Thanks China
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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I think this just shows that it's not stopping. They can say the most ridiculous statements in their defense and everyone just moves on.
The real story is not about Chines influence on data center opinion.
Its openai reading conversations of their customers.
I mean we all already assumed they do before but this is so blatend, it smells like manufactured consent. You need to go from “suspect it happens” to “its normal to be like this”
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Their proof is a couple accounts in China asked the chatbot how to convince Americans to not want datacenters in their backyard...
If I asked a chatbot how to convince someone to not like getting punched in the dick, them not wanting to get punched in the dick doesn't mean there's a grand conspiracy and that's why Bob got mad after being punched in the dick.
Bob didn't need anyone to tell him not to like getting punched in the dick to have that response.
If you think Bob is a person with his own opinions and autonomy, yes. If you think Bob is just a nameless cow in the herd with no capability of autonomy and actualization, Bob's dislike of being punched in the dick couldn't possibly be anything except the neighbor farmer trying to fuck with your profits.
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They asked ChatGPT about how to influence Americans views on AI, apparently.
Sure thing.
Imagine how fucking dumb our world has gotten that the discussion is, "china used our specific software to plot the destruction of our specific software using propaganda that accidentally turned out to be true" and not, "company uses VPN to blame China for their shitty practices."
Yeah data center bad, but what kills me is the water use thing.
It really seems to rankle peoples bungle, and in both directions, that yes data-center water use is bad, but its just utterly dwarfed in comparison to forms sources of water use. And this is something I can speak to with a fair bit of expertise, in that I've worked extensively in developing water-use analyses for water districts, cities, counties, states, etc. Its just a scale issue and like with that recent Hank Green video about recycling, people truly don't understand how many people there are.
For example, take the MAWA equation (mean average water allowance). Typical indoor water allotment (and there is alot of data to back this up) is about 200 gallons (750 liters) per person per residence per day. That includes toilets, showers, cooking, washing clothing etc..
So lets take the recent number from that NYT article about its data centers water use. I think the number was 2.5 billion gallons?
73,000 gallons would be the average per-person-per-structure indoor only water allotment, which again, is pretty well established.
2.5 billion divided by 73k is about 35k, which is a bit of an over estimate but makes no matter.
All of Amazons datacenters combined "used", and I use "used" lightly here because its not like the water disappeared, but it used less water than a small American town. All of their datacenters combined.
Using duckduckgo to get numbers on this..
Just.. put it into context. Say 1lb of beef takes about 2k gallons of water to produce. The average American consumes 50lbs of beef per year. So an average town of say.. 35k people would go through 3.5 billion gallons of water in beef consumption alone, annually.
And the same equations are going to hold for practically everything else humans consume. Its just... its all a matter of scale. And I agree, datacenters are not good. But the water-use argument is weak when you consider just.. something basic and well established like beef consumption, or golf courses. 2.5 billion gallons is like, 120 golf courses worth of water. Its practically nothing.
120 golf courses is a fuckload of wasted water. That isn't as persuasive as you seem to think it is.
I agree about golf courses being a bad metaphor but only because they feed into the same issue. They're something people see and comprehend but which completely fails to capture the scope. It only seems like a bad metaphor if you don't have any context and most people don't.
I'm not doing it to be convincing, but your reaction feeds into my point. It's back to the Hank Green point. To the ley audience it seems like a lot because "number big", but it's utterly meaningless amount, if you have just look at like "one small suburbs worth of front yard".
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I can eat a beef.
I cannot eat a datacentre, no matter how much I try it doesn’t digest.
I agree about golf courses.
completely agree, always thought the water use argument was weak, we are terrible at internalizing large numbers
there are way better arguments against datacenters, like the fact that onsite natural gas generators are now the norm for new datacenter builds where the grid can't supply the load needed, those things are fucking terrible for people and the environment
Data centers typically use evaporative cooling, so the water is consumed (released into the air). If they used closed loop systems it would be different.
Typically? Maybe in some arid climates without humidity but try using evaporative cooling during a thunderstorm and you'll find your data center shutting down from overheating.
~~70%~~ A large part of water usage in industrial nations comes from electricity generation. That's where data centers consume most of their water.
Edit: 70% is only true for Canada, globally agriculture consumes more. The US for example has ~40% each for agriculture and power generation.
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Data centers typically use evaporative cooling,
Yeah so do lawns.
Clearly, the solution is to develop a breed of astroturf that doubles as an AI datacenter. /s
Oh christ don't give them any ideas.
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at least it beats the russian propaganda that use lies that happen to be false
Image generation tech in the open source world has skyrocketed in the last few years, and yet OpenAI still has some of the worst image generation models out there. It continues to produce the most generic infographic bullshit that takes any human with half a brain 0.25 seconds to recognize as AI generated. The bias is so heavily-skewed towards this "obviously AI generated" style that I don't think their engineers even give a shit about improving their image model.
If you aren't even going to take the time to actually produce something that looks halfway decent, and you know, doesn't fucking look like AI, why the fuck should I bother taking this "report" seriously?
Uhm, you can run covert compaigns with true facts?
Yes, 99% of propaganda relies on contextualizing true facts so the audience accepts a favorable narrative and believes they're informed so they'll reject any counter-programming.
Also you can lie to people with facts. Using facts is not the same as facts existing but people don't seem to understand this more often than I'm comfortable with
classic
Its funny because you can use any number and people are shocked because how how its framed. When i compared the numbers vs other industry I was like oh its a nothing burger and Americans are being brainwashed again.
True or not, I, a canadian also agree that excess data centers are bad for our lives. I don't know if that's a chinese propaganda or me realizing the water & electricity costs of it