Just for context, Amazon's GLOBAL data center water use is amounts to: 0.08% of watering U.S. lawns 0.5% of golf course irrigation 0.21% of U.S. toilet flushing 0.17% of California almond farming 0.25% of water wasted by household leaks

AICOA is back, and just as bad as ever! atr.org/aicoa-rears-its-ugly…

More here: x.com/DigitalLiberty/status/…

What about preemption with no bailout?

This morning Senators @SenTedCruz and @RonWyden introduced the JAWBONE Act, taking a zero-tolerance approach to government employees pressuring social media companies to censor disfavored views. This is overdue. commerce.senate.gov/press/re…

Important that we allow providers to fully shift to all-IP networks. Maintaining legacy copper networks have significant costs that can prevent investment, all while providing limited (if any) benefits to consumers. California's rules are effectively preventing retirement.

“Incredibly, there is a debate over how and when to allow broadband providers permission to retire old copper phone lines. This is like having to get permission to replace dial-up phones with today’s handhelds.” - @SteveForbesCEO in @washexaminer washingtonexaminer.com/op-ed…

Government taking stakes in AI firms is not “oversight.” It is "AI socialism". In his new video, @AdamThierer explains why AI socialism would mean: 1. Undermine innovation 2. Politicization, cronyism and regulatory capture 3. A weaker America in the race against China 4. Less freedom for Americans America should lead in AI by unleashing innovation, not nationalizing it.

This preemption effort is an absolute necessity. Such a transformative technology cannot be picked apart by every layer of government, seeking crazy demands, imposing indefensible burdens, and attempting to extract obscene tax bounties.

While I’m no fan of socialism or arbitrary confiscations of wealth, I can see why Bernie Sanders’ proposal (for the government to take a 50% stake in AI companies) resonates, including with many on the right. The CEOs of the leading AI labs have told us repeatedly that they will cause massive job loss. This is not a story that I believe, nor does the data bear it out, but this is what they have told us. Similarly, they have hyped the risks of AI without putting an equal or greater emphasis on the benefits or readily available mitigations. Conservatives have another fear. The employees of the leading labs claim to be philanthropic, but what we’ve seen is massive enrichment of NGOs advancing an agenda at odds with traditional values, fueling a revolution against our cities and communities. Soros-maxxing is not charity in our book. Anthropic and OpenAI have established themselves as Public Benefit Corporations. What could be more in the public benefit than using half the wealth generated by these companies (which trained for free on the collective knowledge of humanity) to pay down the national debt? There is no ideological bias in that philanthropy. Dario and Sam have begun to walk back their claims of massive job loss, but the damage to public trust is done, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. I could almost support the Sanders proposal as a stupidity tax. There’s just one problem. Nationalization of AI will accelerate the corporate-government fusion we’re already sliding toward. Conservatives rightly fear a Central Bank Digital Currency. They ought to be even more concerned about Central Government AI — a system with even more totalistic power over information, decision-making, and human behavior. We saw how social media was weaponized to censor conservatives (including President Trump) in the last Democrat administration. The definition of “trust & safety” expanded to mean protecting the public from supposed psychological harms, micro-aggressions, and disinformation (you know, like hearing conservative ideas or true facts about Covid). That “safety” agenda as applied to AI will be vastly more powerful and Orwellian. AI won’t just moderate posts; it will curate reality — with the ability to rewrite history, enforce ideological conformity, influence policy at scale, mass surveil Americans, and condition the benefits of the many systems it controls on approved behavior. America won’t win the AI race if we beat China but end up with a CCP-style social credit system in the U.S. — and that is the danger as the government becomes more deeply involved in AI development and assumes direct ownership and control. Conservatives are right to fear where this is all headed but ought to think more carefully about how regulations they are flirting with now (that are widely celebrated among those with a long history of lust for Big Government) will be used against them the next time a Democrat administration is in power.

We joined this coalition letter urging Congress to strengthen civil liberties with regards to nondisclosure orders.