Chamath: Why Big Tech Should Pay Your Electric Bill

Google was planning a $1 billion spend on a data center in Indianapolis. There was enough push back and so I think to avoid what would have been an awkward press cycle, Google just pulled it. In this same week, it happened two other times. In Wisconsin, there was a proposal very similar to Google's, but this time from Microsoft, and in the 11th hour, Microsoft pulled it. And then in the third example, there was an attempt by an Amazon data center to get built near Tucson that I think also was mothball. I do think that this is the beginning of a trend. Why is this happening? People are seeing their prices of electricity go up in the local areas where the data centers are being

built. These hyperscalers need to get these communities on their side. We can't have this narrative that AI may take your job away while it's also doubling your electricity price because they're not feeling and seeing the abundance that we think that it can offer. We need to figure out how to fix this because you can't have Google, Microsoft, and Amazon cancel essential projects that advance this entire sector and economy forward. We're not talking about some random fly by night business here. We're talking about three of the five pinnacle horsemen of the AI race. I think that we can fix those problems. My idea is you have to use the balance sheet of these big companies and it can

act as a cushion for a lot of what needs to happen. They can pay higher tariffs for electricity. They can also just frankly go and pay for some amount of the electricity bill of these local folks. They could pay for solar and storage if they wanted to. There's a plethora of ideas here where they probably are going to need to step into market to get folks on their side.