From Farmland to Server Farms

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” — Daniel J. Boorstin

Turning Inward: Noticing Things

This week, I’m shifting my focus from the global to the local. I’ve temporarily muted the constant noise from the Global South, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, and Ukraine—choosing instead to pay attention to what’s right here, right now, mostly free from media interference or guidance. From this vantage point, everything looks different. My days have been filled with weeding, housework, small repairs, cooking, navigating rising grocery prices and utility bills—and working out, almost daily. It’s a relief to turn off the world now and then, at least as much as one can.

But things aren’t exactly hunky-dory here, either. All summer, West Michigan has been blanketed by unusually poor air quality. Each time I visit the lake, the sky feels heavy and dim—a stark contrast to the clear blue expanses of previous years. Air Quality Alerts have become routine, often accompanied by a faint irritant that triggers sneezing and a scratchy throat. Maybe it’s allergies. Maybe not. More likely, it’s smoke from Canadian wildfires drifting across the Great Lakes region, carrying fine particulate matter that pollutes the air and poses real health risks. The result is a summer that feels subtly—but persistently—off.

We didn’t really have a proper spring this year either. The season seemed to skip entirely, jumping from cold to hot with almost no transition. Even the scent of petrichor—the earthy aroma that usually follows a summer rain—has felt strangely muted. We’ve had a few good storms, and I still step outside afterward to take in a deep breath of what I hope is fresh air. So far, it has been. It just doesn’t linger the way it used to.

A few weeks ago, I set out early to hike Grand Mere State Park, only to be swarmed by biting black flies—aggressive and relentless. I abandoned the trail almost immediately. It was a real disappointment. They’ve been around for years, but it used to be just a few weeks at the end of summer when I had to take cover. Now, they seem to be arriving earlier—and sticking around longer. I don’t mind insects that keep to themselves, but these buggers attack. Not cool.

A reader from Arizona recently told me he’s noticed an alarming number of dead trees on his property—and, more unsettling, a near-total absence of insects. I wondered why we aren’t seeing the same thing here. I was outside in my garden today, getting eaten alive. Since the weather warmed up, carpenter ants have invaded my house and resisted every attempt to evict them. The yard is teeming with various species of ants, too.

Regarding the fires and air pollution, he recommended a documentary called The Dimming—so I watched it. I learned a lot. Like many films exploring environmental disruption, it connects strange local shifts to broader, often unseen forces. I’ll write more about The Dimming in a future post.

The Data Center Next Door

For now, I want to turn to something else—something less visible, but just as real. We often imagine the future as distant or digital, but it’s already here. In New Carlisle, Indiana—just 40 minutes from my home—Amazon Web Services (AWS) is reshaping the landscape with an $11 billion data center campus, the largest capital investment in Indiana’s history. Spanning more than 800 acres of former farmland, the project includes up to 32 data centers, with seven already under construction as of late 2024.

The development is expected to bring around 1,000 high-paying jobs and inject roughly $4.7 billion into the local economy. Still, it has raised concerns: increased traffic, disruption to wetlands, and the scale of tax incentives granted to AWS. Known as Project Rainier, it’s transforming the rural identity of New Carlisle, positioning it as a future hub for AI and cloud computing.

But this isn’t just a local story. AWS is rapidly expanding its data center footprint across the U.S. to meet surging demand for cloud services and artificial intelligence. Similar mega-projects are underway in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Ohio, with ongoing growth in Virginia, Oregon, and California.

Globally, AWS plans to spend $150 billion over the next 15 years to build data centers in Australia, Ireland, Germany, Singapore, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, the UAE, and more. These projects often promise jobs, STEM education, and green initiatives like solar arrays and water replenishment. Yet beneath the optimism lie deeper questions about land use, energy demand, and who controls the digital infrastructure that underpins society.

There are also concerns about the health effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs), especially near high-powered data centers and dense 5G infrastructure. While official consensus downplays the risks, some research raises alarms about chronic exposure. As the digital economy grows its physical footprint, these unresolved questions will only become more urgent.

Some say we’re witnessing a manufacturing revival in America—but the reality is more complex. From what I can see, we’re not rebuilding an industrial base. We’re replacing agricultural fields with server farms.

Yes, U.S. manufacturing has seen modest growth since 2017, but it still lags behind pre-2000 levels. The real engine is services—especially tech, finance, and logistics—sectors often propped up by debt and cheap energy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, digital services like cloud computing and e-commerce now dominate economic activity.

But are they profitable? Many AI tools, including ChatGPT, are “free” to anyone with a device and Internet connection. I didn’t understand how that could work—so I looked into it.

AWS, which powers much of the infrastructure behind these tools, operates on a pay-as-you-go model. Clients are charged for compute power, storage, and bandwidth—by the second.

Imagine you have a supercomputer so large and powerful it fills a warehouse. Most people don’t need that kind of power every day. So instead of selling the whole machine, AWS lets companies rent just the slice they need, exactly when they need it.

That’s the business. AWS owns massive buildings full of servers and rents out computing capacity to companies like Netflix, Zoom, and yes, OpenAI. Some clients pay pennies per hour. Others, like Anthropic, spend billions annually. The more the infrastructure is used, the more profitable it becomes.

But that profitability hinges on two things: cheap electricity and high server utilization. The more workloads AWS can cram into each megawatt of power, the better their margins. That’s why they build in places with low-cost land, tax incentives, and abundant energy.

This entire model is fragile. It depends on stable energy prices, constant demand, and complex global supply chains. An energy crunch, hardware shortage, or geopolitical shock could disrupt the system.

For now, the illusion holds. But it’s built on an enormous appetite for electricity—and a quiet bet that this infrastructure will remain indispensable, no matter the cost.

AI’s business model mirrors a larger trend in today’s economy: a shift from producing real value to generating profit through complex, often inefficient systems.

I’m reminded of a story from the Azores, where a local real estate agent explained that beef raised on the islands was exported, while imported beef from Argentina was sold in local stores. The system wasn’t designed for efficiency or local value—it was built to move goods through profitable channels, no matter how wasteful.

AI works much the same way. It doesn’t produce tangible goods. It consumes massive energy to process data, train models, and provide services—often with unclear returns. It’s not just powering innovation; it’s fueling a speculative digital economy that masks its true costs.

Just like the absurd beef trade, AI’s energy hunger reveals a system increasingly detached from real-world needs. Instead of creating sustainable value, it churns through energy and capital, abstracting productivity into virtual models and algorithms.

In this way, AI is both symptom and amplifier of a larger shift—where making money often means wasting energy and attention, with real-world consequences buried beneath layers of complexity.

The new AWS facility comes at a steep cost—especially in power. It’s projected to consume up to 17,700 gigawatt-hours per year, nearly half the electricity used annually by Indiana’s 2.8 million households.

Power will come from Indiana Michigan Power, a subsidiary of AEP. Efficiency measures are planned, but projections suggest data centers may soon outpace residential electricity demand entirely. We’re witnessing an infrastructure shift that’s as invisible as it is immense.

Crypto mining compounds the issue. These energy-intensive operations promise economic growth but often overload power grids, raise electricity prices, and leave behind environmental damage. A 2024 International Energy Agency report found that crypto mining now consumes more electricity annually than Argentina. Many of these operations are clustered near data centers in deregulated energy zones.

So what are we producing?

Not food. Not tools. Not tangible goods. We’re manufacturing data, AI models, and speculative digital tokens—intangible assets that consume vast amounts of physical, human, and civic resources.

This raises urgent questions: What happens when land that once fed people now feeds algorithms? What does it mean when national growth becomes virtual, not physical—built on fragile systems of energy and finance?

Meanwhile, America feels increasingly isolated. In 2025, international tourism to the U.S. dropped by 35%. Major airlines—Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, JetBlue—cut routes, citing high costs, complex visas, and rising social unrest. At home, 28 rural towns lost all commercial air service, cutting them off from vital access to commerce and healthcare.

Yet most Americans remain distracted—by political theater and digital dopamine. Flags wave. TikToks scroll. Candidates shout. Meanwhile, the foundation erodes.

Collapse by Complexity

“Made in the USA” slogans mask deep dependency on foreign supply chains. The real growth is in the digital-financial complex: data centers, trading algorithms, and AI—built on unsustainable energy use and mounting debt. We aren’t building a future. We’re renting one—and paying in advance.

For decades, Americans have taken cheap energy for granted. But energy is the master resource. It’s neither infinite nor cheap—and its true cost is hidden by debt.

You can’t print oil. You can’t quant-ease natural gas. Eventually, energy becomes unaffordable—or the debt collapses.

In The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter argued that civilizations don’t fall from one event—but from the accumulated burden of complexity. Each new layer—technological, bureaucratic, institutional—yields diminishing returns. Eventually, the cost of maintenance outweighs the benefit. Collapse isn’t fire and ash. It’s simplification.

Roads go unrepaired. Institutions lose trust. Bureaucracies stall. Complexity without energy becomes entropy.

The cracks are already visible: rising homelessness, decaying infrastructure, eroding legitimacy. This isn’t Rome falling. It’s Byzantium unraveling—slow, ceremonial, absurd.

Some still insist we’ll innovate our way out. That’s the final illusion.

In The Great Demographic Reversal, economists Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan argue that the age of cheap labor and low inflation is over. Aging societies consume more, produce less, and rely on shrinking labor pools. Add energy constraints and institutional complexity, and the future looks way different.

Governments built for perpetual growth must now manage decline—a task no existing system is prepared for. Yet Americans still believe that the right app, leader, or policy will fix it.

But physics doesn’t care about ideology. And what we too often miss is the extent to which our energy future is shaped—not by market demand—but by political intervention. Take, for example, the recent move by President Trump to eliminate subsidies for wind and solar projects. His “One Big Beautiful Bill” proposal rescinds vital tax credits and directs the Treasury and Interior Departments to strip away clean energy incentives.

The scale of those subsidies is massive: wind and solar alone received roughly $31 billion in 2024, and were on track for $421 billion more from 2025–34 under Biden-era law. And you have to ask yourself: how much of this is like the beef exported from the Azores only to import it from somewhere else?

This exposes a harsh reality: our clean energy sector, which is dependent on the fossil fuel sector, was never self-sustaining—it was built on political scaffolding. Remove that support, and the industry will likely falter.

So here we are—over-leveraged on energy, debt, and complexity, clinging to the illusion of invincibility as margins shrink.

Boorstin’s words at the top of this post ring truer than ever. We don’t lack information—we’re drowning in it. What we lack is clarity, discernment, and the courage to see patterns for what they are.

We’ve built immense complexity on fragile foundations. We pretend debt is wealth, data is productivity, and crises can be solved with tweaks.

But the road forks.

One path leads deeper into illusion: more debt to mask decline, more tech to simulate progress, more distraction to mute the signals. The other path demands reckoning—with limits, with energy, with attention. It asks what deserves preservation, and what must be released.

Collapse isn’t inevitable. But neither is salvation guaranteed. The future depends on what we choose to see—and what we continue to deny.

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