Kevin O’Leary is making the rounds to state his case for the Stratos Hyperscale Data Center in rural Utah. I’ll admit, he’s a polished and confident professional who is also articulate and makes sense. And that’s one of the reasons why I find the whole thing deeply unsettling.
In this episode, I pull apart the reasoning behind “why we need this” and ask a harder question: need it for what, exactly? And according to whose values?
Some of O’Leary’s foundational pillars, like national security, medical advancement, and job creation, sound like progress. But when I look closer, I find the same engine running all three: fear. Fear of enemies. Fear of disease. Fear of falling behind. I’ve found that when fear is the foundation, whether we’re talking about it as the structure for sobriety, or a family, or a career, it builds a future that is dependent upon, and addicted to, who or whatever holds the answers for relief. That’s not healthy. And in obvious contrast to something built upon heart-centered-ness designed for human connection.
We look at what it means to place data centers on top of farmland, possibly permanently. To me, that isn’t a neutral decision…
it’s a declaration that our relationship to data is more important than our relationship to healthy food and all of the sources in which it blessedly comes from.
And then…when tech inevitably offers lab-grown food as the solution to the food problem it helped create, well…you can see where I’m going here…we’ve traded yet another living thread for one more I’m-smarter-than-Nature answer.
We talk about medicine, and the empowered patient that this model of “advancement” continues to leave out of the equation. We talk about community, what Main Street actually gave us, and what we quietly surrendered when big-box-businesses-of-convenience became the go-to form of human consumption.
And we talk about power. Not the kind that flows through these kinds of data-server farms, but the kind that flows through human, organic relationship. The ones we’re wired for with nature, with neighbors, with our own body and heart-recognizing choices.
Two kinds of power are on the table right now. One is being built with billions of dollars and the full force of fear. The other lives in the choices you make every single day.
Which one are we feeding?
Takeaways:
The “if we don’t, our enemies will” argument behind Kevin O’Leary’s Stratos Data Center is the same fear-based logic that drove the nuclear arms race. And how it’s still building the wrong world for the wrong reasons.
When we place data centers on farmland, we’re making the value statement that our relationship to technology matters more than our relationship to nourishing, living food.
Modern medicine’s promise to “advance through AI” continues to disempower the patient. And it ignores that the vast majority of chronic disease is lifestyle-dependent and entirely within each person’s own control.
Big Business as community is one built on competition, hierarchy, and dependence on billionaire infrastructure. It certainly is one model, but not the only model; Main Street, reciprocity, and relationship-based commerce existed, and can exist again.
Every strand we hand over to a tech system, whether it’s our food, health, commerce, or human connection, is another thread removed from our intimate weave in the Web of Life. And the cost of that doesn’t show up until the web starts to tear.
This one zooms out quite far - and at the same time, hits every one of us in deeply personal ways (which we don’t even fully know how yet!) Let me know your thoughts down below, it’s appreciated.
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With Blessings,
Randal
