We Must Embrace, Not Pause, AI and Data Centers

Townhall 

China, Iran, North Korea and ISIS won’t pause their AI race. The US would be crazy to do so.

A recent Friends of the Earth email wailed that Urgent Action is needed to prevent massive data centers from destroying communities, the environment and property values, while tech billionaires get even richer!

Other opponents say artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers (DCs) gobble up rivers of water and terawatts of electricity, sprawl across landscapes, raise electricity prices, and help Big Brother spy on us. Similar assertions echo across the political spectrum and country.

It’s impossible to address all these complex issues in one article, but here’s a start.

First, how big data centers are and what their workloads and demands are depends on what they do. Older, conventional DCs manage purchases and other business applications. Streaming services handle vastly more data per second, especially during evenings and weekends.

Search engines need power to “crawl” through web pages and other sources to build indexes and answer questions at breakneck speed. AI requests require infinitely more computer power (for training, inferences, analyses, predictions and summaries) – and thus still more computers, electricity and cooling systems: hyperscales, hyperspeeds, hyper resource demands.

We must address these needs and solve the conflicts because we increasingly need AI and DCs.  

A data center is simply a building or warehouse filled with computers that generate heat as they meet countless growing needs across nearly every segment of modern society. That heat must dissipate somewhere, to prevent those computers from overheating, crashing or even catching fire.

Older DCs used constant flowing water and cooling towers or evaporative systems – as did their coal, gas or nuclear electricity sources. The U.S. produced more natural gas in 2025 than Russia and Iran combined. Modern AI and other computer chips are cooled by water and chemical liquids running in closed loops, akin to radiators in cars; thus much less water. Some DCs are water-free.

The coolants are recharged on a regular basis, which means disposing, cleaning and reprocessing aged coolant – much as gasoline stations, cities, mines and factories do with wastewater laden with myriad chemicals and particulates – and refilling the systems. We’ve learned how to do it properly.

It’s also important to note that DC water use is tiny compared to water for agriculture, lawns, golf courses and municipalities. Almonds, corn and cotton alone require enormous quantities.

Land use is another exaggerated bogeyman. Large buildings and warehouses filled with AI or other computers use the same amounts of land as other buildings and warehouses – possibly with some additional space/acreage for cooling systems, but less for deliveries, shipments and employee parking.

Moreover, data center land can be abandoned industrial sites, reclaimed mining sites and various other unused areas. It doesn’t have to be prime or nearby real estate. Every situation is unique.

Compare DC needs with the truly massive amounts of land required for industrial wind turbine installations and industrial solar panel installations: thousands or even tens of thousands of acres of what could otherwise be agricultural, recreational, scenic or wildlife land. Plus thousands more acres for towering hundreds-of-miles-long transmission lines from those installations to distant urban and data centers.

Plus still more acreage for backup coal or gas generation plants. Or acreage near urban, suburban or rural homes and businesses for expensive, fire-prone grid-scale battery storage systems.

And yet Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey insists that fake-clean (and weather-dependent, unreliable, expensive, raw-materials-hungry) wind and solar electricity must power AI DCs.

Noise can be an issue, though not much more than what’s associated with air conditioning and other cooling systems for apartment buildings, warehouses, conventional data centers and other buildings. (We certainly aren't going to ban AC in the U.S., the way they have in Europe.)

Loudoun County, Virginia boasts America’s densest data center cluster. Nearly half of its tax revenue comes from DCs – so county residents pay around $6,000 less in annual property taxes than they otherwise would. The commonwealth has the most DCs in the United States: 670+ out of 4,700+ in August 2026.

Rising electricity demand can and should be met by building reliable coal, gas and nuclear generators, contemporaneously or ahead of time, perhaps by requiring DCs to share in construction and costs … and restricting litigation and other permitting delays.

US data centers used 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, less than five percent of total US consumption.

The main reason electricity costs are rising in some states is “green” energy – which requires far longer transmission lines, more rapid and frequent replacement, and every MW backed up by duplicative but reliable generators. Moreover, data center power demands are a tiny fraction of what we’d need for the all-electric society sought by China-funded, climate-obsessed, no-fossil-fuels, eco-imperialist activists.

The bottom line? America needs artificial intelligence and data centers. You need them. The world needs them. Our future will be bleak and dangerous without them.

We can certainly do without AI-powered surveillance cameras and license plate readers. But the risks of not having AI and DCs far outweigh their likely harm. As explained here, we can, do and must resolve any conflicts and problems that arise.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants America to pause or ban its “mad dash” for artificial intelligence. Is he still on his Communist Russia honeymoon? Becoming senile? Or just being a front man for 43 Senate Democrats who’ve declared war on data centers?

AI will terminate many jobs, as did previous revolutionary technologies. But it will also create, preserve, protect and redefine numerous jobs: constructing and operating data centers, safeguarding US jobs that would otherwise be exported to countries that do advance and deploy AI, enhancing research, manufacturing and other industries, leaving more time for leisure, thus creating more leisure-time jobs.

Cancer, pharmaceutical and other medical research, defining metal and mineral deposits, creating more productive and sustainable resource extraction methods, devising better ways to integrate unpredictable wind and solar electricity into grids, spurring greater productivity in agriculture, industry and other arenas … and much, much more. But we must also recognize the pitfalls.

As with explosives and ubiquitous internet connectivity, evildoers will certainly exploit artificial intelligence. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, ISIS and Nigerian scam artists already use AI and are not about to pause their AI race, or honor any treaty they might agree to. The US would be crazy to pause.

Iran’s mullahs already use AI in propaganda – and the Persian people may be using AI against them. AI itself will not destroy humanity – but death-loving Islamic fundamentalists could certainly try.

Hackers are already breaking into America’s water and electrical systems. Internet backdoors in Chinese-made wind turbines, solar panels, transformers and converters provide easy access to repair those systems – but also to modify, disable or commandeer key settings and systems, or shut down electrical grids.

We increasingly need AI and data centers to combat our enemies, foreign and domestic. National, local, corporate, hospital, banking and homeowner defense systems need good-guy AI to combat bad-guy AI.

If America lags behind competitors and enemies, it will lose, big time. We cannot let that happen.

Entertainment thread for Oct 10

 

And just like that, it's Christmas movie time!

So Goes Europe

American Thinker 

Britain is America's mother country. Regardless of what one may think of the once-Great Britain today, much of America's essence sprang from that island's political philosophy, cultural inheritance, legal tradition, and national character. Our language, common law, conception of liberty, parliamentary instincts, and stubborn individualism all trace back directly to Britain. Britain may have declined, but the DNA of its greatness lives on in us. Its decline is therefore not merely a foreign story. It is a cautionary tale written in a language we understand because we inherited it. We ignore those linkages at our peril.

Margaret Thatcher represented perhaps the last great demonstration of Britain's willingness to behave like a world power. The Falklands War was not merely a military victory; it was a psychological one. It proved that Britain still possessed the will to act decisively, defend its interests, and project power beyond its shores. For a moment, Thatcher restored something of the Churchillian confidence Britain had lost before that moment too faded away.

She could not reverse the forces already embedded in the country's institutions. The political class increasingly embraced managerialism, the intellectual class fashionable self-doubt, and the bureaucracy technocratic caution. Britain turned inward, consumed by domestic demands and increasingly skeptical of the burdens of global leadership. Its decline was not simply imposed from outside. A nation that loses confidence in its own purpose eventually loses the political will to sustain it.

That is where the parallel to America becomes unavoidable.

Britain became increasingly burdened by internal social obligations that expanded faster than its economic capacity and political will. America has accumulated similar burdens for decades. However noble their original purposes, domestic obligations expand, demand resources, and rarely contract. A great power cannot be defined solely by what it redistributes. It must also be defined by what it builds, protects, and leads. When internal obligations consume the resources and political attention required for those purposes, national power begins to erode into irrelevance.

But Europe's problem is not simply that its governments became more cautious or its welfare states ever more expensive. Europe also changed itself. Over the past several decades, large-scale immigration has transformed the demographic and cultural composition of countries built around relatively strong national identities and shared expectations.

Immigration becomes more difficult to absorb when it is large in scale, communities become concentrated, assimilation weakens, and governments become increasingly reluctant to insist on a common civic culture. Nations have always absorbed newcomers. The difficulty arises when newcomers can establish durable communities organized around languages, customs, religions, or social expectations distinct from those of the larger society -- and when the state hesitates to insist that legal entry, assimilation, and adherence to common laws and institutions are the price of belonging.

France illustrates the scale of the transformation. In 2024, 7.6 million immigrants lived in France, representing 11.2 percent of the population. In 1968, nearly three-quarters of foreigners living in France were European nationals; by 2024, nearly half were African nationals and only about one-third were European.

Those numbers do not prove social failure on their own. They do, however, describe a profound demographic transformation. When that transformation occurs alongside concentrated communities, weakened assimilation, and the state's reluctance to insist on a common civic framework, demographic change becomes a source of social and political friction rather than simply population growth.

And this is where immigration intersects with the larger problem of European decline. A confident state can absorb substantial change because it knows what it expects of those who enter it. A state that has lost confidence in its own culture, doubts its right to demand assimilation, and fears the political consequences of enforcing its laws has a much harder task. The question is no longer simply how many people a country can admit. It is whether the country still possesses the confidence and authority to insist that everyone living within its borders belongs to the same civic order -- and what it must do when some refuse.

France may be showing us the next stage.

What makes the French crisis particularly dangerous is the convergence of three different pressures against the state: the red -- economic grievance; the white -- cultural conflict; and the black -- violence and disorder. The red attacks its economic legitimacy. The white attacks its cultural legitimacy. The black attacks its monopoly on force. They are not a coalition or even a unified movement. Together, they constitute a stress test.

When those pressures erupt simultaneously, a parliamentary system built around compromise and negotiation becomes incapable of meeting the moment, hesitating when it must act and debating when it must decide. It fears backlash when it must assert authority.

The danger is not necessarily that the French state will be overthrown. It is that it will surrender functionally -- by narrowing its ambitions, avoiding confrontation, tolerating disorder, and accepting that certain neighborhoods, groups, or behaviors are beyond its reach.

That is how decline accelerates, not through dramatic collapse, but through the quiet acceptance of limits that did not previously exist.

And, in the wings, our own Red, White, and Black forces are taking notes. America cannot simply watch Europe decline from across the Atlantic. The lesson of  WWII is that geography no longer protects a nation from the collapse of the civilization to which it belongs. Had America simply assumed that events across the Atlantic could never threaten us, the history of the twentieth century might have been very different. Oceans provide distance, not immunity.

Europe is not simply another collection of foreign countries. It is the civilization from which we emerged. If Europe loses the capacity to govern itself, defend itself, assimilate newcomers, and maintain the institutions that made the West prosperous and free, America may eventually discover that it is next.

This is not a prophecy of America's future, not yet, but it is a warning.

Great nations do not remain great by accident. They remain great because their people choose renewal over resignation, responsibility over retreat, and courage over comfort. America still has the economic, military, cultural, and political capacity to help Europe regain its footing and, in the process, ensure our own stability.

We should do so not out of nostalgia or charity, but self-interest.

Europe helped create the civilization that made America possible. As the elder child, America now has a responsibility to help preserve it -- not because Europe is entitled to American protection, but because a weakened Europe ultimately weakens the West.

If Europe recovers, America's foundations are strengthened. If Europe continues to decline, America will eventually discover that oceans are no substitute for civilization.

So goes Europe.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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UPDATED: Stupendous Supercut Video of New WH Press Sec Katie Zacharia in Action; She Reacts

RedState 

As RedState shared earlier, the White House has announced President Trump's pick for the new Press Secretary in place of Karoline Leavitt, and her name is Katie Zacharia.

The White House confirmed Friday that Zacharia will replace Karoline Leavitt as President Donald Trump’s press secretary, putting the attorney and longtime conservative media figure behind the White House podium as one of the administration’s most prominent public defenders.

We wrote that she is no stranger to the White House, as one of her previous roles was as a spokesperson at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

My colleague Teri Christoph also wrote that "Zacharia recently left DHS after a short stint in the agency's communications shop and returned to the worlds of media commentary and advocacy," while adding that "...she appeared alongside our own Jennifer Van Laar on an episode of The Sean Spicer Show not too long ago..." More on that in a minute.

Now, our sister site Townhall has just unveiled a stupendous supercut video showing Katie Zacharia in action - on everything from how big a failure Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom has been for California - and that he would be even worse for the country, to a spot-on slam of Kamala Harris' lack of support during the 2024 election, and more. Go ahead and press play, though. I don't want to spoil the video any more.

One of the most relevant issues in the midterms, which she nailed here, is how the DNC is trying and failing to rebrand its radical leftist candidates as moderate and good for the American people. 

Anyway, all I have to say is: watch out, fake news in the WH press room!

Just about two weeks ago, as Christoph noted in her piece above, Zacharia appeared as a guest alongside RedState Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar, on Sean Spicer's program, with a bonus guest host, Townhall's Larry O'Connor. Enjoy!

Watch:

UPDATE: Zacharia has released a statement reacting to Pres. Trump's appointment:

She wrote:

Thank you to President Trump for the distinguished privilege of serving as White House Press Secretary.

Serving President Trump and the American people at this critical 250-year mark is the honor of a lifetime. President Trump has shown America that we can be great again, and he works to effectuate that greatness every single day. His confidence is a true privilege, and his leadership is a blessing to this country.

The work ahead is to continue delivering strong results for our Country and communicating to the American people the major wins that this Administration is making every single day. I look forward to working with the White House press corps, and with reporters across the country, to get that record out. Following the fabulous Karoline Leavitt is a high standard, and one worth meeting.

God bless President Trump, and God bless America.

In France And Britain, Multiculturalism Is Leading To Authoritarianism

The leaders of France and Britain are calling for censorship regimes because enforcing multiculturalism requires suppressing freedom.

The Federalist 

Rioting that began late last week in the suburbs of Paris has now spread across France. This week there have been riots in Marseille, Lyon, Dijon, Lille, Bordeaux, Nantes, Strasbourg, and elsewhere. Every corner of the country, it seems, is beset by a coalition of violent left-wing activists and second- and third-generation immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.

The rioters are not calling for education reform or protesting poor classroom conditions, despite what the corporate press has reported. These are not “school protests” but rather an intifada. The rioters themselves are the footsoldiers of a “Red-Green alliance” between the radical left and pro-Palestinian Islamist activists, whose shared goal is to clear the ground for a “New France” that will replace the actually existing French nation.

This “New France” is largely a Third World horde, imported in successive waves beginning in the 1970s, when France scrapped its immigration regime and adopted a family reunification system similar to the United States’ Hart-Celler Act of 1965. In the ensuing decades, and especially since 2000, France has seen a massive influx of migrants from its former colonial holdings in North Africa and the Middle East. These people have for the most part refused to assimilate, and instead have formed discrete Muslim enclaves, retaining the ethnic and religious identity of their homelands. They are not French in any meaningful sense, and do not wish to be.

The consequences of this failure of assimilation and acculturation are now apparent on the streets of French cities. For more than a week now the unassimilated children and grandchildren of migrants from the Third World have been  attacking police and firefighters (and teachers in some cases), burning schools and public buildings to the ground, and calling for the overthrow of the French Republic. They have done so in many cases while waving Palestinian and Algerian flags, and chanting Antifa and pro-Hamas slogans. 

However, they are not doing this all on their own. French authorities said last week the riots were being organized by proxies of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”), or LFI, which is, in addition to being a communist front organization, is also France’s “Great Replacement” party. Indeed, Mélenchon, who is running for president in next year’s national election, has been rather explicit in his desire to erase the French people and replace them with foreigners. On a recent panel, echoing remarks from Britain’s Jacob Rees-Mogg on how the English are a “mongrel people,” he derided the very concept of “native French people,” declaring that a “process of creolization has already taken place” in France, and that those wanting a “static world” are dreaming of something that is gone for good.

No wonder, then, that Mélenchon has publicly supported the unrest, or that LFI politicians have been notably visible during the riots, in some cases appearing at the barricades around schools and urban centers, even as the party has officially denied fomenting violence. Simply put, there is broad crossover between radical-left political activism and pro-Palestinian, Islamist mobilization in France.

Most of this is fairly well known and follows a pattern we see in other western countries, most notably the United Kingdom, where one in every 30 people is a foreigner who arrived there in the last five years.

What is less well known is that mass immigration on this scale doesn’t just destroy a country and a people, it also ushers in forms of authoritarian government that become necessary as a way to manage the problems that arise from a population that includes significant unassimilated ethnic enclaves.

This is why we now see the political leadership of western countries making hard turns toward authoritarianism, and especially against free speech. Freedom of expression is the one thing you cannot tolerate if the state is going to enforce multiculturalism and impose a large foreign population on a native one. Indeed, managing tensions between disparate ethnic groups, and each group’s relationship to the state, is a hallmark of imperial rule, not republicanism. It’s how the millet system of the Ottoman Empire operated.

In our day, it means the liberal leaders of France and Britain are openly arguing that their societies must become less free, more controlled, more monitored. Recently French President Emmanuel Macron said the American idea of free speech is “the opposite of free speech,” and that freedom can only exist within a “common framework” created and managed by the state. In his view, freedom is a privilege granted to individuals by the state, which defines the range of acceptable discourse in accordance with “public order.” He compared limits on speech to prohibitions on assault or the destruction of public property — essentially declaring that speech is violence and must be suppressed by the state, if necessary. 

Macron then called for state-funded fact-checkers to decide what is allowed online and what isn’t, and said the EU’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act, should be used “much more, much faster, much more forcefully.”

It’s the same in Britain, where the Labour Party prime minister, Andy Burnham, recently announced the creation of something called the National Centre for Information Defence —essentially a Ministry of Truth straight out of 1984. The pretext for this new censorship regime is the supposed safety of the British people, who, according to Burnham, must be protected from Russian disinformation and “far-right narratives.” This so-called protection will come in the form of limits on free speech, anything that contradicts or calls into question the prevailing worldview or policies of the Labour left.

We already know what that will look like, because an informal version of it is already in place in Britain. Thousands of Britons are arrested and jailed every year for expressing their views online. Police literally knock on doors and haul British citizens away in handcuffs for expressing skepticism about immigration or Islam, or complaining about Palestinian flags flying in public. The authorities do this under the cover of laws against harassment and incitement, but in reality it’s nothing more than a thin justification for speech codes and blasphemy laws. 

This is an aspect of mass Third World immigration to the West that tends to get less attention than crime or rioting or the imposition of Islam in the public square. To deal with all these things, to manage the tensions that arise from having unassimilated ethnic and religious communities residing in a nation, requires authoritarian measures that are incompatible with a free society.

When the smoke clears from the riots now underway in France, we will see not just emboldened Third World ethnic enclaves, but an emboldened and increasingly authoritarian state.

In the end, multiculturalism and authoritarianism are a package deal, and the global leftist leadership of the West is foisting it their native populations. There is only one way to avoid such authoritarianism, and it requires a total rejection of multiculturalism. 

What that means, in concrete terms, is mass deportations, denaturalization, and remigration. Anything less will not be enough to save these countries, assuming it’s not too late already.

The ATF Announces That the NFA Has Been Gutted

Townhall 

The National Firearms Act has been gutted after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced that they would no longer be enforcing registration for short barrel rifles, short barrel shotguns, “any other weapons,” and suppressors.

The ATF announced that background checks and completion of a Form 4473 are still required to purchase any of the listed items. Automatic weapons still require registration under the NFA as well as a $200 tax stamp.

The agency also notified citizens that the new enforcement guidelines do not apply to state or local laws that place restrictions on NFA items. Restrictions on the transportation of 

SBRs and SBSs between states also still face restrictions.

“The direction from the President, Congress, and the courts is clear,” said ATF Director Rob Cekada in a statement. “ATF is now following suit with our enforcement posture while continuing to ensure we remain focused where we are needed the most: combatting violent crime in American communities.”

The groundbreaking update could provide a boost to Republicans with firearms advocacy groups before the midterm elections.

Is a Russia-Ukraine Deal Close? Here's Why Envoys Are Meeting in Miami.

Townhall 

United States Special Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are meeting with Ukranian negotiators in Miami on Friday for a “working session” as President Donald Trump seeks to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, a U.S. source familiar told Townhall on Thursday. 

The two envoys recently were in Russia and Ukraine for separate visits with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

According to the source, there will be individuals from the Treasury Department and the National Security Council present at the talks, and Kyrylo Budanov, Rustem Umerov, and Davyd Arakhamia, will be representing Ukraine.

“The American negotiators also invited national security advisors from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, as well as officials from NATO and the European Union,” the source stated.

“Officials will discuss proposals for security guarantees for Ukraine, a post-war prosperity plan, and other aspects of the conflict,” they added. “Europeans have been expressing their frustrations to the United States about high energy costs and other major financial impacts of the war in Ukraine. They are all nervous about the winter.”

The source cautioned that if the conflict does not conclude that “it will be a tough winter.” 

“The United States is trying to mediate with the sides with the goal of creating a unified proposal,” the source said. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kickstarted in early 2022, and it has resulted in well over a million casualties as of early 2026, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Putin and Trump called last month to discuss the special envoy meeting, and the two leaders are also expected to speak soon regarding the suspected plague panic in Russia, according to the president. Trump wants the Russian leader to attend G20 in Miami this December, which resulted in some congressional pushback. 

We expect that the U.S. side will succeed in arranging a trilateral meeting in October. For now, the Russians are focused solely on strikes against Ukraine and destabilizing activities in Europe. Putin now knows the situation in Europe – in specific countries – and the statistics on strikes far better than he knows what is actually happening on the front. And an important task for America and all our strong partners is to push Russia toward diplomacy and real steps instead of killing.

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 5, 2026

The last in person summit with the two leaders was in Alaska last year, but meetings between Trump and Zelensky have been far more frequent, as the two held a meeting in New York City at the United Nations General Assembly last month and at the White House in July. M

The conversations largely focused on making sure Ukraine is prepared through the winter, and the ability for the Ukrainians to develop Patriot missiles. 

“We expect that the U.S. side will succeed in arranging a trilateral meeting in October. For now, the Russians are focused solely on strikes against Ukraine and destabilizing activities in Europe,” Zelensky posted to X on Monday.

“Putin now knows the situation in Europe – in specific countries – and the statistics on strikes far better than he knows what is actually happening on the front,” he added. “And an important task for America and all our strong partners is to push Russia toward diplomacy and real steps instead of killing.”

♦️𝐖³𝐏 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝

 

W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

posted by DarkGoldenMan

Welcome to the W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

Post whatever you got in the comments section below.

This feature will post every day at 6:30am Mountain time.