[24843] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Script of my national radio tech report on
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Tue Oct 27 11:08:28 2026
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2026 07:46:42 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
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This is the script of my national radio tech report yesterday regarding
Google's massive data center abuse in Finland, and plans to coerce
people in the U.S. to use less electricity so AI can guzzle more. As
always there may have been minor wording variations from this script as
I presented this report live on air.
- - -
So as we know more than 75% of Americans are opposed to data centers
very much on a bipartisan basis. But what about other countries? Well,
over in Finland, like here in the U.S. where the federal government is
very much pro-big tech and pro data centers, the attitude of the
national government in Finland is very similar in terms of data center
boosting.
And this has apparently given AI Big Tech firms like Google a lot of
confidence. So much so that perhaps they feel that obeying the law
over there is optional -- you know, who's gonna stop them? And what
happened is that a lot of the Finnish people are very upset with
Google. You see, it turns out that Google went ahead and clearcut
something like 250 THOUSAND trees for a monstrous data center project
in one location, plus apparently another 150 THOUSAND trees at another
location for another data center.
They reportedly took the topsoil too and left a horrible and
disgusting muddy mess. Thing is, this was apparently ILLEGAL. Google
had reportedly been ordered NOT to proceed with those operations, and
they just went ahead and did them anyway. And when confronted on this,
they said essentially, "OOPS!, oh gee golly we misunderstood." Big
Brain Google apparently didn't understand what "STOP" means. This also
displaced all the wildlife that depended on that ecosystem.
There was a time when Google seemed to be at least somewhat genuinely
concerned about their environmental impact. Not any more. Google has a
new rather devious plan for here in the U.S. as well. They've just
announced what they're calling a Virtual Power Plant to help feed the
ever growing power needs of their ever expanding network of enormous
AI data centers. What they want, is to get consumers and businesses to
use less electricity -- you know, like using less air conditioning as
everyone tries to survive the nightmarish heat of ever hotter summers,
so that more electricity will be available for Google AI to guzzle
down.
The plan is to offer some sorts of discounts or payments in exchange
for giving up your electricity to Google AI, putting many people in
the position of choosing between summer heat stroke or feeding their
families. Because of course, most of this AI garbage isn't needed in
the first place. A new study just out claims that the economic
benefits of AI outside of the tech industry itself, are pretty much
zero.
The AI hype machine is going full steam, so now Google wants to
convince you to suffer the heat in the name of AI. It's obvious that
Big Tech still feels that by owning the politicians, Big Tech owns the
world, but whether or not that continues to be the case is still -- we
can hope -- ultimately up to us.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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