Speaker 1: Also media, Hello and welcome to the show. It's meet
Speaker 1: James today, and I'm very fortunate to be joined by
Speaker 1: a friend of the show, Kyle Cassada.
Speaker 2: How you doing, Carl, Oh, I'm doing great. And when
Speaker 2: I hear a friend of the show with any of
Speaker 2: you all or you James, it's a real honor to me.
Speaker 2: So I'm honored to be your friend and a friend
Speaker 2: of the show. So I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 3: No, thank you.
Speaker 1: We always appreciate you being here and everything you do
Speaker 1: within range.
Speaker 3: Kyle.
Speaker 1: We're not here to talk about gunstaff today Italy, which
Speaker 1: is nice in a way because we're here to talk
Speaker 1: about something which is also very important right in terms
Speaker 1: of keeping people safe, and that is activism against corporate
Speaker 1: destruction of our environment. We're here to talk about something
Speaker 1: called Project Blue. Specifically, can you explain to listeners who
Speaker 1: are not familiar, folks who maybe you haven't heard about it,
Speaker 1: what Project Blue was proposed to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not dead either. We'll talk about that more.
Speaker 2: But the Project Blue, we'll see a two hundred ninety
Speaker 2: acre data center. Project put that in scope, two hundred
Speaker 2: and ninety acres whoa data center South of Tucson through
Speaker 2: a company called Beel Infrastructure that through people's hard work,
Speaker 2: came to find out it was for Amazon. But a
Speaker 2: two hundred and ninety are AI data center south of Tucson.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is vast.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of a like, I can't think
Speaker 1: of a comparison for two hundred ninety eightis, but that
Speaker 1: that is a huge amount of like computing power, right, I.
Speaker 2: Guess it's hard to fathom that kind of space when
Speaker 2: you think about it. Yeah, there are maps of what
Speaker 2: this proposed data center's footprint is. And if you take
Speaker 2: the rough rectangle of it and place it over Tucson proper,
Speaker 2: the city of Tucson, that's they propose it to be
Speaker 2: just south of it pretty much envelops and it consumes
Speaker 2: the entire downtown of Tucson in multiple neighborhoods. That's how
Speaker 2: big this is. And it's one data center.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was the data centers to do? Like what
Speaker 1: if people aren't familiar, right, what is the data center
Speaker 1: to do? What do they do with the big computer?
Speaker 2: Well? Okay, so for people that aren't really into the
Speaker 2: tech sector of things, a data center is essentially think
Speaker 2: of something the size of a bigger than a mall
Speaker 2: that has nothing but giant computer data banks in it.
Speaker 2: So it's a giant place where you would think of
Speaker 2: your old mainframes in the old days. It's not mainframes anymore,
Speaker 2: but like it's racks and racks and racks of computing
Speaker 2: power and connectivity to the Internet for the purposes of
Speaker 2: whatever Amazon would want to do with this. So if
Speaker 2: you go to use Amazon's infrastructure or use their AI,
Speaker 2: that buzzphrase it now is everywhere the computers that do
Speaker 2: those things or those requests or decide what products they
Speaker 2: want to market to through their algorithm. That's what these
Speaker 2: data centers do. So it's essentially an entire city of
Speaker 2: just machines. Yeah, a tech cropolis is an interesting way
Speaker 2: to put it. Like, not a netcropo, it's a tech cropolis. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So imagine a few people maintaining an entire city of.
Speaker 1: Machines, right and actively participating in like undermining the value
Speaker 1: of labor for everyone else with this AI shit.
Speaker 2: Well, that's part of this project're going to get into
Speaker 2: a minute. Is one of the things they like to
Speaker 2: propose is that it's going to bring jobs, but only
Speaker 2: at the beginning and we'll talk about that more. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, let's talk about like people in Tucson did not.
Speaker 1: Want this data center, right, Like there was a broad
Speaker 1: based and well organized opposition to it. So perhaps we
Speaker 1: should explain like why why? I mean, I guess people
Speaker 1: listen to podcast are inclined to think data center bad.
Speaker 1: But can you explain the impact that this would have
Speaker 1: had on the city and the turning area?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, absolutely, So it's very interesting to me to
Speaker 2: think about. So these data centers of this accord are
Speaker 2: if you're interested in this topic and start googling, you're
Speaker 2: going to find that this is, of course not the
Speaker 2: first large or mega data center that's been implemented across
Speaker 2: this country, because a number that are in Texas and
Speaker 2: they are belching large amounts of pollution into the environment.
Speaker 2: Cities nearby get absolutely destroyed by it. Typically they're brought
Speaker 2: in through some sort of tax incentives by the local
Speaker 2: city council or local county, and so that's exactly what
Speaker 2: was happening here with Tucson. So the local city council
Speaker 2: was pretty friendly to the idea. They were talking to
Speaker 2: this beal infrastructure to bring in Project Blue. They were
Speaker 2: giving tax cuts. They were giving all these incentives to
Speaker 2: bring this gigantic megalithic thing into just south of town.
Speaker 2: And part of the insidiousness of this is that this
Speaker 2: was going to go forward until someone noticed it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was just going to happen all of a sudden
Speaker 2: one day this thing is there, right, But it was noticed.
Speaker 2: And I don't honestly know exactly how it got noticed,
Speaker 2: but it got noticed. And one of the things I
Speaker 2: really find interesting, historically speaking, is how certain places and
Speaker 2: cultures resonate over time with historical events from the past.
Speaker 2: Tucson historically is an interesting place in terms of its
Speaker 2: environmental activism. There's a number of things that happened in
Speaker 2: Tucson in the nineteen sixties. There were groups that were
Speaker 2: actively fighting the spread of highways highway infrastructure. They were
Speaker 2: anti freeway, and their reasoning and rationale was it that
Speaker 2: freeways were the arterial infrastructure that allowed for the destructive
Speaker 2: spread of track pum developments. So the way to help,
Speaker 2: one way is to prevent the destruction of the local
Speaker 2: environment and the spread of a city was to diminish
Speaker 2: its freeway footprint. And I think you can see this
Speaker 2: is true if you look at any big city now
Speaker 2: like Phoenix is essentially a hive city, and all of
Speaker 2: the growth comes because of freeways, right.
Speaker 1: Because people can get to work or whatever quickly, and
Speaker 1: so you get commuter suburbs.
Speaker 2: One thing that's always was interesting when I was doing
Speaker 2: more work in infosec when people talk and this does
Speaker 2: make sense. By the way, this is going to sound
Speaker 2: off topic. I was talking to the information security architect
Speaker 2: for McDonald's and we were working with them on putting
Speaker 2: together a This is why this is interesting me as
Speaker 2: a data center thing I used to do a lot
Speaker 2: of work. They were talking about putting in a very
Speaker 2: secure and encrypted data center for the purposes of protecting
Speaker 2: their intellectual property. And I was talking to this guy.
Speaker 2: I was like, what is this like your recipes or
Speaker 2: what is it you it's a McDonald's protect Yeah, And
Speaker 2: this was wild. No, they don't care about their recipes.
Speaker 2: They were protecting their software that determines where they should
Speaker 2: buy the next piece of real estate to put a McDonald's.
Speaker 2: McDonald is actually a real estate company. And I have
Speaker 2: seen this in real time with my life because I've
Speaker 2: lived in a very remote part of the Arizona Desert.
Speaker 2: The frontier for lack of a better term, of Arizona
Speaker 2: for a long time, and the first thing that popped
Speaker 2: up in this one little area in the middle of
Speaker 2: nowhere was a McDonald's. And now everywhere you see a
Speaker 2: McDonald show up someplace that seems a little weird, give
Speaker 2: it a few years and it's suddenly the epicenter of
Speaker 2: a new tract one development.
Speaker 3: Oh, they have some unique algorithm to determine.
Speaker 2: They figure that out, and the McDonald's are the first
Speaker 2: thing they're own, usually a gas station in a McDonald's,
Speaker 2: and it essentially just looks like, oh, this is the
Speaker 2: place to stop, take a leak and buy a burden.
Speaker 2: But no, they buy all the land around it, and
Speaker 2: then they start selling or leasing that to other businesses
Speaker 2: as the growth happens. That's a big part of how
Speaker 2: the McDonald's Corporation makes its main money. Fascinating, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: so aligned with you put a freeway. When you see
Speaker 2: a freeway suddenly show up in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 2: someone has a goal to put a giant tract home
Speaker 2: development out there and sprawl that city a little more so. Anyways,
Speaker 2: going back to the original topic, these people in Tucson
Speaker 2: in the sixties were anti freeway and they actively changed
Speaker 2: the way Tucson grew. And I think it's one of
Speaker 2: the major reasons Tucson, if you've ever been to Tucson
Speaker 2: versus Phoenix, is a very different, culturally different vibe of Phoenix. One.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sprawl the same, yeah, and it still has
Speaker 2: stuff that isn't strip malls. It actually has locally owned businesses,
Speaker 2: It actually has some community resources, not all of its
Speaker 2: tract home and strip malls. And I think a lot
Speaker 2: of that is because of that freeway activism.
Speaker 3: Yea.
Speaker 2: Also, you look back into Tucson's past, love him or
Speaker 2: hate him, or somewhere in between. The somewhat infamous author
Speaker 2: Edward Abbey lived in Tucson and wrote The Monkey Wrench
Speaker 2: Gang and wrote a lot of environmental acts divism. He
Speaker 2: had a lot of views that were kind of deplorable,
Speaker 2: but when it came to climate and when it came
Speaker 2: to the environment, he was pretty on point. And his
Speaker 2: work spawned an organization called Earth First, which was one
Speaker 2: of the not the first, but one of the most
Speaker 2: famous direct we're talking direct action, climate activity or Clyde.
Speaker 2: You know, they were the ones that were destroying bulldozers,
Speaker 2: driving them off cliffs, some burning down Ski Shelle's like
Speaker 2: pretty wild stuff because they believed there was no retreat
Speaker 2: in defensive Mother Earth. He's a quote, but anyways, he
Speaker 2: was Tucson. Earth First birthed in Tucson, and then Earth
Speaker 2: First was a victim of the green scare. And many
Speaker 2: of them are still in prison for their work. But
Speaker 2: they did have an effect. Whether you agree with that
Speaker 2: sort of direct activism or not, they had an effect.
Speaker 2: But here we are. It's been many years after those
Speaker 2: big main activities and all that stuff sort of became quiet.
Speaker 2: You don't really think of like direct action activism when
Speaker 2: it comes to the environment like you did back in
Speaker 2: the eighties and nineties. But when this data center popped
Speaker 2: up group started showing up in Tucson, that really felt
Speaker 2: very earth First e. I'm not talking direct action like firebombs,
Speaker 2: but their speech, the way they were organizing, coming to
Speaker 2: city council meetings and not just showing up to speak,
Speaker 2: but disrupting the meetings like causing a scene. And their
Speaker 2: work so far, and I will mention some of them
Speaker 2: later in this topic, how actually sort of forced the
Speaker 2: hand of the city Council to deny the project, and
Speaker 2: so looking back, you're like, it's interesting to see the
Speaker 2: residents of things like those old freeway activists and Edward
Speaker 2: Abbey and Earth First it's still there. Tucson still has that,
Speaker 2: and you see that coming up now in regards to
Speaker 2: this data center project and other things that are starting
Speaker 2: to happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love Tucson and spent a lot of time in
Speaker 1: Tucson for years and years and years, and there is
Speaker 1: a feeling of like it has got this like diy
Speaker 1: community feeling that you do not experience. People think Tucson
Speaker 1: and Phoenix are they just small divasion of the same,
Speaker 1: But they're incredibly different.
Speaker 2: Oh no, yeah, it's hard to describe the difference. You
Speaker 2: have to go to both.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Oh, you could not go to Phoenix. You
Speaker 1: can go almost anywhere else in the US and experience
Speaker 1: the same thing as Phoenix. Rite incredibly generic as the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the Phoenix is an old place too,
Speaker 2: not as old as Tucson, but the very core the
Speaker 2: downtown of Phoenix still has something. However, Phoenix was never
Speaker 2: good about preserving any of its historicity or historical content,
Speaker 2: and so they never saw a building old enough or
Speaker 2: cool enough that they didn't care about bulldozing it and
Speaker 2: putting up a Walgreens. Yeah, and so Phoenix is as
Speaker 2: I forgot what documentary it was, but it was like
Speaker 2: what you just described so many American cities. You drive
Speaker 2: to it and it's just like this, like constantly looping
Speaker 2: revolving piece of film of Walgreen, McDonald's nail salon, super cuts,
Speaker 2: Chili's rinse and repeat. Yeah, and it just every ten miles.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing Dutch Brother's coffee. It just never ends.
Speaker 2: And Tucson is not yet like that. It still has
Speaker 2: still has a soul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are special places in Phoenix who say, like
Speaker 1: Guadalupe is cool when my yagie friends live this and
Speaker 1: I Sarah, I like getting there. Let's take a little
Speaker 1: break and talk about how Tuson and Post is data center.
Speaker 2: So there are a number of groups that came togethers
Speaker 2: if you can't track everything all at once, because it's
Speaker 2: not possible to human being. But the one I've been
Speaker 2: keeping eye on and communicating with is called No Desert
Speaker 2: Data Center. They have a presence on the web. They're
Speaker 2: all over social media, Facebook, Instagram, and for me at least.
Speaker 2: And this is not to exclude anyone. If if you're
Speaker 2: one of the primary people or groups that we're working
Speaker 2: against this and you heard this, please do not feel
Speaker 2: like I'm excluding you. This is just the group that
Speaker 2: I landed up connecting with and following. So but they
Speaker 2: are also doing a good job of aggregating others too.
Speaker 2: So almost all of their posts have like a bunch
Speaker 2: of other groups tagged in it. So if you were
Speaker 2: to look up the No Desert Data Center folks, you're
Speaker 2: going to find a lot of them. But they had
Speaker 2: some amazing artwork. You know. One of the things that
Speaker 2: I think is really important in activism is getting the
Speaker 2: attention of the local community. Artwork will do that. So
Speaker 2: if they'd this incredible poster that's like says no drop
Speaker 2: for data and it's a water drop with a rattlesnake
Speaker 2: and havlina and a solaro and they had a rattlesnake
Speaker 2: wrapped around a rain drop. Really good stuff that catches
Speaker 2: your eye. So they were doing that, but they were
Speaker 2: also getting people together. They were having meetings, planning sessions
Speaker 2: before city council meetings, getting people together, doing the artwork
Speaker 2: there rallying the troops for lack of a better term,
Speaker 2: building morale. You don't have activism without morale. And then
Speaker 2: they were showing up and showing up in numbers. There's
Speaker 2: videos on Instagram on their feet alone, where one of
Speaker 2: these city council meetings had over one thousand Twusonians in
Speaker 2: it with signs and posters. And they weren't just sitting
Speaker 2: there quietly waiting for their thirty seconds to speak. They
Speaker 2: were disruptive, They were loud, and they were not going
Speaker 2: to not be heard. So that type of activism in
Speaker 2: this instance very clearly is the reason that this happened.
Speaker 2: Because if you read the writings of a number of
Speaker 2: the city council members, they were very sympathetic to the
Speaker 2: data center. One of them was talking about, like, this
Speaker 2: is the wrong thing to do. If we block the
Speaker 2: data center, they're just going to build it anyway, and
Speaker 2: it's better for us to be involved because then we
Speaker 2: can help tune it to be better for the community. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you're just whitewashing a horrible thing. And so this group
Speaker 2: and other groups called them out on that immediately. Nice
Speaker 2: so like, no, that's not it. So I think I'm
Speaker 2: answering your question. But it's groups like this, yeah, throwing
Speaker 2: up in large numbers, being loud not only online but
Speaker 2: in person that forced their hand. That's crazio.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's people actually being willing to get out of
Speaker 1: the tweets and into the streets so to speak, to
Speaker 1: like actually show up in this case of these meetings.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't have to just be meetings, could be anywhere.
Speaker 1: I guess we should just talk about like Tusunday. It's
Speaker 1: from audham Wood. It means dot corner, but it is
Speaker 1: not a cool place. It is cooler the Phoenix. Actually,
Speaker 1: let's hot that, like this data center would have consumed
Speaker 1: a massive amount of energy I presumed, like just keeping
Speaker 1: the computers cooled right, and a massive amount of water.
Speaker 3: To do that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So when you start talking about heat, for example,
Speaker 2: I think it's worth I know we don't have infinite
Speaker 2: time here on this podcast, but it's worth noting for
Speaker 2: people that are not familiar with the concept of heat islands. Yeah,
Speaker 2: heat islands are where you build so much metropolitan infrastructure,
Speaker 2: including asphalt and concrete, with no thought boards heat or cooling.
Speaker 2: You really don't, like Phoenix was built without thinking about that.
Speaker 2: They're thinking about it now, but it wasn't built thinking
Speaker 2: about it when it sprawled, and it was continually to sprawl. Ye,
Speaker 2: Phoenix was always a little hotter than Tuson, just because
Speaker 2: of like you know, geographical reasons. But now Phoenix is
Speaker 2: measurably and demonstrably hotter yet because it never cool off.
Speaker 2: And that's a heat island. So what happens is during
Speaker 2: the day, all of that I'll create, all that asphalt,
Speaker 2: all those things heat up, and it'll get to at
Speaker 2: moments like just this last week, one hundred and eighteen,
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty degree in the middle of the day.
Speaker 2: But because the heat island hasn't been architected well and
Speaker 2: has no green space to deal with this, at night,
Speaker 2: it's still one hundred and five. Jesus see, it never
Speaker 2: gets below one hundred and So the problem with heat,
Speaker 2: like obviously one hundred and twenty degrees can kill you.
Speaker 2: But the problem with the heat is that as you
Speaker 2: never get a chance to cool off, heat over time
Speaker 2: is more dangerous to human to all living organisms. If
Speaker 2: you get a break, that's what keeps you alive. So
Speaker 2: it could be one hundred and twenty during the day,
Speaker 2: but if it's seventy five at night, that gives you
Speaker 2: a moment to heal and recuperate for the next day's heat.
Speaker 2: Phoenix is not the worst, believe it or not, but
Speaker 2: one of the worst versions of a heat island, and
Speaker 2: they are actively working to make that better. But it's
Speaker 2: kind of hard to undo what's been done. Yeah, Tucson,
Speaker 2: once again, because the sprawl is diminished by activism of
Speaker 2: the past, did not become the heat island. Phoenix does.
Speaker 2: So while it might be one hundred and thirteen during
Speaker 2: the day, it might get down to eighty at night. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that really is a big difference for not only sustainability,
Speaker 2: but for the health and safety of everyone that lives there.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I find is interesting is
Speaker 2: the justification for these data centers is because Arizona is
Speaker 2: seen as a place that doesn't have significant natural disaster risk.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that's being left out of
Speaker 2: the conversation I don't know why this is the case,
Speaker 2: is that heat and heat islands are a natural disaster.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, they kill people.
Speaker 2: If the power were to go out in Phoenix at
Speaker 2: the wrong time of year, the death toll is hard
Speaker 2: to fathom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, people, Yeah, without air conditioning, it's unsurvivable in
Speaker 1: those temperatures, especially for older people, people medically conditioned.
Speaker 2: So what have you Anyone at risk? The unhoused is
Speaker 2: one example course, which they don't even do proper metrics
Speaker 2: and measuring of because our society doesn't care like it should. However,
Speaker 2: outside of that, you said people that are at risk,
Speaker 2: anyone that has any sort of illness, the young, the elderly,
Speaker 2: and anyone like that, they have to live in their
Speaker 2: air conditioned spaceship to survive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it would have taken it, like you say,
Speaker 1: a huge amount of cooling just to keep this data center.
Speaker 2: Well that's where this gets so fascinating when they start
Speaker 2: proposing these because like, oh, let's be realistic, right, Arizona
Speaker 2: is probably low risk for a dramatic earthquake or a hurricane,
Speaker 2: that's fair. Yeah, However, it is not a low risk
Speaker 2: for a heat casualty event, which is going on every
Speaker 2: year and getting worse with climate change. And so these
Speaker 2: data centers, the one in twoson that was proposed, what
Speaker 2: have consumed and the numbers fluctuate and the course the
Speaker 2: numbers you get from the Amazon crew versus others will
Speaker 2: be a little different. But as best as I can tell,
Speaker 2: the our consumption of this one data center was essentially
Speaker 2: the equivalent of that of Metropolitan on pieces. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: you double the power load of the entire city for
Speaker 2: this data center. And the cooling system. There's two different
Speaker 2: ways to cool there's qut unquote air cooled and water cooled.
Speaker 2: They can tell you whatever they want. The reality is
Speaker 2: they're probably not going to be affected with air cooled
Speaker 2: in this environment, so it's going to be water cooled.
Speaker 2: And the data on that also seems to be the
Speaker 2: water consumption of this was not only equal, may be
Speaker 2: worse than that of Tucson itself. Looking at this site
Speaker 2: right now. Water positivity claim for the initial two years,
Speaker 2: but the initial estimate was six hundred and twenty two
Speaker 2: million gallons. Whoa yeah, yeah, with a seven hundred miliwad
Speaker 2: expected demand, it's crazy. And so what happens is not
Speaker 2: only does the city council just see dollar signs in
Speaker 2: their eyes, local electrical infrastructure like TEP, the two soon
Speaker 2: Electrical or other data center places where data centers are
Speaker 2: located suddenly do things like stop worrying about any form
Speaker 2: of carbon positivity, or they get rid of all their
Speaker 2: carbon goals so that they can build and work with
Speaker 2: people like this, Because if you double the power consumption
Speaker 2: of a region overnight for a data center, yeah, think
Speaker 2: of the waste that you're going to produce to do that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And suddenly how do you produce that power. You're not
Speaker 2: going to have a nuclear plant pop up tomorrow, so
Speaker 2: you're going to do other things like burn more coal. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so your carbon and carbon positivity or an attempt
Speaker 2: to move away from carbon waste, they just throw that
Speaker 2: out the door so they can have these lucrative, juicy
Speaker 2: contracts with these data centers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that is I mean, it's just on the
Speaker 1: face of it. When I heard of it, I was
Speaker 1: just like, why are they doing this in one of
Speaker 1: the hottest places you know in the region. But I
Speaker 1: guess yeah, they just don't see heat as a threat.
Speaker 1: Having spent a lot of time in the desert there,
Speaker 1: I can tell you it is a threat to human life.
Speaker 1: So as of last week, right, the Council has refused
Speaker 1: it permission to be built in.
Speaker 2: Tucson due to intense external pressure. They were they did
Speaker 2: vote against it.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, so that's like it's a victory. I guess
Speaker 1: it's a victory in a battle, but it's not the
Speaker 1: end of the war.
Speaker 2: Oh No. That's the problem with all this is that
Speaker 2: these companies and these folks will never stop. So I
Speaker 2: just saw an article in fact that two days ago, yes,
Speaker 2: this project was voted down. However, they're coming back with
Speaker 2: just another proposal to do it a slightly different way,
Speaker 2: and so each time they just reiterate and change it.
Speaker 2: It's just a new battle, right, so they will change
Speaker 2: the words however they want to make it sound until
Speaker 2: these people will vote yes for it. So like Nikki Lee,
Speaker 2: which is the ward for a councilwoman, was the one
Speaker 2: that was arguing against essentially saying that we should approve
Speaker 2: this project so we can have better control of it,
Speaker 2: and the activists set against that. But it's just they're
Speaker 2: just going to keep changing the tune until the activists
Speaker 2: get essentially worn out. On top of that, this is
Speaker 2: not the only data center being proposed in Arizona. There
Speaker 2: are currently three of them under proposal. So there's this
Speaker 2: one in Tucson and two of them in Panall County.
Speaker 2: The one in Panall County. Starts off at the small
Speaker 2: size of three hundred acres, but it's proposed to go
Speaker 2: to three thousand acres. Jesus, they want to build a
Speaker 2: ultimately a three thousand acre data center that sprawls essentially
Speaker 2: from southern Phoenix across the entire north south breath of
Speaker 2: Penall County on the west side of the I ten
Speaker 2: from southwest of Elois, extending through significant what are indigenous
Speaker 2: or what were indigenous lands, destroying whatever cultural remains are there.
Speaker 2: But imagine if this two hundred and ninety acre data
Speaker 2: center was going to equal the power consumption and water
Speaker 2: consumption of Tucson. What is a three thousand and acre
Speaker 2: data center going to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's insane.
Speaker 2: That'ssts us And that one is currently still in its
Speaker 2: early phases. That one is called the Laosa Project. The
Speaker 2: CEO of this company is named Cold Deep Verma Okay,
Speaker 2: Verma v r M. I'm not affectioner, that's the right pronunciation.
Speaker 2: But in another example of tech bro narcissism, he's calling
Speaker 2: this verma Land and his company is called vermal Land.
Speaker 2: It's like the most awful version of Disneyland. We're not
Speaker 2: even bringing you rides. We're just gonna drink your water
Speaker 2: belt heat into the sky, destroy your desert so you
Speaker 2: can have a disturbing psychological parasocial relationship with an ai avatar.
Speaker 2: And we're gonna do it at your expense. Vermal Land,
Speaker 2: Isn't that lovely?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Man, I've seen that's weird. They already owned a
Speaker 3: lot of land of the iten, I think.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah, No, they've been they've been purchasing land
Speaker 2: throughout Arizona and sitting on it. But this is where
Speaker 2: the three thousand acres come from, is Vermaaland.
Speaker 1: Jesus, Yeah, that is uh, that's a mind bogglingly vast
Speaker 1: data center.
Speaker 3: So I guess like this is one you know.
Speaker 1: As you say, this will either move someone else. So
Speaker 1: there will be other struggles, right like the For instance,
Speaker 1: the United States is waiving many of the waivers, including
Speaker 1: ones that protect indigenous human remains, to build its border
Speaker 1: infrastructure right now. Actually a lot of the border infrastructure
Speaker 1: is coming out of the U of A tech park
Speaker 1: in Tucson, right, That's where a lot of these companies
Speaker 1: have their headquarters.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The people who make the border surveillance infrastructure, what can
Speaker 1: we learn from this struggle in Tuson?
Speaker 3: If we're not in Tucson, we might not even be
Speaker 3: in the US.
Speaker 1: Because there are some unique things about Tucson, right, it
Speaker 1: has this history of activism, and it's always been I
Speaker 1: don't want to use weird in a derogatory way, but
Speaker 1: it just hasn't conformed to like the neoliberal capital model
Speaker 1: of a city. But I don't think it's unique. There
Speaker 1: were things I think that anyone can take from this victory,
Speaker 1: and they continued opposition, right, So what can we learn
Speaker 1: from it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, No, I think that that's a fair way
Speaker 2: to put it in. And I think that speaking of
Speaker 2: the reverberance of the history of the area and the
Speaker 2: types of movements that came out of there, as we
Speaker 2: mentioned already earlier, make Tucson unique in regards to it
Speaker 2: being at least culturally more ready than someplace to have
Speaker 2: this struggle. However, if they do succeed and completely stop
Speaker 2: Project Blue and the two hundred and ninety are data
Speaker 2: center near Tucson is stopped, it's not going to stop there.
Speaker 2: We see three more data centers being proposed in Arizona proper,
Speaker 2: the three thousand acre dream site that I've mentioned already
Speaker 2: is they're just going to keep changing and moving and
Speaker 2: trying to do it somewhere else. The reality of this
Speaker 2: is that when we look back at the workers' rights
Speaker 2: movement right there was the IWW the Industrial Workers of
Speaker 2: the world. The thing is tucson winning fight against this
Speaker 2: data center only is a microcosm of the greater macrocosm
Speaker 2: of the consumption of these tech bros and tech industry
Speaker 2: people who do not care about the climate, do not
Speaker 2: care about you, do not care about the community, do
Speaker 2: not care about the water they consume, and they will
Speaker 2: destroy everything in their patht for profit. We know that
Speaker 2: that is what this form of data capitalism is. And
Speaker 2: so Tucson's lesson is everyone has to be this And
Speaker 2: I agree with you that Tucson isn't unique in that
Speaker 2: there are other places that will have the fight. But
Speaker 2: this is truthfully everyone's fight, because the amount of pollution
Speaker 2: that would be belched out of this data center or
Speaker 2: the ones being proposed in Arizona affects everyone. The reality
Speaker 2: of climate change is, in my opinion, indisputable. We're seeing
Speaker 2: it every year. It's worse, and it is human induced.
Speaker 2: At least to a large degree, unlike some people want
Speaker 2: to deny, and having your AI avatar on the Internet
Speaker 2: is not in the interests of humanity as a whole.
Speaker 2: So we have to work on this a much larger
Speaker 2: It's a global issue. Yeah, yeah, it is not. It
Speaker 2: is not a local issue, That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2: And these data companies like Amazon, like Google, like Apple,
Speaker 2: although this isn't Apple in this instance, but all of them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they have the power, if not more of power than
Speaker 2: that of a nation state.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like I think if my friend's in the
Speaker 1: Marshall Islands, right, this small nation state, but one nonetheless, right,
Speaker 1: they will have maybe thirty or forty years before the
Speaker 1: island's around inhabitable due to the rise of the sea level.
Speaker 1: And like their response has been a to double down
Speaker 1: on community and supporting each other.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They also did things like if you go in between
Speaker 1: the islands on an Atoll and the Marshal Islands, generally
Speaker 1: used like a Higgins boat, okay, a landing craft from
Speaker 1: World War Two. Right, But they also have these solar
Speaker 1: power canoes now to reduce their footprint. They're a tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of a single percent of the world CO
Speaker 1: two footprint, and so what happens in Tucson will affect them, right,
Speaker 1: and what they do cannot alone help them survive, right.
Speaker 1: And they've appealed to the world's solidarity, made a whole
Speaker 1: podcast about this, and the world has not shown up
Speaker 1: for them.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, like I think, people, you're right, like this is
Speaker 1: a global struggle. It's one that you know. It doesn't
Speaker 1: stop in two sign, doesn't stop in Eloy, doesn't stop
Speaker 1: in Phoenix, like it stops when these data centers, which
Speaker 1: are antithetical to our survival of a species, stop being
Speaker 1: built for shit that we don't need.
Speaker 2: This is touching on a point that always that frustrates
Speaker 2: me frequently when we talk to people who are at
Speaker 2: least on the right side minded in terms of being
Speaker 2: concerned about our future, and they do the thing right,
Speaker 2: They'll do their recycling, or they'll put up a solar panel,
Speaker 2: all those things. Sure, but and this isn't to say
Speaker 2: that the individuals shouldn't do the ethical and moral thing
Speaker 2: that they can do when they can do it. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Can you recycle, sure do it. Can you put up
Speaker 2: a solar panel, Absolutely do that. But the real truth
Speaker 2: and reality of climate change and the destruction of our
Speaker 2: environment and this planet that we all inhabit. It's not
Speaker 2: the individual, it's the corporations is at a nation state
Speaker 2: level and a corporate level that is going to destroy
Speaker 2: our small biosphere one. Ironically, biosphere is we'll talk about
Speaker 2: the experiment is near Tucson. Actually Biosphere two was a
Speaker 2: little experiment that was a self contained nineteen eighties thing
Speaker 2: where these scientists essentially encapsulated themselves in air tight bubbles
Speaker 2: to see if they could live with the CO two
Speaker 2: production that they were creating within it. The truth was
Speaker 2: they couldn't. The ocean turned to algae and they would
Speaker 2: have died. So they learned Biosphere two wasn't going to work.
Speaker 2: But we have bios for one, and the individual doing
Speaker 2: the solar panels or recycling. That's a good thing, and
Speaker 2: that's moral, but that's great, it's something we should do
Speaker 2: if we can. But it's us we have to act
Speaker 2: against the truly destructive forces. And it's the corporations and
Speaker 2: the nation states that are belching destruction into our planet,
Speaker 2: not the individual recycling or not recycling a soda can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And I think it's one of the greatest
Speaker 1: like fraud so edited cannods. These corporations amants to put
Speaker 1: off it is to have people attribute blame for climate
Speaker 1: change to the person, not recycling.
Speaker 3: That can not the corporation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the political spectrum is always challenging, and
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to like point at any one thing,
Speaker 2: but this is where I think we all have our failings, right,
Speaker 2: and I think this is where like progressive space fails often,
Speaker 2: which is you'll see tone policing, and you'll see recycling,
Speaker 2: and you'll see solar panels. But the reality is that
Speaker 2: isn't really doing shit. It just isn't in the grand
Speaker 2: scheme of the numbers. It isn't it that data center.
Speaker 2: Stopping that data center is an actual victory. That's something
Speaker 2: that needs to happen, and those things need to stop
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff across the board, not just in Tucson,
Speaker 2: not just in Arizona, but everywhere. It needs to be
Speaker 2: a thing where everyone comes together and realizes that these
Speaker 2: people are consuming the very planet that we need to
Speaker 2: live on. You see Elon must talking about going to Mars.
Speaker 2: The human race has to go to Mars because a
Speaker 2: meteor might hit the Earth. No your company is what
Speaker 2: hit the earth, my friend, you're the one destroying the earth,
Speaker 2: not that meteor.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it's not external and they like the you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's coming from within, right, And it is if
Speaker 1: you say, like it did the species level threat to us.
Speaker 2: The calls literally coming from inside the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah. But we should
Speaker 1: also celebrate these victories and lemp in them. Right, So
Speaker 1: if people are interested in learning more about the struggling
Speaker 1: in Tucson, perhaps they're they're living in Phoenix and they're
Speaker 1: just now learning about vermaaland right or these other AI.
Speaker 3: Projects, Like why can they find out more about this?
Speaker 3: How can they involve themselves?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I want to first of all, I don't
Speaker 2: I hope that I didn't come across as saying like
Speaker 2: this is hopeless. I don't think it is. Like when
Speaker 2: we see the actions of like what made two soon
Speaker 2: unique now, and we saw the actions of what Earththirst
Speaker 2: was able to achieve through their decades of work, which
Speaker 2: they did achieve a lot. It resonates still to this day.
Speaker 2: The plan it is a better place because those people
Speaker 2: paid a price to do what they did, and that's
Speaker 2: just something that never stops, is what it boils down to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: these these companies, these people will never stop trying to
Speaker 2: destroy our home for their profit. So that's the point
Speaker 2: I was trying to make. And so this was a
Speaker 2: success and we should celebrate that. Like you said, ye,
Speaker 2: But what I want to reference is No Desert Datacenter
Speaker 2: dot Com. Again, I want to very much point out
Speaker 2: they are not the only ones. Many people came together.
Speaker 2: They're the one I have really been paying attention to.
Speaker 2: If you go to No Desert Datacenter dot com, they
Speaker 2: have links to all their socials Instagram, Blue Sky, Facebook,
Speaker 2: and if you go to any of those, their Instagram
Speaker 2: is particularly active and has some great motivational art on it.
Speaker 2: I will tell you that they will also link you
Speaker 2: to a number of other organizations at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so if you're interested in this particular issue of these
Speaker 2: data centers in Arizona, I would reference you to that.
Speaker 2: You can go to their link tree, which is also
Speaker 2: linked from their Instagram, and that'll connect you to a
Speaker 2: number of other organizations that are working on this right
Speaker 2: now and to their merit the Project Blue. They succeeded
Speaker 2: at least delaying Project Blue, hopefully stopping it. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: the next post they put up was about the data
Speaker 2: center in Eloy, so they understand that this is broader
Speaker 2: in scope than just one desert.
Speaker 3: Yeah, data center.
Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, it's like it was in this movie
Speaker 2: There will be Blood if you ever saw that. There's
Speaker 2: an amazing line. Of course, I drink your milkshake if
Speaker 2: you drink the water south of Tucson or don't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but then put a data center just north of Tucson.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. It's the same watershed. Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: it's the same same problem. So no desert datacenter dot
Speaker 2: com and that'll get you to a bunch of different
Speaker 2: links and a bunch of updates about what's going on
Speaker 2: with this perfect and color.
Speaker 1: If people want to follow your weg, I mean you
Speaker 1: have a presence on the internet.
Speaker 3: Where can people find you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, my project is not necessarily about the desert
Speaker 2: data center, but I'm definitely obviously very sympathetic and part
Speaker 2: of that too, just not on my project. I'm in
Speaker 2: Range TV, So if you want to find all my work,
Speaker 2: you can find it by just easily going to Enrange
Speaker 2: dot tv. And there's a link on there called watch
Speaker 2: and that'll get you to all my socials. I distribute
Speaker 2: my video content. Decentralized YouTube is the is the line
Speaker 2: in the room must be realistic. But I have my
Speaker 2: content in multiple different places. The easiest way to find
Speaker 2: all of them is range dot tv, and you'll find
Speaker 2: my socials there too, which is Facebook and Blue Sky
Speaker 2: and all that. And of course my topic is more
Speaker 2: about firearms history and civil rights and how they intersect.
Speaker 2: But if our ability to breathe and drink water isn't
Speaker 2: human rights, I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's how we should see these things.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time, Kyle. That was great, James,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: For having me. I appreciate It's always a real treat
Speaker 2: to be on any of the shows here, and I
Speaker 2: love all the work you all are doing, and together
Speaker 2: hopefully we can I don't know how to put it
Speaker 2: stop these corporate maggots from eating our not yet corpse
Speaker 2: of an earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I think it's like, I guess I'll finish
Speaker 1: you up by saying like, it doesn't matter if Way
Speaker 1: confronting fascism, It doesn't matter if Way confronting this destruction
Speaker 1: of our planet right. The only way through this is
Speaker 1: to go and the only way that we defeat this
Speaker 1: is through building stronger communities to show up for one another.
Speaker 1: And that's something that you have documented extensively in the
Speaker 1: historical parts of your channel. So I think there is
Speaker 1: a connection that I hope people can see there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, community defense is also protecting our planets so we
Speaker 2: can live on it. Yeah, I agree with that, and
Speaker 2: we have to do that together. Thousands of people showing
Speaker 2: up to city council meeting at Tucson is a glimmer
Speaker 2: of light in this moment, and hopefully we can see
Speaker 2: more of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Thanks KYP.
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.