Latest / Man in America Podcast / AI Data Centers: The DIRTY SECRET the Media Won't Touch w/ Hakeem Anwar

Transcript

AI Data Centers: The DIRTY SECRET the Media Won't Touch w/ Hakeem Anwar · Man in America Podcast

• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Man in America, a voice of reason in a world gone mad. I'm your host, Seth Holehouse. Thank you for being here. So here's something that honestly kind of stopped me in my tracks when I first saw it. Researchers at Cornell University ran the numbers on how much water AI is gonna consume by 2030, and what they came out with is this.
• 0:34
  By 2030, US AI data centers alone could drain the equivalent of the annual household water of up to 10,000,000 Americans every single year. Right? And that's not the part that got me. The part that got me was this. When my guest today, Hakeem, and his team went and mapped every single data center in The United States, over 3,400 of them, They found that two thirds of the new ones being built right now are sitting in communities that are already water stressed, right, already running low on water.
• 1:04
  So they're not just using water, they're using water from the places that can least afford to lose it. And here's the thing, most of those communities had no idea the facility was coming until after the permits were already approved. The companies aren't required to disclose how much water they're gonna use. They just don't have to tell you. And the mainstream media covering the AI boom, they're asking zero questions about any of this.
• 1:25
  So that's what this conversation is about. My guest today is someone I've actually had on the show before, and I've been wanting to get him back on because honestly, I think that the work he's doing is really, really important. He's a former big tech software engineer. He left the industry during COVID because he looked at what he was building, the surveillance tools, the tracking infrastructure, and all of it, just said, I'm done. I'm not gonna be part of this anymore.
• 1:46
  So who is this person? His name is Hakeem Anwar. And since leaving big tech, Hakeem has been doing a few things. One is that he built this company called Above Phone that gives people practical tools to opt out of the surveillance grid. But the other thing he's doing is research, like real deep months long research.
• 2:04
  So Hakeem and his team spent months mapping every single data center in The United States, not just where they are, but how much water stress already exists in the communities surrounding them, what kind of agreements there were or were not that that were made with local residents, and what's actually being built. Some of these facilities are being compared in size to small cities, and the communities next to them, a lot of them had no say in this. In some cases, they didn't even find out until the permits were already improved. But here's what I really appreciate about Hakeem's work, and this is what's important. It's not just doom and gloom.
• 2:36
  Like, that's not how we do things here in Man in America. Right? There's the darkness, but we're also looking at the good things that are happening. Because the reason I do this is because I believe that you need to understand what's actually happening, but also because I think that we have more power than we're being told. So that's what today's conversation is.
• 2:51
  It's not about scaring you. It's about making sure that you have the actual information the mainstream media is not giving you. Because if you're watching this show, you already know how that works. They cover the AI boom like it's all upside. It's all progress.
• 3:03
  It's exciting future stuff, and they're not asking the questions that Hakeem has been asking. So, yes, I'm glad to have Hakeem back on. It's gonna be a really important conversation. So this is my interview with Hakeem Anwar. Hakeem, it's been far too long since our last discussion, but I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
• 3:23
  So thank you for being here with us today.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Hey, Seth. Thanks for having me back. I hope you've been well. I hope all your viewers have been well, and hope you're thirsty for some some info on data centers.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Info on data centers and clean water. So which they go hand in hand, right? So be before we jump into the the meat of discussion today, you've got a a tech background, and and you understand technology and data centers and the infrastructure, I think, more than most people that I've talked to. And so do just wanna give us just a quick introduction in terms of what your background was and how that gives you the, like, the expertise and the understanding of of looking at what's happening with these data centers and also privacy and digital privacy in general?
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So I was a professional software engineer for five years when I started my career and I was hopping around many things. So I learned about cloud architecture, I learned about web and mobile app development, I learned about robotic process automation, and I did learn about AI as well. So I got exposure to a lot of different fields. And when I decided to quit my job in 2020, when I realized that, hey, what you're doing at work is literally building a digital prison around yourself, so don't do it.
• 4:49
  Those skills really helped me to create this company above phone. And I like to call ourselves like the antithesis to big tech companies like Google and Apple. So we do phones, we do laptops, we do communication services, all private by default and using transparent open source software. We've been doing this for a while. And the reason I'm here today is because our customers were asking us to create an AI service.
• 5:16
  And I didn't know much about AI six months ago. Like how do you actually run an AI service? And so as I started looking into this, was like, okay, hey, there are some risks here. And then of course in late twenty twenty five, we started hearing the news about how ecologically risky these data centers were. And so I just decided I had to learn everything I could about it, and that led me to writing this AI data center map report, which explains everything you could need to know about this issue.
• 5:49
  And I also built a map of all the data centers in The US.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And so and we'll be going into this in detail. This is the the website is aidatacentermap.org. We'll make sure that's linked in the description. So a lot of our discussion will be surrounding this. I'll just give a quick preview, before we kind jump into it.
• 6:08
  Basically, this is part of what you've built is this huge map, right, that shows the data centers. There's a lot more about this that I'm gonna have you explain for us. But before we jump into those details, looking at data centers from, like, the that 100,000 foot view, right, we have seen it seems like almost overnight, data centers have become this really big issue, And that part of that being a big issue is correlated to the fact that they're popping up everywhere. They they're like dandelions and a healthy lawn in the spring. It's just all of a sudden, one day, they're just the lawn's covered, which is a good thing for us.
• 6:47
  Lines. But what do you see? Like, why? Right? Like, that's the obviously, we've been told, okay.
• 6:55
  Hey. There's an AI war. We're competing with, say, China. We've got far more data centers than China does. Like, we're way beyond them.
• 7:03
  People are talking about how, oh, it's it's to handle all the AIs for rendering, you know, the the cat that's driving a go kart, you know, whatever it is.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: But it also there's the aspect of surveillance. Right? Because Mhmm. That's a that that requires a lot of processing power. You know?
• 7:19
  And if you look at that in in conjunction with all of the data coming in from smart devices, flock cameras, all this stuff, there's that aspect as well. So when you see all these data centers, what do you see behind like, what is the bigger picture push for all these data centers?
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So so why why is this happening? How did it happen so fast? And so when you look at the legal climate around data center, one thing becomes really, really obvious. One, everyone wants to be the first to create the world's biggest data center.
• 7:57
  Elon Musk says he wants his AI systems to have more compute than everyone else combined. So does Sam Altman, so does Andy Jassy, so do all these big tech companies. So they're all racing to have the best AI product, they don't want to be left behind the dust. The second thing is that as these started getting building out, there was a real limitation of resources. So one, there's not enough power for these things.
• 8:25
  You mentioned China, they went through their data center boom in 2023 and 2024, and it was driven by greed. Really, everyone wanted to hop on the next big thing. China's economy was suffering, the real estate market was down post pandemic. And so they're like, all right, this is the next big thing. Everyone build data centers.
• 8:47
  Companies that had no business building data centers were building data centers. And now in 2025, the MIT Technology Review came out with an article saying 80% of these data centers are sitting empty. They're not even running. And China is a society where everyone uses AI. 600,000,000 people use AI in China.
• 9:09
  It's an AI first society, right? The US is not even close. So if an AI first society and also I didn't even mention robotics and all these things that they're very far ahead on, if they're doing all that already and they're not using their AI data centers, what the heck are we going to use their AI data centers for?
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: You see, that's like, that's the trillion dollar question. Right? Because if you just those facts that you put out there, okay, 600,000,000 users and from some of the reports that I've seen, I I was the report I saw was comparing how many data centers US has compared to China, not even how many are active in China. Right? So if we're, say, between three and four thousand here, you know, maybe China has, you know, maybe a couple 100 active data centers.
• 9:54
  I'm not sure. But if that's if that's enough processing to give their entire nation AI, then, like you say, what on earth are all these data centers in America being used for?
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Statistics I've got is I like to measure everything in power capacity because it like really gives you scale of how big these things are. So The US has built 50 gigawatts either planned or operational, actually operational so far. So 50 gigawatts is around, you could say it's like 40 to 45,000,000 homes worth of energy that that's using. China is at about 30 gigawatts, so pretty sizable amounts of the nation's power.
• 10:49
  So why are they doing this? Well, I have three theories. One is that they're just greedy and incompetent. And that's a really like it's crazy to think about. Oh, they're spending the data centers we've built thus far in 2025, they spent $2,500,000,000,000 on that.
• 11:13
  So it's just crazy to think about that it could be greed and competence, but I think that plays into it. I think that's a big part of it. The second is that, yes, what you brought up with surveillance, the flock cameras, building this surveillance network. I definitely do sense that that is part of the equation. And we can look at China's surveillance systems, they have the largest network of CCTV cameras on Earth.
• 11:44
  There's about 1.16 cameras to one person in the most major cities in China. So if you think about that, that's ridiculous. There's almost one camera per person. And so they have what is called Skynet, which is the name for the system that watches everything. It makes sure it recognizes the people as they're walking through the city.
• 12:12
  And even that system is not real time. That system is not real time. So it requires an extreme amount of power to run these things. That's a possibility of these data centers. Also as a lot of people don't think about this, our phones are now all running AI.
• 12:31
  If you're using a normal big tech phone there has been AI that's been embedded as a core part of the operating system. Google phones have Google Gemini. Apple phones have Apple intelligence. One day there is an update and now you can't turn it off. Now it's just core part that's baked in.
• 12:50
  So if that AI is looking at what you type or even listening to what you're doing, that's gonna require a massive number of data centers to process that data.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And so okay. So you you see you gave, you know, three reasons. Right? Greed and incompetence, surveillance. And then was the third one AI?
• 13:10
  Is that just kind of consumer AI, or what what was that?
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: The the third third reason is the more conspiratorial reason. So, you know, we have to all put our tinfoil hats on for this one. I mean, the way I see it is that these data centers are it's a coordinated push, right? It's not just the big tech companies, it's also the power companies. Many of the power companies in The US and even the electric grids have passed emergency regulation.
• 13:42
  There were so many interconnection requests to the grid in the Northeast that they didn't even have enough power to supply it. So we're at the point where our grids cannot be reliable because there are so many people applying for it. So you would think that they would push back and try to limit the requests but no, what they did was they passed emergency regulation to pass these requests actually to make it easier and to give data centers new creative ways to build a power plant where you are or do a co location with other providers or bring temporary gas turbines. Right? So all these creative solutions started popping up.
• 14:34
  And so they're they're giving them help.
• 14:37
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• 15:45
  Speaker 2: The less conspiratorial view would be like, okay. The power companies just want to make more money. This is gonna drive up energy costs for everyone. In some parts of The United States, Bloomberg estimated that its electricity prices are tripling in Virginia. So everyone's going to make more money there and economic forces, they can do it, so they're doing it.
• 16:10
  The other thing is just water aspect too. We've already gone through financial trauma here in The United States and in the world. We're not doing good financially, but there's this one thing left which is land and power. So our data center is the final grab at our environment, you know, so that water is inaccessible? Is it easier to lead people through fifteen minute cities if they can't feed themselves?
• 16:41
  And this is a real thing we have to think about.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: And so looking at because that's you made an interesting point there, right, in terms of what these data centers do to rural America. Because a lot of what I'm seeing my, you know, my hometown of of Columbus, Ohio, there's a lot of big data centers there. And but they're they're in, you know, relatively populated areas. I know New Albany is a big area. So they're they're not out in more rural areas, but a lot of what I'm seeing are these big data centers being bit built out near towns with 2,000 people, a thousand people.
• 17:23
  And it's in certain ways, it's almost making those towns, in an uninhabitable be between the noise, the light pollution, the water. And so, you know, so it's kinda like you either you either move further out into the country, or you you kind of just move towards the cities, if you're not gonna end up living like that. And so, yeah, that's that also I think that's a big part of it. Because I try to look at these things, you know, you mentioned the tinfoil hat. Think I have one that's, like, permanently glued to my scalp with everything, with how I look at everything.
• 18:01
  And, you know, I'm seeing, okay, how does this fit in, right, to this more globalist agenda with fifteen minute cities, with, you know, how does it tie into what the WHO is doing, what the WEF is doing, And with, you know, BlackRock and some of these bigger organizations that we know have really been kind of slowly rolling out, a somewhat dystopian way of life, to put it lightly. And so in terms of you you said it's a coordinated push. Now, I know that last year, Trump signed an executive order, about data centers and and kind of, allocating federal land for them and doing some things that open doors for them. But you rarely see it's kinda like when COVID happened. Right?
• 18:48
  It wasn't some just random, organic, every country around the world had the exact same response, the exact same language, safe and effective, two weeks to slow this to slow the spread. We, you know, it was pretty obvious for some people that it was a globally coordinated, event. And so when you're looking at this push for data centers, would you say that it's it's it's centrally coordinated, and where is that push coming from for this?
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: It's coming straight from the top. You know, we can look at, the Stargate project at the beginning of twenty twenty five, which was, Trump, OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank doing a $500,000,000,000 investment into data centers, which just that's just a tiny piece of the total pie, right? But that's a signal to institutional investors and to other big tech companies. And then Trump has also tried to pass legislation that goes even lighter on data centers and tries to make them critical infrastructure so they can escape environmental reviews and historical reviews. And we know he's already done that with other things like the six gs rollout, with the American Broadband Deployment Act.
• 20:08
  Luckily, that was rejected specifically for data centers, but it doesn't really matter because it seems to have gotten the green light, and these companies have so much power in legislative not legislative, legal finesse. They have some of the best lawyers in the world. They weaseled their way in to every part of America. I'm just going to bring up the so this is this is the country's aquifers. Actually, these are the major US aquifers.
• 20:43
  So, you know, you were mentioning earlier that, okay, this is this is something you wanna get out of these areas that are really bad with data centers and move out farther into the country. But for me, like a spiritual realization when I was working on this was, oh, dude, you don't even know how our water system works. Like, I don't even know how our water system works. How does it work? And then it turns out we have these amazing, giant bodies of water under the ground.
• 21:12
  So these these bodies of water under the ground, they don't claim allegiance to a state or even a country. Right? They're just in the ground. And so you see that data centers are more or less, especially the hyperscalers, are located near areas with aquifers, not all of them.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, so the color, like the greens and the yellows, so those are the aquifers?
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. And these are the 13 major aquifers of The United States from the US Geological Service. Oh, interesting. So, you know, like like there's this is just how society is built today.
• 21:50
  Yeah. Like, cities are going to be positioned on top of aquifers, of course. And so the way it works is that the municipality will get their water from the aquifer, and then data centers, heavy industry agriculture located on top of these aquifers will be able to drill directly into them and take their water. Now what most people don't realize is The United States is in severe groundwater depletion. This is the World Resources Institute for water depletion in The United States, and you can see that some of the worst places in The US for data centers are also severely water depleted.
• 22:34
  So I wanted to build this map as a resource for people to get an understanding of what's happening in their area. And what this map is doing that no other map is doing right now is actually giving you a calculation of water displacement and power displacement. And I've tried to make it as scientific as possible. I'm not making the numbers up here, I actually have talked to academics and looked at the studies that they were citing and given you linked papers here. So this is the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Report where they basically break down, hey here are the averages that we think that data centers are using because they are so secretive and they will not measure their water usage.
• 23:24
  They typically hide behind these efficiency metrics. And so yeah, we had to like what I realized is okay, if they're not gonna tell us how much water they're using, let's make our own best estimate. So I think the map does a pretty good job of that and it's really good resource for you to use to understand what's happening in your area. One more thing is that the next phase of this is I'm going to be collating a list of all of the water activism orgs in The United States because it's these activism orgs which actually some people are surprised to see that these are typically more left leaning, progressive, Democrat orgs that are standing up to these data centers and getting them kicked out. But they're on the ground doing something about it.
• 24:12
  So this is one of the issues. It's very special that I could ideally unite the left and right, together against this one issue. So yeah.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Okay. So currently so I'll I'll put the map on my screen because I wanna ask you a few questions about it. And so zooming in, so again, know, if you go to the website, just simply know how to get there, aidatacentermap.org, then you go here, explore the map, and you have this little drop down here, we can select what we want to look at, right. So, in here, we're looking at current water stress. Before, you're looking at the major US aquifers.
• 24:47
  Right? Which is kinda cool because I I looked at the area that I live, and it's it's a pretty decent area. And and we're actually we're sitting right on an aquifer, which which is good because, you know, we've got groundwater about 200 feet below us, and it's we just had it tested recently, so we're redoing our water filtration, and it's really healthy water. But in looking at the, the current water stress, this is interesting, especially because if you look and you kind of zoom out, right? We're looking at obviously the darker, the red, you get into the most severe.
• 25:19
  Now, is it that it's unknown, right, where it's a gray color, that's kind of, NA?
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, sometimes there's no data there. Also, just wanna mention these are not like real world on the ground measurements. These are hydrological models based on like rainfall and seeing how much water demand is in an area. So I just wanted to say that, but it's it's it's a useful thing to see, you know, what what areas are in danger, actually.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Okay. And so if we come into here, for instance, I think that we're looking at here is out, this is Scottsdale, Arizona. I mean, obviously, you can see now, it is a much more arid climate, so water is is gonna be an issue out west, obviously. But, you know, some of these areas that you're looking at is extremely, extremely high in terms of the severity of the water stress because so let's take a step back and, the data centers in America. Let's look at how much water they're using, right?
• 26:15
  So how many do you have any kind of numbers in looking at how much water Americans, know, kind of the average family home uses combined in America versus how much water these data centers are using?
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't have 10,000 foot up numbers or numbers like that. Okay. I try to keep it focused. So I'll tell you my methodology. Sure.
• 26:36
  So a data center is typically using anywhere. So a hyperscaler actually like we also need to make the distinction between, like, normal data centers, which have been around forever, and then hyperscalers, which are using 100 megawatts. Right? Those are the black triangles on the map. Oh, okay.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: If zoom in to, say, Scottsdale or Phoenix, right, you can see there's a handful of these hyperscalers. There's Stark infrastructure, that's a hyperscaler, here's another one. So you can Though
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: you could see on the left in that panel, how much water per day that it's using. So that's the estimate that we have, that's based off the total power that it's using.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: So this little data center is using approximately 140,000 gallons a day of water.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: That that is a reasonable estimate based on, current academic standards in the face of this data center not supplying that information itself. That makes sense? Yes. It does. It's like that that's like a that's like a fair assumption until they give us more more information.
• 27:46
  So like with with data centers, there's a lot of there's a lot of, like, nuance. Right? It's like, okay. How much water is the data center using? Well, what time of year is it?
• 27:56
  What part of The US is it in? What cooling technology are they using? There's so many variables that go into it. So I did try to standardize it. And what I actually think is that this is an underestimate because I was only able to get the amount of power for about a fifth of these data centers.
• 28:17
  So it's not actually calculating all the different data centers in the area. It's just the ones we have power estimates for. But I think it's a pretty reasonable assumption because there has been no data given to show that these data centers are using less. In fact, if you look at Google and Meadows own sustainability reports, you look at the fine print, they're not even measuring how much water they're using. They're not even measuring.
• 28:46
  There's no water meter. Is ridiculous because every house has a water meter, right? Like they have one for us not for the data centers. They don't even meter them. There's been surveys less than a third of facilities are measuring their their water usage.
• 29:01
  There's no business justification, right? So it's ridiculous and these sustainability reports they'll use estimates, they'll use projections but they won't actually tell you how much water is being used. And I think that's incredibly suspect. So this is my best estimate. If someone has a better one, do let us know but I think it's time we demand transparency when it comes to their water usage.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Okay. And so actually, there's one thing I had from some notes from your report. Looking here, it said that, projected US AI water consumption by 2030 could reach seven thirty one to 1,100,000,000 cubic meters per year, comparable to the annual household water use of six to 10,000,000, Americans. Okay, I see there. So it's okay, that makes sense.
• 29:49
  And so, so basically, what we're looking at though is that, obviously, these are a draw on the power grid, but the and obviously, they have their own kind of environmental pollution they're causing. We'll talk about heat and how they change temperatures, in a second here. But the water usage, this is a big one. And this I just saw a video this morning, I think, of someone out in the Rio Grande, river has dried up in New Mexico, and highlighting that, and kind of tying it to what was happening with the data centers over there. And so, we have these huge aquifers underwater that I'm sure have their own natural ways of being replenished.
• 30:25
  But when you have these areas where these aquifers are already probably running pretty low, especially out in the desert if they have a, you know, a drought or whatever. I'm sure the water the aquifers are suffering. So, I mean, it's kinda like what happens if those aquifers just dry up. Right? Because, you know, you have entire cities, you know, probably millions of people that are living off of the water coming from these aquifers.
• 30:52
  And so if these data centers start just sucking up all that water, it's like, you know, what you can't truck in 200,000 gallons of water every day. I mean, to me, this seems like it's kind of pointing to a pretty dire situation.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. If if things go along unchecked I mean, the I think the one hope we have is that a lot of these projects were just pure speculation. They can't find people to pay for them, and they fail.
• 31:19
  So I do have that bit of hope. But we also need to push back on on the ground level. And and you're right. Like, a lot of really bad things happen if these data centers are really pulling millions of gallons a day. Think like a subsidence, which is, sinkholes opening underneath the ground.
• 31:38
  Right? This water used to provide water. It's heavy. It's providing structures for what's happening underneath the ground. Now suddenly there's empty space.
• 31:47
  You're gonna start to see breakages on on the surface and holes and holes opening up. So that's one thing. But the more important thing that's probably going to impact you is the water table dropping. So it's like when you're on farmland, I think you have a homestead. I'm sure a lot of your listeners have a homestead or know someone who does.
• 32:09
  You have to drill a well which goes maybe a few 100 feet down and there's water at some point, it hits water and you go down a little bit past that. So as this water table is sinking, eventually it will go past the farthest depth of your well, and then your well is going to run dry. Now, it costs a lot of money to drill a well, right? This could hurt farmers. It could hurt a lot of ranchers who depend on these wells.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Sorry, quick point there. Back in Ohio, one of the houses that we lived in that we had bought, it was on city water. Even though we're out in the country, it was still in neighborhood kind of area, and it was on city water, and the water was just it was like swimming in a swimming pool. Like, was so chlorinated and filthy. So we drilled a well.
• 32:53
  And I think the well was a 175 feet, and it cost, I think it was, like, $12 to drill the well and run and and hook it up. I mean, it was it's it's it's not it's not cheap to to do Which
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: that was a good deal.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That was about five years ago, out in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. So maybe that was, but, yeah, it's it's expensive.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: It's not cheap, and it puts you know, imagine having to incur this expense as a farmer and you're not able to do it. Your farm is going to go out of business. So going back to that original, we see Bill Gates and BlackRock buying up all this farmland. Hey, maybe this is another piece of the puzzle of data centers just use water. Maybe small sized farmers and properties would be able to use it.
• 33:39
  That's honestly, yeah, like that's really bad not being your farms not being able to use water. But even more is our environment, which is like what happens to our country when the levels and creeks start to drop or levels and lakes start to drop. This is this is nature we're talking about here. Right? These aquifers are normally able to under the ground, there's this whole network.
• 34:03
  Right? So sometimes they will overflow into rivers. They're replenishing the rivers, rivers are replenishing them. There's this exchange that happens. So when the water level drops in a river, then you have this effect to the edge of the river, the riparian zone, which is, really important for cleaning the water.
• 34:24
  There's a lot of water loving plants that filter the water. They're building new soil. This is where the habitats for most, animals are. So on like one hand, you have these globalists saying, hey, we need to bike to work to, treat our environment better. But on the other hand, when it comes to these data centers, they're like, progress, you know, let's destroy the environment and then AI will tell us how to fix it on the other end.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And so, I wanna talk about how these data centers affect the temperature surrounding them, because this is also another big thing. Again, you know, we've been they've been scaring us with global warming for so long. Global warming, global warming, we gotta you know, the cows farting and, you know, don't don't don't focus on John Kerry's jet or, you know, whatever. But, so how do these data centers affect the temperatures?
• 35:15
  Because I believe your map also helps, kind of correlate that data, right?
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. If you if you want to pull up the map and, take us to take us back to Phoenix in that neighborhood. I think it's called Avondale.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I think down here, right?
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: That's where you're at. Yeah. And so just you see where those black triangles, if I click on the center of those black triangles.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, Right here.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just click in the middle there.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: So this is your Avondale, right? You see there's what? Within this area, there's five
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: them. Okay, so we click here.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Just anywhere in there, right? So it's drawing a pretty short 10 kilometer circle around it. And so if you click on the question mark on the left hand side. So the Statahat Island effect was an international group of researchers. They started looking at land surface temperature from space and plotting it around data centers.
• 36:16
  They found within two months, the average temperature would increase by two degrees Celsius, around four to five Fahrenheit. So this effect compounds with more data centers. And they looked at some of the hottest places in the world like Brazil and Mexico, where there's these clusters of data centers being built and they found temperatures up to nine Celsius, an increase up to nine Celsius. So they're taking their formulas and their paper and trying to apply it on the map. How close is the point you clicked on the map?
• 36:54
  How many data centers is it close to? And what is the average temperature rise going to be based on their model? And mind you it's capped. So I think there it might be hard to see it, you might have to scroll down a little bit more. But at the bottom it says, there we go, 16, a little bit farther down if you could.
• 37:15
  There we go. The total heat island is 16.4 degrees Fahrenheit hotter. So that's actually a cap. That's the maximum effect they saw in the study. I thought it would be responsible just to put at that.
• 37:30
  But it's actually more if you look at that because there are so many data centers in that area. Now this is something I want to be proven wrong about this. I'm just trying to follow the math here, but I want to be proven wrong about this. And this is easy, right? Like anyone in your audience could comment on this.
• 37:47
  I'm in Phoenix. I'm going go drive to there to see how hot it is. But if this is actually happening like that, that is ridiculous. And the reason why the data that a heat island effect happens is because these AI chips are literally getting as hot as the surface of the sun. They are performing trillions on trillions of operations per second on a chip that has billions of transistors on it.
• 38:16
  This generates extreme amounts of heat, which is then cooled down by water, it goes through piping underneath the ground, and then it's released into the air, right, as steam. So that's where the water goes and the heat does expand outwards. So land surface temperatures are gonna rise around these things.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Which is just crazy. Because, again, if if you look at this, you know, in already hot area, I I mean, I know that, you know, of course, if if you look and think about all the different, you know, inconvenient truth and all the different, you know, kind of propagandists that's been thrown at us, they'll say, oh, well, you know, a rise in the temperature by, you know, two degrees, will cause this kind of effect to the ecosystem. All of a sudden, the polar bears are dying, and the whales are, they're dying, and, you know, it's like, it's catastrophic. But if you look at this, I mean, even if it was a five degree increase, right, because you could see it's like, make I I can see where your data is coming from. It's if each of these little points is contributing to within that area, you know, roughly, say, five, six mile radius, it's increasing.
• 39:23
  What happens if you put them all in there? It's like if you have a you have an empty room and you have one space heater versus 10 space heaters, that room, it's not like, okay, well, it's not gonna go more than three degrees beyond because one space heater increases three degrees, it compounds. And so this is something that is, I just it's just so shocking that there's not every major environmental organization or all the people that were screaming, like, where's the Obamas on this? Right? People that just hammered us with environmental protection stuff.
• 39:54
  Where are they at with this?
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Dead silent. Dead silent. And that's what we'll be unless we we start to do something about this. I I hate to be alarmist, but, you know, I I do think this issue is important enough because, like, it's our environment. If we go past a certain point, you know, we were talking about the aquifers earlier, how do they recharge?
• 40:18
  Well, hundreds of years to recharge because it has to rain or water has to be over the right places that it can actually seep back into the ground. If we wanna do that naturally, that takes a long time. It takes hundreds of years. Right? So when they when they evaporate our clean drinking water and send it off the atmosphere, that is messing us over.
• 40:42
  That is water we're not going to get back for a very long time. So I would say if there's one issue that you should care about right now, it is the data centers. And honestly, it might require you to get out of your comfort zone because like I mentioned, I'm sure a lot of your audience is definitely wide awake. Some of them might be right leaning. But it's the left that is currently organizing and fighting back.
• 41:07
  In my report, I have done a legal life cycle of a data center and I've looked at data centers that were stopped early on to their approval cycle. And there's like San Marcos in Texas, for example, got a $2,000,000,000 data center kicked out of their area. So it's like we have to pay attention to these things and understand how the legal process works if we want to do anything. And soon this map will be able to connect you to your local activist orgs.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: So I want to play a short, video, actually, that I had done some research on this that, it's a minute and nineteen seconds, but it talks about earlier, you talked about the kind of lawfare involved in this. And you're looking at sometimes these small towns, they really can't stand up even with the right vote. They can't stand up against the developers or the companies behind these. And so it's really there there like we saw with that huge data center out in Utah, where they they they basically kind of overrode what the general public wanted in that region. So this little video kind of walks through a specific case where that happened in Michigan, but also shows that there have people have been finding ways to still fight back against that.
• 42:16
  So I'll I'll play this really quickly for us.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: I hate that it's come to this, but small towns now need to fight billion dollar corporations just to control their own land. A massive $16,000,000,000 data center built for OpenAI and Oracle is being forced onto a small farming town in Michigan called Saline Township. By the way, that town only holds 3,000 people. In September, the town board voted four to one to reject the data center. Residents packed the meetings, they put no data center signs all over the town, and they did everything a community is supposed to do.
• 42:42
  Two days later, developer of the data center sued the town. The lawsuit claimed that the town was illegally blocking development by refusing to rezone their farmland. But sadly, the town was told they wouldn't be able to afford to fight the lawsuit. Within weeks, the town that had voted no was legally forced to allow the thing they voted against. Construction vehicles then rolled in.
• 42:59
  Right now, seeing stories like these, it may feel like your vote does not matter if a billion dollar company decides it wants your land, but here's what should give us hope. At least 19 Michigan towns have already passed laws to block data centers after seeing what happened to Saline, a resident who lives just yards from the site is in court fighting the settlement, and the state attorney general is appealing the power approval. Data centers are no longer becoming a quiet takeover. People are now paying attention. I use the conscious app to see what else companies behind these projects are doing from Oracle to OpenAI and many more.
• 43:26
  The more people who see what's going on, the more power moves back to where it belongs. Every single one of these projects depends on towns not noticing until it's too late. The more of us who know the playbook, the harder it becomes for them to run it.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: So I thought that was just a good example of both sides of the of the story in terms of the fight against this.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That you know, I actually hadn't seen that case before. There's there's so many of these projects, but, yeah, that that's extremely heavy handed to sue a town to take it over. But there are so many sneaky tactics that these data centers are using to do that. So you're right.
• 44:02
  Communities are I'm sure once they're aware, they start to resist. But the thing is these data centers will come in with code names. They'll take your county commissioner out. They'll take the planning and zoning board out. They'll take them to the site.
• 44:21
  They'll wind them, they'll dine them. They say, hey, this could come to your town. And they try to get these things passed in before the public has a chance to comment. So in that video, they mentioned the rezoning hearing. That rezoning hearing is one of the most important pieces before agricultural or residential land can be industrial.
• 44:41
  And it doesn't need to apply for so many permits to build giant million square foot houses or industrial water pipes or national gas pipes. And so this is one of the only processes in a data center's life cycle where the community can speak up and it's on the legal record and that the county commissioning or the planning and zoning office have to listen to you. It's really one of the only pieces. So sometimes you do see data centers being kicked out at that point in time.
• 45:13
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• 45:48
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• 46:45
  All the links and information are in the description below. You mentioned before one of the big uses was, the AI, and also the AI is natively installed on phones and even computers now. I think Apple and Microsoft computers, they're operating systems. You know, they're capturing screenshots of everything you're doing. They're using all this information.
• 47:05
  It's a huge amount of processing in in in these data centers. You also see that a lot of data centers are Meta. They're Microsoft. You know, it's the same companies running OpenAI, right, Oracle. And so how does because I know that you're you're very tuned into the phone world of this.
• 47:22
  And so I also know that the phones, a, there's the processing through the AI, but also there's the data collection. And that data collection is then being sent to these data centers to be analyzed, sorted, whether they're, you know, looking at shopping trends or building out your social credit score. Right? And so how does that affect, you know, the average person carrying a, you know, Google Android phone or whatever, or an iPhone? How does that tie into this system?
• 47:52
  And I know that you've got your above phone. So how is that how's that different from what these other phone systems are doing in terms of plugging into this giant surveillance grid?
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The AI is now the new normal in in big tech phones. So whether you're using your Windows computer or your iPhone, every AI company has done the same thing, which is, hey, AI is the next big thing. Let's go ahead and update your phone with our AI service. Apple's got Apple Intelligence, Google's got Gemini.
• 48:27
  It gets integrated into the part of the operating system itself. In the report that I've written that you can download at aidatacentermap.org, it breaks it down how they actually rolled it out. But typically these AI systems have a level of trust in the operating system that gives them direct access. So it's not like an app on the phone. It literally is a part of your phone.
• 48:52
  It cannot be removed. There is no company that has allowed you to completely remove the AI from the phone. So a lot of these companies have some AI processing on the device, but they also all use cloud as well. And as I've seen from researching mobile privacy for years and years is that they're not telling you the majority of what they're consuming on your phone. It's everything that you're typing on the keyboard.
• 49:24
  It could be everything that you are installing from the App Store. It could be your microphone permissions.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Your location data.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So the features you get on the surface, which is like, hey, we'll help you reply to your text messages really easily. Here you go. Here's a button. Click.
• 49:44
  There you go. That's just what you see on the surface. You don't know how much data they're actually collecting in the back end. So this is here. It's across Android, Google, Samsung, even the Chrome browser, Google Chrome's browser, Meta in Facebook, X, AI is all built into it.
• 50:06
  So simply by using one of these platforms, you are justifying the use of data centers. There are alternatives though, and that's where I bring up above phones. If you've heard of degoogled phones, your audience probably has. And I'm thankful that Seth has invited me for a second time to talk about this solution because it really matters. This is a phone that does not have any big tech in it at all, meaning that there's no AI layer, there's no digital ID layer, there's not even an ads layer.
• 50:39
  And you can still do everything that you would normally do on your phone. Here I'm pulling up the private version of the Google App Store where you can log in through an Anonymous account. So you can see, hey, are a lot of the apps that you would use normally. They work on this phone, but you don't need a centralized AI layer watching everything that you're doing. So you can get the apps that you normally use and love.
• 51:05
  You can bring the cell service you're already using no matter where you are, whether you're in The US or international, this will work. And additionally, are alternatives to the things you normally use. Instead of YouTube, there's something called Newpipe, which will actually allow you to download the videos directly to your phone. And again, there's no ads. You have alternatives for communications like video conferencing and email and encrypted messaging.
• 51:33
  Those are all ready to go for you to use out of the box. So there are solutions, and I encourage people to start checking it out.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: And so basically, so, your the website, this will be in the description, abovephone.com/seth. And so this is basically your one of your solutions to this, which I always enjoy talking to people that are solutions people. Like, I I try to be that's what this podcast is. We're we're building a private community. There's there's a lot of things that we're trying to do to create solutions.
• 52:05
  And so I know that the phones are very central to the data centers, but also just to the surveillance grid. Like, the, you know, tracking and tracing, digital ID, the the phones become a key part of that. And so, basically, so an above phone, if I understand correctly, is that, you know, you've got these devices. These are Google phones, right, Android phones, and the Pixel, you know, Pixel phones, etcetera. But then you're in essence, you're kind of flashing them, wiping them clean.
• 52:34
  You're putting in your own custom operating system on there that is this massive security and privacy, you know, kind of aspect to it. Is that correct?
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. There's, It's using hardware that's already out there and then we're installing our own operating system on it, which has zero connections to big tech. That's really the major threat to your privacy are these big tech companies. So these phones do not connect to them at all.
• 53:05
  And it turns out it is possible to use a phone without needing those companies. It's kind of a trick. They think they try to make you think you need to rely on them, but hey, it turns out you can still use, you can still navigate around the world. You can still use your GPS without needing it. You can still make phone calls.
• 53:26
  You can still make group texts without needing it. You can even do things on this phone that you couldn't normally on a big tech phones as both Apple and Google are locking down their app ecosystems. So if there is an app that comes out that they don't like and they don't approve of, they can literally pull it from your phone and you don't have access to your app or your data anymore. I think that this is something I've been talking about for a very long time, but we're starting to get into the years where there will actually be actions taken against people and their phones. Like we'll get to start to see some of these back doors that already exist.
• 54:05
  Actually, and we didn't even get to talk about this, but if we're to believe what these data center developers are saying, they think that there's going to be a giant cyber AI war, right? Where a lot of our current infrastructure will be compromised. Now, do you think that big tech will be a part of that? I personally think that it will and that people who are using these services really need to think about owning their own data on their own devices. So again, there's no reliance to a cloud system.
• 54:40
  There's no reliance to any third parties. You truly own the apps and you own your data when you use this phone.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: And so if you're using one those phones, let's say you're an AT and T subscriber, is it as simple as just you get your you get an above phone, and you can just add your number to it? Can You basically kind of port your number over and your service over to it. So you don't have to have, like, a special service. Is that correct?
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You can you can bring your own service, whether you're using AT and T or T Mobile or even if you're in another country. That's one of the best things about this phone. It works anywhere you're at in the world. So you take your existing service, you might have the physical SIM card or you might have the eSIM, you can get that activated on this phone and then boom, now your text messages and your data works on the above phone.
• 55:27
  And just to bring it up on screen again, you know, it's normal phone. If you've used Android, you've used something very similar to above phone. So you can search the web. Man in America. Here, let me use my voice search.
• 55:43
  Man in America. Welcome to America. That's good too.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Man
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: in America. Here we are. Yeah. See, it's it's fast. There's no ads, your battery life is longer, and yeah, there's alternatives for pretty much everything that you would normally do.
• 56:05
  So it's going to take many of us working together, supporting these independent open source ecosystems so that these companies, Google, Apple, Oracle, OpenAI, so these companies don't get any more power than they already have. Isn't that why we're in this mess in the first place? So go to abovephone.com Seth if you're interested or if you've been talking to your friends and they're like, Hey, my phone's breaking apart. I need a new one. And tell them about this project.
• 56:38
  You're not just supporting us. You're not just supporting open source software, but you're also supporting Seth as well because we've got this partnership. And this is a really big deal. I also just want to mention that if you get a phone or laptop from us, we have a free hour long support call with a real live human. We're not replacing our people with AI.
• 57:00
  We're not replacing anyone with AI. So you have real hands on support. We'll help you take the data from your old phone and move it to your new phone. And, yeah, I think Seth's got one too, and he's gone through the process.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And so thank you for sharing that. I'll make sure that all these links are in the description, and the, again, the, the big one we talked about obviously is the AI, the AI data map. And so, yeah, just, just get this out to people. Like, this is, because I've done a lot of shows on this recently, and I've been looking for tools, and I haven't come across anything even close to this and helping people understand exactly what these data centers are.
• 57:39
  And I think the big one is just that it's really useful just to come in and look at where you live and look at what's happening around you. Like, that's a that's a just a key one. Because again, like I said, I I used to live in Columbus. I we almost bought a house in, you know, these areas. I mean, we were looking at houses, we're looking at buying a house in Dublin, Ohio, right?
• 58:02
  And so you look at right here, now that I see this, it's like, oh, okay, yeah, this is, this is a medium risk. There's already a bunch of data centers that are popping up, and this is just helpful information. And thankfully, we know, where we're at, we've somehow managed to pick a good place. We're over at Aquifer. We're, you know, away from any data centers, but, this is this is really important.
• 58:23
  And so I think the key, is just education, getting more people, you know, behind this. I think you made a good point too. This is a this is a nonpolitical issue. Right? We we have to look actively for these issues that can unite Americans.
• 58:37
  Like, to me, another another one is this children, the exploitation of children, you know, child sex trafficking. Hey, that's one that it doesn't matter what your political view is. Let's come together on this. Right? And so this is one of those big ones.
• 58:49
  So I just yeah.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: Let's do something about it. Absolutely. Exactly. So, yes, so the hopes are within a few weeks, we're going to have a way for you to contribute information to the map because you're on the ground. If you're in your town, if you're in Ohio, if you're in Texas, if you're in California, you are the one who can submit the Freedom of Information Act request to get us this information.
• 59:13
  Because right now these data centers are not publishing information about how much water they're using, their cooling towers, which municipality that they're working with. And we literally do have to file these requests to start gathering intelligence about it. So in the coming weeks there'll be a way for you to contribute your information to the map and also a way to plug in to local groups in your area. Someone help me come up with a name for this, but it'll be like adopt a data center. So you'll see which region is doing stuff for data centers and hopefully get involved because this is like exactly what you said, Seth.
• 59:49
  This is something that can unite us.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. Well, Hakeem, thank you for obviously doing everything that you're doing. It's it's really important work, you know, compiling information, making it easy for people to understand what's happening, but also building solutions. So I encourage you to check out your data center website and also the above phone, make sure the links are in the description. And yeah, thank you.
• 1:00:10
  It's always great, you know, speaking with you and keep fighting the good fight. And I look forward to, doing this again a couple of months and coming back and seeing, you know, where how things have progressed by then.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: It's my pleasure, Seth. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for everyone who's watching.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Of course. Thank you so much.