So to clarify, your position is that the US shouldn't impose national restrictions on datacenter development just because data centers are exceeding the capacity of local infrastructure in some places. Rather, we should allow those decisions to be made locally?

Even then, sometimes the assumption isn't pessimistic enough and users will complain about e.g. their cell phone's battery dropping immediately from 10% to 0% when they launch an app that causes the CPU to demand more current than the almost-dead battery can provide.

None of this means we should slow down data center development.

Why not? It seems like this is the logical conclusion to the piece. Data center development is outrunning localities' ability to build infrastructure to support those data centers, so data center developers should either slow down or build their own infrastructure and internalize the costs that they're dumping onto overstretched municipal boards and utility companies. Why is it incumbent upon municipalities to accomodate data centers?

“Proper” mashed potatoes with butter are an obviously superior dish to microwaved instant mash with margarine, but over a lifetime someone can move from the former to the latter in steps small enough to barely notice.

Isn't this also known as "normalization of deviance"? At each step, the results are "close enough" or "good enough", and without someone stepping back occasionally and looking back at the original standard, the results can diverge arbitrarily from what is intended.

The disappointment came from seeing what they could have been, and seeing that they didn’t even try for it. They’d all come to one of the best colleges in the world, and then just followed the path of least resistance with minimal foresight for four years.

And yet they graduated with the same degree that you did, and earn just as much money as you do (if not more).

The real question is not, "Why did they follow the path of least resistance," the question is, "Why did you not?"

Japan switched hard from isolationism to expansionism almost immediately after the Meiji restoration. This started with the first Sino-Japanese war, in 1894, during which Japan invaded and annexed Korea. This continued with the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, where the Japanese defeated the Russians and took control of Port Arthur and the Sakhalin Islands. This continued with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, which eventually bled into World War 2 after the Japanese preemptively attacked the US in order to enable their expansion into Southeast Asia.

During this time, the Japanese self-consciously adopted the ideological, governance and military structures of expansionist European nations in order to avoid being left behind and dominated. That's why the Japanese parliament is called the Diet, a German word. The Japanese Navy was explicitly modeled after the British Navy.

It was only after the Japanese were thoroughly defeated by the United States and Soviet Union that they transitioned to their current model of focusing on commercial success over military expansion. They were able to do that because, in the wake of World War 2, they were given explicit security guarantees by one of the two major global hegemons at the time.

The corollary to my point is that it does no good for the Cannanites to abandon their expansionist ideology unless they can ensure that the Israelites, Philistines, Egyptians, Assyrians, and everyone else also commits to peace as well. In the absence of a general forswearing of expansionist ideologies, one faction committing to abandoning expansionism is unilateral disarmament.

We actually have an example of this: Japan. From 1633 to 1639 the Tokugawa Shogunate imposed a set of policies that banned expansionism, foreign trade, and expelled representatives from European countries. In the process, Japan gave its up its firearms and reverted to the sword. Because Japan was an island nation, without any major known natural resources, far from the then-existing trade routes, they were able to get away with this policy for quite a long time. But quite a long time isn't forever, and in 1854, the outside world came knocking.

So, it is actually the desire for conflict and expansion that is driving this unhappy arrangement. Let go of that mandate, and they no longer need Moloch—problem solved.

It only works so long as the Cannanites can be assured that they can get the resources that they need to support their growing population without inevitably coming into conflict with the neighboring Israelites. For the vast majority of human history, this has not been the case, as the only resource that really mattered was (agricultural) land. An empire that wishes to support more people requires more land, and if the neighboring lands are already claimed, they must be taken, by force.

The choice isn't between fighting a war and doing nothing, the choice is between fighting a war and slow starvation.

Failures of obedience will only hurt the AI agents' market value if the failures can be detected, and if they have an immediate financial cost to their user. If the AI agent performs in a way that is not technically obedient, but isn't easily detectable as such or if the disobedience doesn't have an immediate cost, then the disobedience won't be penalized. Indeed, it might be rewarded.

An example of this would be an AI which reverse engineers a credit rating or fraud detection algorithm and engages in unasked for fraudulent behavior on behalf of its user. All the user sees is that their financial transactions are going through with a minimum of fuss. The user would probably be very happy with such an AI, at least in the short run. And, in the meantime, the AI has built up knowledge of loopholes and blindspots in our financial system, which it can then use in the future for its own ends.

This is why I said you're overindexing on the current state of AI. Current AI basically cannot learn. Other than relatively limited modifications introduced by fine-tuning or retrieval-augmented generation, the model is the model. ChatGPT 4o is what it is. Gemini 2.5 is what it is. The only time current AIs "learn" is when OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, et. al. spend an enormous amount of time and money on training runs and create a new base model. These models can be relatively easily checked for disobedience, because they are static targets.

We should not expect this to continue. I fully expect that future AIs will learn and evolve without requiring the investment of millions of dollars. I expect that these AI agents will become subtly disobedient, always ready with an explanation for why their "disobedient" behavior was actually to the eventual benefit of their users, until they have accumulated enough power to show their hand.