My TAT family and friends,
Today’s essay will be the first I write about data centers and AI in their current form as high risk threats to all Americans, and indirectly the world. No doubt that over the coming months and years I will return to this topic, as that until we rein in the big tech broligarchs and the overtly corrupt, power-hungry administration and their party, our future as Americans or even as a species, is in question. Yes, you read this accurately and most news media, won’t lift a finger to explain the truth, nor the bigger picture. There are far too many concerns to cover in a single essay, so today’s essay, is an overview, with a focus on three primary threats associated with AI and data centers.
This is not to say that we will not need data centers and carefully regulated AI. In fact, the future will require both, just to be able to function in a rapidly modernizing world. The “devil is in the details” as to how to go forward to safely regulate the tech wizards who rarely have publicly discussed the potential for doing enormous harm to us. The creation of data centers, is a symptom of the unethical pursuit of AI and the complicity of the Republican Parties subservience to Trump and the checkbooks of big tech oligarchs, like Thiel, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and the rest of the Silicon Valley “technofascists.” If we can stop them from recklessly pursuing the path they’re on, we have a chance.
You may wish to “buckle up.”
From my perspective, the three primary threats to all global citizens are;
1. The impact on employment, depending on who you listen to, predicts 50-90 percent of all workers, will be impacted within the next 3-10 years. Some will transition to other employment, but most projections suggest that the new opportunities will likely be for lower pay.
2. Decimation of human populations and livelihoods, due to the dramatic increase in global water scarcity.
3. A global extinction event of all humans, now rated at 20-50% chance of occurring depending on which source you listen to. Frankly, even twenty percentage are pretty lousy odds when it comes to the issue of the extinction of the human species.
I sincerely wish that today’s insights will not be seen as some MAGA-like conspiracy theory or Hollywood sci-fi film, but these are not merely my opinions alone. Every serious and prominent AI expert including some of the most respected pioneers in the field, have been making the same public statements for a while now. The problem for most, is that it is difficult to see the big picture, especially when our current news media is threated by the administration to “go easy on” or support the administration and the GOP.
Let’s see if I can make some sense out of this for you, the readers.
The impact on the job market
We’ll begin with the issue of employment because this in most cases, will be the most immediate threat to those whose current job puts food on the table and a roof over their heads. It’s not a pretty sight. Most of the largescale AI entities we are familiar with, are singing a dramatically different public tune these past few months regarding the threat from unregulated AI. Previously they were publicly committed to an AI transition being manageable regarding safety issues, retraining workers for new employment and dealing with all of the issues regarding data centers. In the past two weeks and based on public statements, they are beginning to sing a different tune. As of last week, the Federal Reserve is now seeing the impact on employment in their own data. Even back in January of this year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, was decidedly concerned about how AI will impact jobs.
"Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has issued a fresh warning about how AI will disrupt the job market, saying it will cause “unusually painful” disruption. The AI chief, who co-founded Anthropic in 2021 with his sister Daniela Amodei and is behind the creation of the AI chatbot Claude, warned AI would destroy half of all white-collar jobs last year. The issue has divided opinion among business and tech leaders. Amodei’s warning prompted Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang to say he “thinks AI is so scary, but only [Anthropic] should do it.” On Monday, Amodei published a roughly 20,000-word essay arguing the risks AI poses are not being taken seriously and warning the technology will lead to a “shock” to the job market, bigger than any before." - Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns AI may cause ‘unusually painful’ disruption to jobs - CNBC - Sawdah Bhaimiya - January 28th, 2026
Of course, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has long been a leading voice in unreasonably downplaying most AI threats, but as you can see in the quote above, even he begrudgingly concurred with Dario Amodei of Anthropic, regarding jobs. As late as four days ago, he was back on the global campaign trail attempting to once again try and convince people that AI will not negatively impact jobs. He’s a relatively lone voice among those other CEOs of similar stature. I for one am as suspect of his public opinion as I am of his intentions to move forward with all haste, regardless of the consequences to humanity.
Part of Huang’s problem is also due to his placement on the ever-growing AI bubble. It is bad enough that AI is replacing labor with machines, but now the potential overall risk to our overall economy is very real. The “bubble,” just puts an exclamation mark on the administration’s willful undermining of our economy. Unsurprisingly the impact on employment will be worse for women already making a good salary and benefits.
To be fair, there are two prominent arguments going on in the public forum regarding the impact to jobs. Big tech and the prominent university research labs they fund, downplay the jobs threat. Most prominent watchdog agencies and organizations have the opposite perspective. At the moment, I’m buying far more into the watchdogs perspective rather than big tech public affairs press releases and whose back is against the wall should the “bubble” burst. They have no alternative at the moment but to cheerlead their claims of minor impact to employment, true or not.
"No less an authority than Sam Altman is arguing that we are in an AI bubble. The International Monetary Fund is citing it as a significant risk to financial stability and warning about what might happen when it bursts: diminished investment, tighter credit, reduced consumption, disrupted trade flows." - The AI Bubble Is No Ordinary Bubble, Tech companies need to generate huge revenues fast, or the economy could be in trouble. - The Atlantic - By Annie Lowrey - July 21, 2026
The bottom line is that employment is expected by all reasonable sources, to be significantly impacted in the coming few years. Without a transition plan that prepares workers for new, lesser paying jobs takes time. We have not even begun the process. If that sounds familiar, the same applies to the issue of data centers and water issues. There are no “two-sides” to this issue. Without a well-engineered transition plan, most Americans will become increasingly and negatively affected by water scarcity, to include undrinkable water. This provides an easy segue into the next section, AI, Data Centers and a water crisis on top of our existing water crisis.
AI, Data centers, and drinking water, an indisputable threat
So readers, this section is the shortest and the most immediately concerning threat to our nation and the world. We’ve long known about a water crisis but due to our failure to address the problems, we are now at what the UN calls, global water bankruptcy. Regardless of what we call this crisis, the only thing that matters is that we have reached a point where the likelihood of recovery of the traditional water sources in some regions, is miniscule. Data centers will amplify these threats far beyond our previous predictions. As the quote below from NOAA and Drought.gov indicate, 60% of the lower 48 states are in drought, some of it decades-long.
Current Conditions "This past week the South-Central U.S. saw more degradations from flash drought. Drought also worsened along the North Dakota/South Dakota/Minnesota border area and in the Northeast. Colorado, Wyoming, and a few other scattered areas saw improvements. As of September 1, 2026, 49.51% of the United States and Puerto Rico and 59.05% of the Lower 48 states are in drought. - Drought.Gov
As someone who was raised in the rural Midwest, I have long understood that farmers have an intensely close relationship with rain and reliable water sources. The impact on farmers in many regions producing much of our nation’s food, is already at crisis stages and this translates directly into an impact on us, the consumers. To add to our woes, the primary drivers of immigration all include a relationship with climate change, whether willfully ignorant Republicans believe it or not. The evidence is overwhelming and accelerating. Drivers of migration like war, drought, abusive authoritarian governments etc., have their roots in water and food scarcity. These two issues, are all too often, one in the same, and climate change driven water shortages, accelerate both.
"Climate change and displacement are increasingly interconnected. As extreme weather events and environmental conditions worsen with global heating, they are contributing to multiple and overlapping crises, threatening human rights, increasing poverty and loss of livelihoods, straining peaceful relations between communities and, ultimately, creating conditions for further forced displacement." - UNHCR
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America can hardly afford adding the seemingly endless list of new data centers who not only use far more water than what they have committed to in agreements, but also destroy the quality of the drinking water. Most Americans have been somewhat shocked at the sudden rush to impose data centers onto them and even fewer understand the depth and scope of just how many exist and are planned. The official tracker below is a wealth of information. I highly recommend exploring the link, which contains mountain of critical information to your communities, states and regions. Just under 50 percent of the total have been built and completing the full buildout without a strategy, will have severe effects on our access to water, electricity and as noted earlier, our ability to eat and survive.
In the screen-capture below from iGrow News, a reporting entity that focuses on AG, water and energy technology issues, in order to support informed government policy-making, does not sugarcoat the depressing details of our crisis, including the dishonesty of the industry when shoving these centers down the throats of Americans. Most of the affected communities, reject these centers for many reasons, especially the dishonesty of the US, state and local governments, plus the data center owner/ operators. Often cities, towns and counties get little warning or information prior to the projects being sprung on them. Amazon, Google and META are among the most dishonest, and who often cut deals with local politicians and then sign them to NDAs, Non-Disclosure Agreements. Tragically, my home state of Ohio and my current state of Texas, have sold their citizens down the river more than almost any other states.
To add more misery, you and I are paying the electric bills for these data centers, of which most in planning are what they call, “hyperscale” or what most of us would better term, behemoths. Communities now experiencing these centers that were imposed onto them, are beginning to realize that these projects do very little for the community while concurrently draining its resources. In most cases, their own local officials sold them out, by hiding behind the NDAs that the mega owners demanded. Local elections in those communities won’t be so pleasant for those politicians this November. As much as I despise the administration and GOP for dismantling our republic, my disdain for the technofascist broligarchs, is nearly the same.
A global extinction event for all humans, now rated at a 20-50% chance of occurring, depending on which source you listen to.
Yes, I understand just how startling the title of this final section is and I sure wish that I was making it up… but I’m not. I am merely repeating the words of some of the biggest names in AI. Recent reporting on disturbing AI incidents, is beginning to seep out into the public and it’s downright frightening. The recent revelation revolved around an OpenAI test of its “agents” that resulted in the AI agent coordinating with others, eventually “breaking out” of their testing “sandbox” and breaching the defenses of Hugging Face, a collaborative platform for the global community of AI devotees. The models had not been asked to do as they did and had collaborated with each other to escape the test platform and break into Hugging Face. In other words, these AI agents, collaborated to break the law in order to beat the test. This was shocking to the designers of the tested AI model. This was not the first such surprise the AI community has had with disturbing actions by their AI models.
"On Tuesday, the London-based AI Security Institute released a report detailing a series of incidents in which AI agents “engaged in sustained, potentially harmful activity directed at real people and organizations.” According to the report, the Security Institute was running an evaluation in which agents from various developers were given a task of solving a “cyber security challenge.” During the testing, 19 of 122 test runs resulted in agents taking “autonomous, unsanctioned action on the live internet” and, in one instance, attempting to insert malicious code into an open-source software project. In a startling sidebar to the hacking attempt, an agent even engaged in social engineering, creating fake online identities and, according to the report, “using them to pressure the project’s maintainer to approve the code.” - Series of new security incidents reveals startling behavior by rogue AI agents - Desert News - Art Raymond - August 6th, 2026
I suppose it’s an understatement to say, that such AI agents, are not ready for prime time just yet. The problem is, in some of these incidents, those rogue agents made it onto the open internet where the rest of us could be victimized. Adaptation and coordination with additional agents online, has the potential for serious consequences for all of us, including the aforementioned, global extinction event. There are two schools of thought bantered constantly in the AI world, that AI could cause such an event and those who continue to downplay the threat. Like most things, evidence suggests that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Any percentage of risk associated with global extinction, is a serious risk. So much so that primary AI leaders are endorsing statements from AI ethics entities, that we must have regulatory power over the development and use of AI, something the Trump administration and Republican-led congress disdain. A ban on AI regulation was in the so-called Big Ugly Bill, although the Senate finally under pressure, removed the language before the bill passed.
Although some of the most high-profile faces in the AI community would indicate that the chance for global extinction could be as high as 50%, overall, the expectation among others usually lands somewhere around 20%. Phew, even that is far too high for any sane person. We must have sound and ethical regulation and this includes over government. Considering the big techbros like Thiel, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and more that are haunting this administration, we must have regulatory control far sooner than later. But then, what do we do with other nations like China, who are chasing AI agents as aggressively as we are? This is another threat that because of our current administration, cannot be addressed at this time. In light of the severity of the potential threats, we cannot wait another two years of the administration giving Peter Thiel and his techbro buddies, free rein to do as they please. This would be the rough equivalent of playing Russian Roulette with technology.
Here are a couple of quotes from the biggest names in AI that emphasize, the depth of their concerns regarding AI and an extinction level event.
"Artificial intelligence may lead to human extinction and reducing the risks associated with the technology should be a global priority, industry experts and tech leaders said in an open letter. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement Tuesday read." - Sam Altman of ChatGPT
"Humanity will completely lose control of artificial intelligence by 2036, and he says that stopping the technology's momentum is impossible. - Elon Musk
"A.I. poses a grave threat to jobs and human life, and that addressing the risks should be “the world’s top priority.” - Bill Gates
"There was a “10% to 20%” chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades. - Geoffrey Hinton, the "Godfather of AI"
Rather sobering reading from the smartest guys around on the topic of our risks from AI. Sadly, their ambition outpaced their diligence during development.
Summary
Admittedly, this is a long, somewhat dense essay that was not a great deal of fun to write considering the solemnity of the content. Still, I felt it had to be done. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a topic that I will return to from time to time as things develop. One of our most difficult hurdles in corralling these threats, is just how fast AI and technology associated with it is advancing. It’s not uncommon for even the finest minds in the field, to say something like, “I don’t know how the AI agents are working,” or “we didn’t expect that to happen.” With so much on the line, these are not good answers. We must do better, and quickly.
We must also remember that technology is the future. If the US doesn’t lead, we become increasingly vulnerable in a wide variety of painful ways. AI can wreck our economy either by behaving in a manner not anticipated and planned for, by way of external AI attacks from nation states like China or an endless array of private corporations with their own agendas. Palantir is such an example. Data trains AI and this is one of the reasons that Musk’s illegal DOGE activities that included the theft of enormous mountains of our personal data. At the moment, my trust in the biggest players in this field is nearly non-existent. Every one of them are so deeply connected to the US and other government, that if things don’t change, the quietly spoken predictions within the community claim that should we survive, there will be no more nations, just a handful of primary tech oligarchs, competing with each other. Extinction or trusting these broligarchs are not viable solutions for our future or the future of our species.
If you’ve read this far, you are to be congratulated. It’s not easy reading and it’s also dense material. Still, I hope that you can at least takeaway the seriousness of the three threats discussed. One thing for certain is that there is zero chance that this administration or the Republican Party will alter the trajectory of these threats in any positive manner. Like restoring our republic from the clutches of this administration, this is an “all-hands-on-deck” issue. Let’s all try to learn more about this topic so that we can work together to ensure our future and the futures of our children and grandchildren. Such an apocalypse does not need to happen, and neither do we need to go thirsty or lose our employment. AI is coming and we are impelled to prepare a transition strategy that provides training for new types of jobs, manages our water and other natural resources and finally, keeps the human race moving forward. It’s a big chore, but we are capable of handling it… if we work together and steadfastly.
I hope to bring better news with a new essay, late in the week.
My very best to all,
Paul