This isn’t spin. It’s seasoned analysis.
San Diego Was Always Ground Zero
President Donald Trump said something the other day that caused an uproar in California. Talking about Iran and the price of war, Trump said: “They can take out a city. Let ’em take out Los Angeles. Let ’em take out San Diego.” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria fired back....
How Dive Bars Power the Cloud – Audio
Two seemingly ordinary stories — a bartender helping a customer set up his first smartphone and a neighborhood dive bar increasingly connected to the digital world — reveal something much larger about America’s demand for data centers. Smartphones, streaming music,...
Words Matter
I learned something about words a long time ago. When you see the word “could” in a news story, add two words to it: Or not. The same goes for “may.” May happen. May not. That isn't a lesson in grammar. It's a lesson in journalism. CBS News gave us a fine example the...
Who Put the Cameras There?
Solar panel left that powered a Flock camera at 25th and Orange Ave. in Fort Pierce, Fla. Well, this is comforting. St. Lucie County went looking for license-plate cameras along its roads and discovered something you generally hope your government already knows: There...
The White House Has Renamed AI. Everybody Clear?
There are times when Washington solves a problem nobody knew we had. This week it was artificial intelligence. Apparently, AI needed a better name. President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the executive branch will henceforth call Artificial...
America May Be Running the Wrong AI Race
There is an old American habit that goes something like this: If somebody says the Russians are ahead, build a missile. If somebody says the Chinese are ahead, build a data center. Preferably one the size of Rhode Island. We are now spending astonishing sums of money...
Folks, It Still Ain’t About the Data Center Building
Back in June, I wrote a column called “Folks, This Ain’t About the Data Center Building.” The argument was pretty simple. Everybody was staring at the big windowless building going up outside town. I thought people were looking at the wrong thing. The real story was...
Texas Was Bigger on Paper
Texas Was Never Too Small. The Map Was. I was born a few blocks from the Alamo, my family has been in San Antonio since the 1700s, and somewhere along the way I majored in American history and later became an investigative reporter. So when an old map of Texas doesn't...
A Million Data Center Satellites? Do the Math
My recent excursion into putting data centers in space brought an interesting fellow into my orbit. His name is Shubber Ali. He has been involved with the space industry since the 1990s, when he managed KPMG's space consulting practice. For nearly 20 years, off and...
Sure, Just Put the Data Centers in Space
Someone said something recently that I have heard more than once as communities begin pushing back against the enormous appetite of artificial intelligence for electricity, water and land: Why don't we just put the data centers in space? I chuckled. Well, sure. Let's...
The People Building AI Are Worried
Jacob Coxon managed to scare the hell out of a lot of people this week. Coxon isn't some guy sitting in his basement asking ChatGPT whether the machines are coming for him. He worked on artificial intelligence at OpenAI and Anthropic, two companies at the front of the...
Judge Orders Full Review of California Data Center
Rendering of the proposed $10 billion Imperial Valley Computer Manufactoring data center near Imperial, Ca. A Superior Court judge has overturned the county approvals for the project and ordered the development to undergo environmental review as a whole. There is a...
A Silicon Valley Node With Beer
The light comes through one window at Bogeys and Stogeys, and that's where I sit. I don't smoke. This is not necessarily an advantage at Bogeys. Cigarettes. Cigars. Smoke hanging in the darker reaches of the room and wandering through the shaft of Florida daylight...
When the Bartender Became the IT Department
A few years ago, my buddy, Paul, finally surrendered. For years, Paul had resisted the smartphone revolution. He had his flip phone. It made telephone calls. People could call him. He could call them. As far as Paul was concerned, Alexander Graham Bell had pretty much...
Welcome to Lake America; the Canadians Hold the Keys
President Donald Trump has renamed Lake Ontario. It is now, according to the United States government, Lake America. Well, sure. Why not? We have apparently reached the point in international diplomacy where the State Department can be replaced by a label maker. There...
Isaac Cubillos
This isn’t journalism for the polite table.
This is truth with grit under its nails and dirt on its boots.