The AI data center buildout is a house of cards that not only will collapse, it should.
Let AI Burn Ed Zitron Jul 7, 2026, Where’s Your Ed At No bailouts, no handouts, no special treatment, no tax breaks, no CHIPS act, and no sovereign wealth fund. It is time to tell the AI industry to go fuck itself, because it’s effectively done the same to the rest of society. This industry is unworthy — a sham conjured up by a tech industry that’s run out of ideas, a trillion-dollars’ worth of manufactured consent and entirely-avoidable financial crises — and should not be protected under any circumstance. Every single time you hear somebody discuss “bailout” or “too big to fail” or “sovereign wealth funds,” know that this is the industry, on some level, attempting to create the air that it cannot die, when in fact every one of these companies is just as weak and brittle as any other startup.
I agree with this red flag pointed out in an op-ed by tech finance journalist Ed Zitron: “There has never been a tool or product in history sold with such hysteria and aggressive monocultural force that has ever turned out to be anything more than a grift.” It’s because something that’s useful doesn’t need a product cult to sell it. And with all the errors caused by AI automation all over the place, where’s the value I ask you? That politicians seem to like the idea of the whole economy resting on this bs is both disturbing and pathetic. So I will again quote Ed Zitron who puts it best about these weirdo boosters: “Please, people. Nobody in the real world cares about “loops.” Nobody is thinking about tokenization. If you said inference to a guy on the street they’d take you to see a doctor. Nobody gives a shit.” Real people care about healthcare, functional hospitals, workers having bargaining power, the price of groceries, and mitigation of the threats already bearing down on us, in our lived environment. Nobody wants more pollution, water issues, or loud monstrosities in our neighborhoods just to support this crap product from the sketch business models of megalomaniac tycoons, where the taxpayers get left picking up the bill and bailing out more of their golden parachutes. No bailouts. No data centers.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Many have been warning about how data center buildout need is actually overstated, and others have been repeatedly saying how other avenues of automation and language processing make more sense (and more cents) than these everything bagel chatbots. And data center resistance activists and others have been pointing out how it’s a lot of speculators involved since the get go, and how our communities will be left with deforested land for absolutely nothing to show for it, and the taxpayers will be left holding the bag, while suffering under the enshittification accelerating in all our interactions with business because of this crap technology being shoved everywhere for no good reason.