and drones. Even the US naval base in Subic is a target, especially since it may harbor the deadly land-based NMESIS anti-warship missiles.
Even if the AI data centers may be geographically far from the bases, their strategic role in surveillance and intel make them critical targets for Chinese missiles and drones.
Third World alliancevs AI data centers
An alliance of poor Third World countries will strengthen the cause for regulating AI data centers set up on foreign soil. This alliance can come up with a primer of international dos and don’ts authored by experts, distributed to its members as an information campaign to counter foreign AI propaganda.
