Our feral elite are determined to install data centers no matter what the plebes want, even if they have to deploy robot dogs to force the issue.

As Americans grow increasingly angry at the rapid encroachment of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers into their communities with the attendant higher energy prices and destruction of aquifers, tech companies are embracing a dystopian solution to protect the complexes: robot dogs.

Woof.

It’s been obvious for a while that the tech-bros view democracy with disdain. Zuckerberg, Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, Karp and their intellectual lodestar–Curtis Yarvin, speak and write about their techno-feudal vision of an ideal state. They are an increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. They worship The Network State: How to Start a New Country, which outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. 

Of course their wet dreams are hardly popular with the rest of us, hence the need for force to bring about their planned dystopia. But, as I’ve written about before, elite security forces will always be suspect, and the dark fantasy among the tech intellectuals has always been robots, who will always obey. In Survival of the Richest–Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, Douglas Rushkoff, explains that the tech bros like Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, etc. would rather escape than simply make the world more livable for Americans. Rushkoff was the professor of media theory and digital economics, who was invited to to lecture 5 mysterious billionaires on how to survive the “Event”–the societal apocalypse they know is coming. They laughed when Rushkoff explained that maybe sharing their wealth now might preclude the “Event”, and instead wanted to know how to ensure the loyalty of their security guards in the aftermath.

It makes total sense that they are rolling out robot dogs to protect their AI data centers, since the only way in which AI will pay off was if it was employed as full-spectrum surveillance. Going further, it has become apparent that the tech-bros have become politically toxic. When/if the AI bubble pops and when/if it takes down the larger stock market and possibly the entire U.S. economy, they will be seen as the villains they are.

Back when he wrote for Naked Capitalism, Lambert Strether, came up with a sound response to robots. “Kill It With Fire”. I heartily agree. I’m not scared of technology, but I am scared of the sociopaths/psychopaths who control our world and wield said technology.

Because, of course, in the U.S., the billionaires will own the robots. They’ll own the corporations, the capital and the political process. They will still require a small subset of the professional/managerial/caste drones but the rest of us will get shit. No jobs, but also no Universal Basic Income (UBI), and no prospects for the future for us or our children. There will be simply a growing underclass structurally locked out of the new automated, digital economy, where human labor is superfluous.

Now do you see why they are releasing the robot dogs?