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By Jerry
Everyone Is Watching the Data Centers. Nobody Is Watching the Power That Isn't There.
Lead · Surveillance, Tech & Intelligence

Everyone Is Watching the Data Centers. Nobody Is Watching the Power That Isn't There.

An AI data center can be built in a year. The firm power to run it takes five to seven, and the one machine that makes it, the gas turbine, is sold out through the decade.

This Week

Everyone Is Watching the Data Centers. Nobody Is Watching the Power That Isn't There.

An AI data center can be built in a year. The firm power to run it takes five to seven, and the one machine that makes it, the gas turbine, is sold out through the decade.

Filed in Surveillance, Tech & Intelligence
17 Min read
Read chapter

Everyone Is Watching the Chips. Nobody Is Watching the Packaging.

The fabricated chip is not the bottleneck. The advanced packaging that assembles it and the high-bandwidth memory it needs are, and one of those gates is not even in Taiwan.

Filed in Surveillance, Tech & Intelligence
17 Min read
Read chapter

Everyone Is Watching the Models. Nobody Is Watching the Water.

Everyone is watching the models. The determining variable is the water that cools them, drawn from the places that can least spare it.

Filed in Surveillance, Tech & Intelligence
22 Min read
Read chapter

Muhammad Ali: How America Punished Him, Then Made Him a Saint

On the morning of April 28, 1967, in a military induction center in Houston, an officer called out a name. Cassius Marcellus Clay. The

Filed in Manufactured Culture
20 Min read
Read chapter

Everyone Is Watching the Reopened Strait. Nobody Is Asking Who It Reopened For.

The Strait of Hormuz is open again, but access to it increasingly tracks not a ship's flag but the currency it can settle in. For the dollar fleet it may be a Suez moment: the place where a reserve currency quietly began to lose its grip.

Filed in Geopolitics
22 Min read
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Operation Paperclip: How America Recruited Hitler's Scientists and Erased Their Past

Anne Jacobsen named the program that brought more than 1,600 German scientists to America. The deeper story is what made it possible: not the recruiting, but the rewriting of the record that turned war criminals into citizens.

Filed in Fourth Reich & Postwar Continuity
21 Min read
Read chapter

Everyone Is Watching the Dictators. Nobody Is Watching the System That Connects Them.

Anne Applebaum named the network of autocrats in Autocracy, Inc. The deeper story is the infrastructure beneath it, much of it built and staffed inside the democracies they are said to threaten.

Filed in Geopolitics
24 Min read
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Everyone Is Watching the Iran Deal. Nobody Is Watching the Veto Outside the Room.

The United States and Iran sign on Friday. The one country that can break the agreement will not be in the room, never signed anything, and owes it nothing.

Filed in Geopolitics
21 Min read
Read chapter

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The Index
Everyone Is Watching the Data Centers. Nobody Is Watching the Power That Isn't There.
№ 1

Everyone Is Watching the Data Centers. Nobody Is Watching the Power That Isn't There.

An AI data center can be built in a year. The firm power to run it takes five to seven, and the one machine that makes it, the gas turbine, is sold out through the decade.

Surveillance, Tech & Intelligence Jun 23 · 17 min read
Everyone Is Watching the Chips. Nobody Is Watching the Packaging.
№ 2

Everyone Is Watching the Chips. Nobody Is Watching the Packaging.

The fabricated chip is not the bottleneck. The advanced packaging that assembles it and the high-bandwidth memory it needs are, and one of those gates is not even in Taiwan.

Surveillance, Tech & Intelligence Jun 23 · 17 min read
Everyone Is Watching the Models. Nobody Is Watching the Water.
№ 3

Everyone Is Watching the Models. Nobody Is Watching the Water.

Everyone is watching the models. The determining variable is the water that cools them, drawn from the places that can least spare it.

Surveillance, Tech & Intelligence Jun 23 · 22 min read
Muhammad Ali: How America Punished Him, Then Made Him a Saint
№ 4

Muhammad Ali: How America Punished Him, Then Made Him a Saint

On the morning of April 28, 1967, in a military induction center in Houston, an officer called out a name. Cassius Marcellus Clay. The most famous athlete on

Manufactured Culture Jun 22 · 20 min read
Everyone Is Watching the Reopened Strait. Nobody Is Asking Who It Reopened For.
№ 5

Everyone Is Watching the Reopened Strait. Nobody Is Asking Who It Reopened For.

The Strait of Hormuz is open again, but access to it increasingly tracks not a ship's flag but the currency it can settle in. For the dollar fleet it may be a Suez moment: the place where a reserve currency quietly began to lose its grip.

Geopolitics Jun 20 · 22 min read
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