Unreal Bird #2: Rogue State

Power lines at sunset in winter.
Power lines against a winter sunset. Lakewood, OH, 2026.

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Some readers may wonder why this issue does not say more about the ongoing state terrorism in Minnesota. The truth is that the news comes too fast and furious for a biweekly publishing schedule and if I try to keep up with it I will surely fail. As a result and by necessity, this will be a somewhat reflective space.

In this issue:

  • My deep dive into Ohio data centers is live on Tech Policy press!
  • I also have a new piece on the need to provide US activists opportunities to build solidarity with—and learn from—democracy activists abroad.
  • Let's take a moment to consider the newly apparent "rupture" in the international order, and its intersection with the US tech sector.
  • Odds & ends: A free-speech-first university implodes. What percent of the AI boom is just porn? Build Back Better™ through Project 2029. The inevitability of ads in ChatGPT.
  • Scroll to the bottom to see dogs!

What I'm up to

I have two new pieces out:

RE: the first piece, please consider sharing and promoting this online discussion on "Understanding What It Means to Be in Solidarity with Iranians & Venezuelans," on Jan. 30 at 1pm ET.

The data center piece has something for everyone: pictures of birds, romantic descriptions of small towns, even an Epstein files angle. When I started writing, it was impossible not to think of Karen Hao's Empire of AI, a deeply reported look at OpenAI as an imperial project: driven by ambition, extractive in nature, and global in reach.

The boxlike structures appearing across Ohio do not look like monuments to empire, but they are. They are essential to the fortunes of Big Tech and its investors, who pitch them as middle America's on-ramp to the 21st century economy. Local and state leaders provide enormous tax abatements at the cost of funding to Ohio schools, in exchange for a paltry number of long-term jobs and other benefits which, research shows, may not materialize. Data center development is driving up utility prices as the public subsidizes demonstrably corrupt power companies and pays billions to cope with the respiratory health impacts. And the business and political connections of the beneficiaries make some of the deals smell like old fish.

Will Ohio become a colonial outpost of Silicon Valley? Read the piece here.

Rogue state

The trouble with a potential US occupation of Greenland is that it seems like a bad joke. Unfortunately, even with the odds declining, it's deadly serious.

Why blow up the most powerful military alliance in the history of the world over a piece of tundra where you already have a military base? Justin Hendrix has a piece making the connection to Greenland's supply of critical minerals, and Casey Michel has another describing how Big Tech investors are licking their chops at the prospect of seizing those resources; even the techno-libertarian "Network State" crowd get a mention.

This embarrassing affair will never be fully behind us. The possibility of kinetic military conflict between the United States and another NATO member state will accelerate the unmaking of the international order; Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called it a "rupture." Philip Gordon and Mara Karlin have a piece in Foreign Affairs concluding that "Allies’ Plan A should be to do everything in their power to preserve as much practical cooperation [with Washington] as possible. But it would be dangerous and irresponsible not to have a Plan B." Henry Farrell, meanwhile, suggests that the European Union improve the speed and flexibility of its mechanisms for economic retaliation as a credible deterrent against future US action.

These conversations won't stop soon, and they won't stop after the Trump administration ends. America is now a rogue state; even a change in the party in power won't restore its credibility. US politics will be rightly seen as too inherently unstable to trust, always one election away from calamity.

In a song released in early 2025, the folk singer Jesse Welles reminds us that:

When the king's cut friend and foe / And every nation knows his wrath / When he's dead in fifteen years / We'll be here and they'll be back.

The consequences of the Greenland Affair will be with us far into the future.

Odds & ends

  • "They Wanted a University Without Cancel Culture. Then Dissenters Were Ousted." Evan Mandery, Politico. I did not resist the urge to cackle while reading this look into the Bari Weiss affiliated University of Austin. It's a good reminder that, whatever your views, much of the debate about "cancel culture" and free speech has been captured by a political project funded by right-wing billionaires and more interested in free expression as a Trojan Horse than as a genuine concern.
  • "The Bangification of AI," by Nina Jankowicz. I missed this when it went live in October, but it deserves your attention in light of recent reporting that 41% of images created by Grok over a nine-day period were "sexualized." Given the economic and environmental footprint of AI and past reporting that major image generation sites are mostly porn, it begs the question: for what, exactly, are we paying these costs?
  • "Tech Viaduct: A Searchlight Institute Project." What if you could DOGE... for good? This project, led by former chief technologists in the Biden Administration, is developing a playbook to help a future US Digital Service streamline public services for Americans. I wish there were more forward-thinking projects like this, laying groundwork for eventual rebuilding; if you know of any, please share.
  • "Risky Business: Advanced AI Companies’ Race for Revenue," Miranda Bogen & Nathalie Marechal, CDT. You may have heard that OpenAI is testing ways to put ads in ChatGPT. Of course they are! They have to recover those hundreds of billions of dollars in costs somehow. CDT has a new report explaining the different ways AI product companies make money: subscriptions, API access, marketplaces, government contract, and, of course, advertisements. The authors give stark warnings about the risks of ad-based revenue models, and they will sound starkly familiar to anyone who studies social media.

Snoot watch

Greyhounds at play, faster than light.
Greyhounds at play, faster than light.

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