Data center/Public lands analysis

[Hunting Wife]

Hot off the press…for those interested in the information related to data centers and public lands. I haven’t read it yet but viewed the AFWA presentation.

USGS Publications Warehouse

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming industries and economies, creating an urgent need to strategically plan for the energy and infrastructure required to support increasing AI use. U.S. Federal agencies and bureaus have been directed to explore ways to accelerate permitting...

pubs.usgs.gov

https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2026/5035/sir20265035.pdf

Hopefully folks can access this. I’ve been trying for 20 minutes to get these posted. For some reason, HT keeps failing to respond for me when trying to access this type of content for the past couple weeks. @Big Fin must have pissed off the Tech Bros.

 

[Big Fin]

I just got the same notice. I thought we were a market-based economy where private industry and corporate ideas were to compete based on free-enterprise principles, not government subsidy of picking winners and losers.

This is BS. If these data centers are needed to meet demand, let private lands be used. It will help a private landowner who can get a greater return and it will force the markets to pass on the true costs of data centers to the end users. Using public lands to subsidize activities people don't want in their backyard is BS.

Gotta run, but this issue is only going to fester - it's not going away with the money the tech giants are tossing at an Administration who views everything as transactional and an opportunity for personal enrichment.