The artificial intelligence boom has become one of the biggest drivers of the American economy.

It's also triggered a growing backlash against the data centers that make the boom possible.

Tech moguls have rushed to build giant warehouses packed with a computing power needed to run AI systems,

but they've done almost nothing to explain to ordinary Americans why those facilities deserve so much land,

water, electricity, and political favoritism. You would think that that failure would have

created an obvious opening for libertarians. Government's shower data center projects with subsidies

wield imminent domain to seize land and help politically connected corporations

reshape local communities in the name of technological progress.

A coherent libertarian response would attack the merger of state power and corporate power.

Instead, many libertarians have chosen to cheer the expansion without asking what the technology will be used for or whom it will serve.

Their quasi-religious loyalty to capital has pushed them into another foolish position and exposed the danger of turning an economic theory into a full worldview.

The tech elite insists that AI will revolutionize the world, but they've done almost nothing

to tell average people how their own lives will be improved.

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs spin wild stories about superhuman intelligence and the automation

of tens of millions of jobs.

That doesn't sound like a sales pitch.

That sounds like the setup for a

science fiction dystopian movie. The one concrete justification they do offer is strategic.

AI will supposedly define the future of warfare, and America must stay ahead of China.

This is their strongest argument, and it is legitimately one worth listening to.

That argument would carry more weight if the same people pushing AI weren't also committed

to building the kind of technology most likely to be used against Americans.

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