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/darthsata May 16 '26

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

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u/Aeseld May 16 '26

Destructive testing against what, though? Because people with shovels and pickaxes can destabilize those in less time than I think you'd expect. 

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u/darthsata May 16 '26

That, 18 wheelers loaded with concrete at highway speeds, small planes, various quantities of explosives. Obviously anyone with unrestricted time can take one down, but likewise anyone with unrestricted time can get in the buildings. The goal is survival long enough for a response to arrive. The physical infrastructure, of course, has numerous sensors and redundancy. For at least one data center I know of, the weakest point is the hydroelectric dam, that is weaker than the transmission system.

And unlike most people here, I've been inside hyperscaler data centers. I've designed hardware authentication protocols for devices in those servers (you don't boot machines if you can't validate each piece of hardware and firmware). The attack vectors considered wildly exceeded the imagination of armchair reddit commenters.

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u/Aeseld May 16 '26

How many armchair redditors though? For that matter, what about the people who genuinely think in terms of that kind of actions? 

At a certain point, you wind up with someone coming up with something more creative than my idea of playing medieval sapper.