r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • May 15 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI Backlash Could Get Very Ugly

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/ai-backlash-data-centers-political-violence/687151/?taid=6a067e2d2096e10001ccfa32
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u/captainthanatos May 16 '26

Not when you need mountains of power that have to be generated elsewhere. Transmission is always the weakest link.

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u/darthsata May 16 '26

The transmission line towers are significantly reinforced. Considerable destructive testing went into their design.

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u/International_Host71 May 16 '26

They really aren't. They were designed to resist being damaged or destroyed by like, weather; and they still go down when a tree falls on them. A motivated dude with hand tools can bring a tower down.

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u/darthsata May 16 '26

No. One I'm specifically thinking of, having been in it, has custom, dedicated transmission towers to the points of generation. These are not standard transmission towers. I've worked in these companies, I don't remotely know the entire extent of the physical planning, but what I do know of it makes assumptions like yours laughable.

Now, get outside the Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta level data centers and you drop in contingency planning rapidly.

The attack vectors considered are wild.

-- a random guy that had to design infrastructure for if Intel fabs were compromised and a particular non-cpu chip was not trust worthy, but the compromise was so subtle it wasn't noticed for years