ICE

Data Centers as Dual-Use Scaffolds

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The book of Esther tells us the story about Haman—a man who was so obsessed with destroying a rival that it cost him his own life in the end.  It could be read as being a cautionary tale against ambition when it is at the cost of others.  The devices we build to solidify our own power might instead be our own undoing.  

In the same way Haman didn’t anticipate Mordecai being related to queen Esther we can’t always imagine how our own plans will play out and never actually know how the scaffolds we build to deal with others will be used.  There’s a principle about such plots found in Proverbs 26:27, “Whoever digs a pit will fall into it; if someone rolls a stone, it will roll back on them.”  Jesus explained this concept of reciprocation and told Peter “those who live by the sword die by the sword.”  The things we bring into the world can easily come back on us.

We Must Beat China!

A few years ago, policies like confronting China and large-scale deportations of illegal immigrants seemed right to me. I saw them as necessary for national security and for preserving our country’s character. It was never about skin color or the language people spoke. For me, it came down to basic fairness—everyone playing by the same rules—along with the belief that China was acting as a bully in its region and that the U.S. should put the interests of its own people first. Back then, I still trusted that our institutions and the character of the American people, though imperfect, would generally do the right thing.

Fast-forward to today, and—for multiple reasons that go beyond the scope of this post—I no longer trust the government to reliably serve our best interests.

After I’ve watched multiple administrations say one thing while doing another, the actual needs of the American people clearly aren’t a priority in Washington DC or amongst our elites.

A race towards the abyss?

So, when Kevin O’Leary says we need more data centers to beat China, I’m skeptical.  Is all this massive AI infrastructure being built as a tool of protection from a foreign power or is it simply about control, in general, for a few elites?  There’s actually no way to know for certain how this plays out, but there’s no reason to believe that this tool of war and of mass surveillance won’t eventually be used on us.  China may be the excuse.  However, AI is the ultimate dual use technology and as easily domestically employed as it is against an alleged foreign threat.

What Is Actually Coming?

My initial response to data centers was a response to NIMBYism.  It was so ironic to see people, on social media, using ChatGPT to construct arguments against a proposed data center.  Maybe this was just a typical fear of change Luddite response and what is built or not built a matter of the property rights of a land owner.  And yet sometimes a rule is true until it isn’t.  The formula that has worked since that 1800’s invention of the power loom, that technology frees up labor to do other beneficial things, doesn’t work with a machine that does everything at less cost than a human.

Even if the current intent of O’Leary is not to destroy your future, we need to consider the law of unintended consequences.  The rule is that a complex system will often react in unpredictable ways.  And not necessarily an AI going rogue either.  Sure, issues like the paper clip problem must be discussed, but it’s more the tendency of humans given too much power that should be considered.  So even if a leader now is opposed to using AI tools in a way that violates our rights—the next guy to take the reigns may not.  

What sent a chill through me as far as ICE and immigration enforcement was not that it is any different from any other arrest in some regards.  We take criminals off the street all of the time, rip men away from their families simply on the basis of accusations, and this is just an accepted part of civilization.  We have this system to punish the evildoer and it’s better than violent chaos.  But, this only can work when the mechanism is itself bound to law.  What bothers me is how quickly the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were pushed aside for sake of expediency.

Moreover, when U.S. Citizens were killed by ICE the same people who said that we need stronger enforcement to protect citizens did a complete 180 turn and cheered with a FAFO dismissal of those questioning the use of deadly force.

What this tells me is that propaganda from a political regime trumps our Constitutional law.  And it works both ways.  When parents speaking up at a school board meeting can be described as “domestic terrorists” and a Jan 6th rioter be held in indefinite detention, this isn’t about right or left and Democrats versus Republicans.  No, when a partisan sees a legal tool that can be stretched to gain on their enemies they will use it with a completely clear conscience.  There is not a shortage of excuses to abuse power.  That’s why we must stand for civil rights for all, we never know when we’ll be the inconvenience to be eliminated.

Our Hangman’s Noose

In the end, and returning to the thesis (those who plot and build their devices to destroy others end up facing the device they built), there’s been a critical lack of awareness about what we are actually building.  We cheer ICE as surveillance technology developed to kill in Gaza is deployed to our streets.  It is “Homeland Security” and, therefore, this would never be used against the American people, right?

That ‘security’ being the same DHS that a ‘glitch’ had mysteriously as in Tel Aviv, Israel—after X rolled out a feature showing the account location information. 

Strange, huh?

Thankfully our government and the  head of product at X dismissed it as being “fake” or “manipulated media” (it was not) while they took the feature down temporarily and then ‘corrected’ the issue.

So as far as the AI rollout and ICE tactics, what if they’re actually laying the ground work for the surveillance state—manufacturing consent by deploying an acceptable version first (as a trial run) against a population many of us see bad and giving us some tools for free?  We need to ask why are AI companies so willing to lose money (spend three dollars for every one earned) if it’s merely another business venture?  Could we be walking into a trap?  Could those same detention facilities also be used to warehouse American dissidents?

If you’re trying to catch a wild animal you’ll put out a trap.  You will present something for free, lure them into the device you have built to ensnare them, and at an appointed time the mechanism is triggered.  So, think, is there any reason why you would trust the people currently building AI infrastructure?  Are you absolutely certain that this political class that betrays us at every turn is really concerned about illegal immigrants?

Even if this isn’t the plan—what would stop it from becoming the reality?  

Did you see how fast the narrative shifted in Minneapolis?  You know if a Federal agency were to ever raid your home in the middle of the night, ship you away for crimes against the regime, there is nobody coming to save you, right?  If you were to totally disappear few would even care enough to inquire and those who might protest would be quickly drowned out by propaganda that painted you as extreme and dangerous.  Consider this: One moment people praised ICE for protecting citizens, but in the next they’re celebrating when ICE killed two citizens—Alex Pretti and Renee Good.  

Rights that aren’t universal, those which do not exist for everyone, are not long for this world.  We can’t give our abusive elites this kind of surveillance infrastructure and legal power without expecting it to eventually be used against us.  You can’t count on anyone to defend your own civil rights when you do not fight for the rights of others.  For sure, the government will not save you from their own power grabs.  We must see the foot in the door strategy and slam the door on their toes if need be.

We must be wary of those making special exceptions.  And we need to question those who give unexplained gifts.  When—at a flip of a switch—something we build is so easily turned against us, we may just be better off not to build it.  At the very least we should be taking time to consider all possibilities and then create safeguards which are up to the task.  Otherwise we may end up hoisted by our own petard.

A Better Union of Humanity 

We are the only line of defense.  

Our existing institutions are corrupted.

Government and corporations often will serve only the most powerful elites at our expense.

We need a Union of Human Individuals that goes beyond sending a representative to be bought or otherwise manipulated.  We need to address the growing power unbalance—a growing wealth gap that with AI will only be multiplied.  We must put aside old divisions, none of the red team versus blue team stuff really matters where this is all going, so it is time to leave it behind like a middle school clique.  Language doesn’t matter nor does a nation of origin.  Even religious differences are best set aside.  We all have something in common: We’re human.

If we can’t find common ground we’ll be destroyed by our own devices.

The guillotine was eventually used on those who initially used it.  We may build a system aimed at one group of people and yet these things tend to boomerang back at us.  We’re better off to judge as we wish to be judged, forgive as we wish to be forgiven, and stop building infrastructure that can be turned on us as easily as it is used against them.  So let’s do this right, not be a Haman, and just be human to all humans instead.  We don’t need more dual use detention facilities and data centers—we need to complete a more complete and better union of humanity.

What Is the True Cost of EV?

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The battery electric vehicle (EV) versus the internal combustion engine (ICE) powered debate is one of the most irrational of our time. On both sides of the discussion, you have those frothing-at-the-mouth types who attack the moment you disagree. And this is exactly the response that I got after I had casually mentioned that ICE is 1/3 the cost under a click-bait post…

Model Y starts at $43,990 FYI.

One just called me ignorant, but others tried to make an argument, including this response:

I’m trying to figure out what car cost 1/3 of the price of a Tesla🤔🤔? The long range Model 3 (the one you want for a roadtrip) is $42,500 – $7500 tax credit is $35,000. This is not factoring in gas savings. Please tell me what new car is availability for under $12,000 (that’s the 1/3 cost of a Tesla you mentioned)?

Fair enough question.

Note, I never said new, but assuming that I did…

Believe it or not, and even in this inflationary age, there are still reliable sedans that come in under $20,000. Starting with a Mitsubishi Mirage G4 ($18,500), the Kia Rio ($17,875), and the Nissan Versa ($17,075), the lowest-priced option is half of even the subsidized price of the Tesla base model.

But you can’t exclude the subsidy from the cost of the EV, the government doesn’t have a magic wand to create value and we all end up paying for their expenditures in our taxes or by inflation due to money printing. And it only begins with that “tax credit” (so-called) given directly to privileged people who can afford a new luxury car.

What is the true cost of subsidies?

According to a study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the cost to us is nearly $50,000 for every EV produced:

Federal and state subsidies and regulatory credits for EVs totaled nearly $22 billion in 2021, or nearly $50,000 per EV, socializing the true cost of these vehicles to taxpayers, utility ratepayers, and owners of gasoline vehicles

Tens of billions of dollars have been spent trying to make EVs viable, and yet still the average cost of these vehicles is $65,000, compared to $48,000 for ICE. Why haven’t these subsidies leveled the playing field? It is simply the fact that batteries require tons of extra material and a much more complex process to produce.

So we can at least double that visible “tax credit” subsidy and already the true cost of an EV is close to three times a comparable ICE sedan.

We could stop there—the 1/3 number reached—but let’s continue…

What is the true cost of production?

The cost of a vehicle isn’t just the window sticker price or the money that it takes to manufacture. The bigger question—given the reason many say we should switch to EVs is about emissions—is what the increased environmental impact is of producing the batteries that go into these cars. Is this a trade-off we are willing to make?

Lithium batteries are costly, they require an enormous amount of water and also leave a toxic legacy that will grow exponentially as EV is adopted. Is it worth this cost to only marginally reduce carbon emissions?  That is to say, around 17-30% less emissions according to European Energy Agency? 

Sure, it could get better with a heavy investment in electrical generation and transmission—yet that is another huge cost financially and environmentally…

What is the cost of infrastructure demand?

This is where the conversation is the most interesting. We have the refining capacity and distribution network already built for ICE vehicles. Gasoline and diesel fuel have the advantage of being energy-dense and can be moved around using the existing highways. But what about EVs?

There is an illusion that comes with plugging something in. The load we put on the system is invisible. But there is no magic to it. Electricity is something that must be produced somewhere and then transmitted to the charging stations. If everyone adopted EV technology the grid would collapse.

We’re currently nowhere even near what it would take in capacity to convert everyone to EV. The easiest route to more electrical generation is to go anuclear. So how many new nuclear power plants would it take? Well, if we use miles driven and the number of cars on the road today, then we would need to build 250 additional nuclear power plants as big as the largest plant in the US, and the supporting infrastructure to keep up with this demand.

So are you willing to have a Palo Verde in your own backyard?

It cost 5.9 billion dollars to build one in 1988 (the equivalent of 13.9 billion in 2023) and we needed to start building 250 of them yesterday.  The solar and wind equivalent would be even more costly to build and maintain.

The costs would be astronomical and that’s just considering only passenger vehicles. Switching Class 8 trucks would take even more of these massive power plants and spending—the cost of switching would be insane.  Not to mention you would need more trucks to do the same work as you did with diesel.  And remember, every dime that we spend on this mass EV conversion could go to health care or education instead.

Can you now see how extremely costly EVs will become as they are adopted?

But it does not end there…

Why is the cost of wear items greater?

Batteries are heavy and weight is the enemy of “wear items” like brakes or tires—which is not to mention the additional damage to the highway infrastructure.

EV tires wear 20% faster than comparable ICE vehicles.  That is a cost out of your own pocket and also a concern for the environment. And do not forget, to be safe you’ll need those heavy-duty EV-specific tires. Sure, maybe this is not a very big problem for those who can already afford the premium cost of a new EV?  However, for that waitress struggling to make ends meet she will have to make the choice between safety and home utilities.

Next up is excess road wear.  Big trucks are obviously the leading cause of damage to roads. However, EV proliferation will start to cause problems for existing infrastructure:

A 6,000-pound vehicle causes more than five times as much road damage as a 4,000-pound sedan. A GMC Hummer EV, which weighs 9,063 pounds, will cause 116 times as much road damage as a Honda Civic, weighing 2,762 pounds.

The article cited above isn’t about EVs yet does apply given it is about the vehicle weight. Even the Model 3 is a whopping 3,862 to 4,054 lbs. Sure, one vehicle is not going to do a whole lot by itself, but the volume over time will significantly impact bridges and parking garages that were designed for lighter ICE vehicles. This EV vehicle weight bloat caused by batteries will require very costly upgrades to prevent catastrophic failures—like the Ann Street Building Collapse:

Speaking of disasters. With EV there is potential for a thermal runaway or reaction that can’t be stopped—like an ICE fire—by simply denying the source of oxygen. This hazard will result in more damage to road surfaces, more time spent in traffic jams after incidents, and additional toxic emissions. This is a cost to be seriously considered with all of the others.

Cost of time, capability, and resale value…

Many of the costs and drawbacks of EVs are hidden under a pile of subsidies or are moved upstream like the emissions—out of sight out of mind.

But what cannot be ignored is performance in terms of range. Time is by far our most valuable resource and nobody wants to spend hours in a place they don’t want to be because their vehicle battery is drained.

As far as capabilities, even EV trucks are useless for towing, both the Tesla Cybertruck and the Ford Lightning—both costing around $100,000 in the higher trim levels—aren’t so good at doing typical truck things. Sure, they produce a ton of low-end torque and are very fast. But the F-150 EV only went 90 miles pulling a camper and the Tesla only fared a little better.

7000lb luxury land yachts

And finally, we need to talk about plunging resale values. For a while EV was a novelty, the “way of the future” every suburban geek needed to virtue signal. But it appears that this is now starting to fade and reality is starting to take over again—46% of EV owners in the US plan to ditch EV to return back to ICE—and many will not recoup their cost because the floor is dropping out for used EVs:

A recent study from iSeeCars.com showed the average price of a 1- to 5-year-old used EV in the U.S. fell 31.8% over the past 12 months, equating to a value loss of $14,418. In comparison, the average price for a comparably aged internal combustion engine vehicle fell just 3.6%.

That’s bad news for the EV industry.  That is probably why Ford, after losing billions on their EV investments, has made plans to pivot back to hybrid.  Toyota, ever conservative, never made the mistake of getting sucked into the EV mania.  My wife’s C-Max (hybrid) has no range anxiety, saves fuel, and has a plug-in version that can go on battery for a length of a commute.  This is the right compromise.

ICE costs less to build, but the hybrid will likely emerge as the winner for being the best of both worlds. It has range like ICE, and torque like an EV, while also keeping its value and not requiring vast new expenditures to upgrade the electrical infrastructure. If costs are reflected in the market hybrid will come out victorious in the end.  Some can afford EVs today, but only because others are absorbing more than half of the real costs.

As a footnote, I’m not opposed to EVs nor do I think they are destined to go extinct. If resale values continue to drop I would even consider owning one. The whole point of this article is simply to give a bit of pushback against the Pollyannaish sentiments that would lead to an ill-advised mandate. There would be an enormous cost, and opportunity cost, that would come with this. Just the fact that EVs need massive subsidies to be sold should tell us enough. If it isn’t viable in the market it isn’t viable.

The Difference Between A Car Enthusiast And An EV Fanboy…

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Ferrari has decided to stick with internal combustion engines rather than join the crowd.  The famed Italian supercar manufacturer is known for its shrieking V8 and V10 engines.  And, despite government pressure, will not force electric drivetrains onto their customers.  The sound is, after all, a big part of what makes them a Ferrari.

Under the article, there was a comment “a Ferrari that doesn’t win races isn’t a Ferrari” and went on to suggest that the tune would change “when their $600,000 works of art start getting blown away by an electric minivan full of kids, driven by a soccer mom sipping a latte and talking to her mom about her test results, and towing two jet skis.”

If owning a Ferrari was about winning illegal drag races, redlight to redlight, this is a valid point.  Obviously, being formidably fast is part of the supercar equation and electric does have a significant torque advantage right off the line.  Nobody who spent half a million on a vehicle wants to be dusted by a minivan full of kids.

The van was faster and legend is, in the book of Things That Never Happened, the guy with the McLaren traded it for the modded Honda.

However, the problem with this argument is that there are already muscle cars that will beat a Ferrari in a straight-line race.  And many mundane cars can be modified or tuned to at least give a supercar a run for their money.  But that’s not the point.  Nobody is going to trade their F50 for a Civic with a big turbocharger.  Why is that?

First of all, what it takes to win a drag race is completely different from being competitive in the 24 hours of LeMans.  

Currently, there is no EV in the world that has the kind of endurance to go full bore (or coil) for as long as a real track car.  The Tesla P100DL can only last a lap and a half before it must be pitted due to the batteries overheating.  But the main problem is simply that batteries do not store enough energy and take far too long to recharge to be viable in competition.

The huge advantage of petroleum is energy density.  This means both extended range and also lightweight.  This translates to better driving dynamics, and less demand (or wear) on brakes and tires, which is key to winning races.

And there is no magic wand that will solve these massive drawbacks of EVs either.  It’s just how the chemistry and physics work out.

Secondly, most people who drive a Ferrari aren’t racing them nor do they need to own the fastest car on the road.  They own the car for the same reason that a person buys a painting rather than a photograph.  Sure, the image a cell phone can produce is much more realistic than the artwork, but arguing that this makes a van Gogh worthless is silliness.  

Or, more to the point, a true aviation enthusiast isn’t going to turn down a ride in a P-51 Mustang arguing that commercial airliners are fast or that the jet engine made that V12 Merlin obsolete.  Sure, the car may have replaced the horse, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who enjoys these beautiful animals is Amish or a Luddite.  No, rather they enjoy the experience of riding a horse, being near something with a personality, breathing and majestic.

A pure driving experience is not about only the performance stats on paper.  No, it is about way more than that.  It is about how it feels.

There’s a reason why Mazda Miatas are a favorite and it had nothing to do with being able to blow the doors off all comers.  It was about those intangibles.  A combination of size and handling makes a driver’s car.

My Shelby GT-350 isn’t the fastest Mustang on the road.  The manual transmission makes it slower than it could be with the latest automatics.  But there is just something glorious about the whole experience that was not matched during my test drive of a similarly powered Mustang Mach-E. 

Sure, EV fanboys may only care about the 0-60 numbers.  But, if that’s all it is about, then why not buy the theoretical future EV minivan that accelerates like a top fuel dragster while pulling jet skis?  It’s much more practical than a Ferrari.  Why pay a premium for a less capable vehicle?

A car enthusiast knows the answer. They know why the old guy in the neighborhood putters around in their Model T Ford and they also understand why someone restores a vintage Porsche that’s not even a match for a family sedan. 

There’s no way to rank fine art.  It is all subjective, finesse and balance, what does it for you, those who want to turn everything into some kind of adolescent tool measuring contest don’t get it—they never will.