Jackie McGuire, a Marana resident and artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and research analyst, said the cost to construct two data centers will be around $120 billion.
“This is being funded primarily by private equity and debt that’s being hidden from public company balance sheets,” McGuire said, adding that the AI bubble will eventually burst, making this a financially unsustainable project. “This AI bubble bursting is going to materially impact my ability to pay my mortgage and I will have to pivot. I don’t want that for the entire town of Marana.”
The simplicity of town council and other powerful organisations on “many jobs, many smart people, many economyyyy”. There will be a few underpaid foreigners building, and a few security guards and cleaning personnel. Datacenters are as void of humans as possible.
These sorts of agreements are always so one-sided, also. What the company gets (tax breaks, property deals, etc) is always explicitly specified in the agreement but what the town gets (jobs, tax revenue, whatever) is left as unwritten assumptions, with the former never seemingly tied to the latter. If it wasn’t for the kickbacks and bribes, you’d think these towns were just really bad at writing contracts.
It is one reason why they go into small towns, they need a sucker municipal leadership that isn’t aware how universally badly deals for datacenters work out for communities.
Those are getting harder to find, thanks to enhanced media attention…
