Krystal Polk’s family has owned its Southaven land for generations. Now, she tells Scientific American, company representatives question relatives near the property, and the family carries tax records to establish that it belongs there. Across the road stands the power plant feeding Elon Musk’s AI ambitions.
That is what “the cloud” looks like from below.
By July, regulators counted 69 temporary gas turbines at the Mississippi site powering Colossus 2 in Tennessee. Meanwhile, the promised Memphis water-recycling facility sat unfinished; officials had never secured a binding agreement. The computers could not wait. The safeguards could.
I’ve been following #TheRobotsAreComing and #RiseOfTheRobots for years. In 2014, I asked whether automation would concentrate capital and destabilize democracy. By 2018, my enthusiasm for Musk had curdled after the Thai cave submarine spectacle and reports of his political donations. In 2019, despite my affection for Terminator scenarios, I identified the likelier threat as technology deployed against workers and democratic institutions.
The machines need not develop hostile intentions. They can faithfully execute ours.
That is also why my criticism of Musk cannot be reduced to disliking an obnoxious billionaire. In 2022, I asked why protecting our air, soil, and water should rank below tax cuts for him. Technical accomplishment does not confer moral jurisdiction over other people’s lives.
I have called a related political pathology Petrocancer: an industry that began as a useful organ of civilization becomes pathological when it rewires the host simply to keep itself fed. Subsidy lock-in, captured regulators, propaganda networks, and political leverage become a kind of institutional angiogenesis. Growth stops serving the organism and begins commanding its bloodstream.
Colossus makes the analogy uncomfortably literal. Here, the infrastructure of artificial intelligence couples itself back into fossil combustion while political institutions are asked to absorb the friction. The Justice Department asked a court to dismiss the NAACP’s pollution lawsuit, invoking national security and AI innovation. An attempt to enforce environmental law becomes, rhetorically, a threat to the national interest.
What a revealing definition of “national.”
I use generative AI. I want its capabilities to improve. That makes the accounting more necessary, not less. A useful tool does not become innocent because I find it useful. Nor does its usefulness establish who must subsidize it with lost sleep, diminished control over their surroundings, or environmental risk. Requiring tech mega-corps to recycle their water and produce green electricity is a very reasonable ask.
The cloud has a watershed because computation never leaves the world. It occupies land, requires energy, produces heat, consumes water, and enters relationships its owners cannot erase by excluding them from a balance sheet.
The relevant test is not whether every technological advance has costs. Of course it does. It is whether those who claim the benefits must negotiate with those expected to bear the burdens—and whether “no” remains an available answer.
We keep asking whether the machines will learn to care, while their owners are already being given the option not to.
Related posts
Fear the robots
June 22, 2014
An early warning that automation could concentrate capital, deepen inequality, and destabilize democracy.
“Between the Thai cave submarine debacle…”
July 16, 2018 (tweet)
An early break with Musk, connecting the cave-submarine spectacle and his political donations.
“Although I’ve always been intrigued by Terminator-esque scenarios…”
August 28, 2019 (tweet)
The distinction between science-fiction rebellion and technology deployed to undermine economic security and democracy.
“Call me crazy but maybe we should spend more…”
April 28, 2022 (tweet)
A direct statement of competing priorities: preventing crises and protecting air, soil, and water rather than prioritizing tax cuts for Musk.
Andy Beshear: “AF1FA vs Petrocancer”
June 11, 2026
A satirical campaign announcement diagnosing fossil-fuel capture as political angiogenesis: institutions rewired to keep an incumbent industry fed.
Ugolino’s Hunger for the Future’s Flesh
December 4, 2025
The moral cost of financing present comforts with resources taken from generations unable to consent.
