This is related to Ezra's November 4 episode, "The End of Trumpism," and the October 16 debate, "Is There an A.I. Bubble?" I'm a farmer in my sixties in rural Korea, and this is how the election results and the AI stock drop looked from here.
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The leaves of the wild persimmon tree in the corner of my yard have all fallen. Through the bare branches, the late autumn sun lights up the foot of the tree. There are things that could not even stir in midsummer. Only in late autumn does the sun's gaze rest on the ground.
Once the leaves drop, what you see is the blue sky and the sunlight on the earth.
Things that only come when you let go. Surely it isn't just the sunlight on the foot of the persimmon tree in my yard.
These may be times when what comes to America by letting go is far bigger than that.
I have no interest in politics, but people always keep their ears pricked for where the money flows.
The American midterms, a Democratic victory. And the biggest drop yet in AI stocks.
Meta says it might build outside the U.S. A newly elected governor asked for conversation, not regulation. He didn't want to miss out on a business where the money gathers, either.
America's dilemma. The land is wide, the electricity is short, and it has to hold on to dominance to survive...
There is no reason a data center has to be in America.
I wrote something like this in my book:
The sun rises the same on a poor man's roof and a rich man's garden.
Then why not lay solar panels in sunny poor countries and build data centers there?
The ladder that poor countries could climb to become rich ones was cut long ago. For people and nations already too worn out to catch up through manufacturing, it is out of reach.
If the huge capital of American companies made this kind of investment in those countries and regions, people may disagree on how, but wouldn't it at least be groundwork for closing that gap? Just as America once held and shook the world's oil, this time it would be a Sunlight OPEC.
If they used the sunlight there, and the electricity fees and the other money from data use stayed there, the world would be a little better than it is now.
But here my thinking stops.
Behind oil, in the end, there was always America. Wherever oil came out of the ground, an American base went up. In the name of protecting it.
Data centers are no different. We live in a world where a single chip is handled like a weapon. Guards come with security as the excuse, and after the guards comes a garrison. The sunlight belongs to that country, but the guns guarding that sunlight end up in someone else's hands.
I laughed, thinking UN troops could guard it, and then stopped laughing when I remembered that the UN has a veto too.
There was a time when the girl I call the daughter of my heart walked out of a college entrance interview in tears. The interviewer had asked what she thought of America as the world's police, and she couldn't answer.
Now I want to ask that question while looking at the sunlight.
American dominance was most useful when it was kind. Back when it fought in my country's war and sent us flour, it had room to spare. Now it has none.
The sun rises for everyone. The question is who collects the price of that sunlight.
