I'm writing this post partially as an indirect response to a YouTube video, "Does ESOTERICA use AI?", under the channel "ESOTERICA". It's not so much a video meant for *watching*, as much as it is a video for *listening*, to the script being recited by the creator which is very well-written. In the monologue and the script it's based on, he makes many poetic references to William Blake, and draws on his deeper knowledge of the occult to explain why, rather bluntly and dispassionately, that AI is a "demonic" force sucking away the life of humanity. More importantly, he makes an official statement, or announcement, that the creator of "ESOTERICA" forbids himself unwaveringly from EVER using AI to produce any piece of content whatsoever on his channel. Scripts, thumb-nails, etc. will all be made without its use. The video, as of April 28th, 2026, is publicly available here:
youtu.be/v0VZvMmelN4?si=EeWs3laOjs1h1tid
Although the video is definitely worth a listen, currently I'm not as interested in the subject of AI and its implication for art, humanity, etc. as much as I'm interested in the *class relations* for which this video is a microcosm of, and an expression of. Specifically the creator of "ESOTERICA" briefly mentions *another* subject that's been weighing on me very heavily recently, which is the growth and production of large data-centers across the United States. He says:
"The material reality is that these data centers are planted, without consent, in largely working-class neighborhoods, like the one that I grew up in"
It needs to be noted that the production of data centers in the US is nothing new, and AI isn't the sole contributing factor contributing to their production. But why this is important is because to me, there hasn't yet been any kind of cold, cohesive, thorough assessment of what implications the data center production has for the future of humanity in the long term (e.g. the next 50-100 years). Nor has there been any objective assessment, any predictive analysis, of the circle of Silicon Valley elites slowly gaining power in the White House through its control of alternative media and back-channels to advisors like Elon Musk and JD Vance.
Rather, the response to this ongoing "coup" (for lack of a better term) of America's productive force, has been, on the surface, extremely moralistic, vacillating between extreme levels of nihilistic fatalism and violent subjectivism which is historically highly characteristic of the petty-bourgeoisie. In this case it happens to be related to the fact that alternative media and the mainstream media is *itself* dominated by petty-bourgeois urban intellectuals who've become comfortable with passively working W2 jobs and accumulating 401ks, while doing the same work that *AI is meant to replace*. Unfortunately, it's a tall order to task these same journalists, whose source of income relies on the suppression of AI technology, with the task of writing objectively about America's ongoing economic development -- to write about big tech without resorting to opportunistic moralism and fear-mongering out of basic desperation.
This is not to argue that the ongoing situation in America's economy isn't tragic; The past half century of exporting finance capital through the IMF and World Bank, for America to extract rents from the rest of the world has contributed to a trade deficit that none of America's elites have any ability or intention to solve. It's tragic that America's been so deindustrialized to the point where the only remaining opportunity for the industrial working class is to build data centers. It's tragic that these data centers are consolidating mass surveillance data which will be used enslave the same people building them. But nothing I mentioned so far really tells us what's actually, really, going to happen.
To do that, a serious circumspect effort needs to be made to separate the objective from the subjective -- separate the inevitable from matters of personal agency -- and I'm hoping to lay the groundwork for that task in writing this.
Firstly, we need to figure out where these data centers are actually coming from to figure out where this is all headed. It isn't just AI: What they actually represent is a *centralization* of the productive capacity of computer technology into large warehouses. Before these things existed, a large amount of computing was relatively decentralized: If I wanted to start a website, I would have to buy a computer, fill out some forms online to buy a domain and then register it to the IP address that points to where my computer's sitting (usually an office or garage). Now, because of data centers, all I have to do is make an account on AWS or Google Cloud without buying a computer, and I simply pay a fee for the computing power "on the cloud". The "cloud" being used in question is no longer *somebody's* computer, as much as a small slice of a larger computer in a giant warehouse.
This means that data centers are an objective development. The centralization of computing power to service luxuries that people increasingly take for granted like websites, social media, video games, and even more practical business software for keeping files on medical patients, business clients, and quantitative logistics concerning trades, schedules, and credits. The demand for all of this is objective and can't be done away with trivially. What hype bubbles do, such as AI and cryptocurrency, is *accelerate* the development of these data centers above and beyond typical and practical essential market demand. This is being done in addition to government defense spending on projects like Palantir, Project Maven, etc.
Everyone already knows data centers are impacting the electrical grid as well; Their objective growth and profitability is directly restricted by the ability for electrical utilities to service them, and even now power companies *can't* service them without increasing the price of electricity[1]. But the data companies' thirst for power is also driving the development of *microgrids*, grids that are entirely privately owned that exclusively connect the centers to their own power lines and power plants, all owned by the data companies. This in turn drives the demand for special voltage transformers, and small-scale load generators that are much easier to deploy than the large, heavily-regulated behemoth power plants and transformers that we've traditionally seen throughout the 20th century.
And this transformation of the grid itself, this *decentralization* into microgrids with smaller, more plentiful, transformers and generators supplying smaller, more limited areas with electricity *is an objective development as well*. At the same time as data centers are driving the demand for smaller, more modular transformers and load generators, the increasing threat of drone warfare to the domestic peace (a.k.a. "national security") means that decentralizing the grid is already necessary. As it stands now, there's very little that a developed country could do to defend itself from a smaller, rogue state with a very specialized supply/production chain from using drones to take down the developed country's electrical grid. There's nothing to prevent a country from having siege laid to it by shutting down critical elements of the grid. So grid decentralization is going to be a necessity in the coming century whether we like it or not, and the data centers only accelerate the demand for incremental innovations (e.g. smaller transformers and generators) that will facilitate this inevitable infrastructural overhaul.
This should be enough to lay the groundwork for what is objective about this, and what cannot be undone. But this doesn't mean that the ongoing development caused by data centers isn't contributing to unsustainable excess. Excess which is driven by the caprice of our elites.
The excessive banking credit given to AI companies by private finance capital on the one hand, and the excessive defense spending from the state for surveillance programs on the other[2], are contributing to an uneven development within the country, where the vast majority of transformer and generator innovations are going to be misdirected to securitizing the electricity supply of these data centers as opposed to securitizing the general electrical supply of the general population. This means that in extreme events, such as natural disasters and civil wars (though more especially, the drone warfare kind), the general population is at a much greater risk than the data centers of losing power, giving the latter a pretty significant amount of leverage over the former; The general computing infrastructure which is now increasingly centralized and no longer controlled by small businesses, and the decentralization of the grid into the hands of the data companies, will make locals increasingly reliant on these data centers to conduct business. These data centers are now leviathans whose tentacles stretch into our source of power and information. **That's** the real risk that journalism so far has only obfuscated and mystified. This is really the only thing that concerns the industrial working class, and everything else is mystification and obfuscation.
[1] data on St. Louis FRED shows that electricity prices were virtually the same throughout all of 2010-2020, but have started to accelerate in price since the pandemic, when GPT was made public. However, it's worth noting that there's a New York Times article where they argue other factors are driving up electrical costs (not data centers): nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/27/opinion/electricity-power-grid-infrastructure.html
[2] For more info on AI being used for government defense projects, look into "Project Maven".