Trump To Announce Up To $500 Billion In AI Infrastructure Investment 85
According to CBS News, President Trump plans to announce billions of dollars in private sector investment to build AI infrastructure in the United States. From the report: OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle are planning a joint venture called Stargate, according to multiple people familiar with the deal. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is expected at the White House Tuesday afternoon, along with Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. Executives from the companies are expected to say they plan to commit $100 billion initially and pour up to $500 billion into Stargate over the next four years.
Other details of the new partnership were not immediately available. Stargate will start with a data center project in Texas, sources said, and eventually expand to other states. Other investors are expected to join the venture, but it was not immediately clear which ones. Further reading: Scale AI CEO To Trump: 'America Must Win the AI War'
Other details of the new partnership were not immediately available. Stargate will start with a data center project in Texas, sources said, and eventually expand to other states. Other investors are expected to join the venture, but it was not immediately clear which ones. Further reading: Scale AI CEO To Trump: 'America Must Win the AI War'
I hope it's mostly power-oriented (Score:2)
Re:I hope it's mostly power-oriented (Score:4, Insightful)
It will mean more renewable in some states, delayed coal retirements in other states, and more natgas in almost every state. The time required to build a nuclear plant even on an accelerated schedule is too long to have any effect. Small modular reactors will be faster to build, but almost no one will want them anywhere close, so they'll get caught up in litigation and regulatory battles.
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Maybe this will help push forward the design of modular reactors that can be hauled on a truck bed, dropped into place and wired in? Something that passes the inspections at the factory, then just needs to be transported to the destination site and fueled? IIRC, Toshiba has been working on things like this, perhaps we may see these powering rural SuperCharger stations, or other items which would be a heavy grid draw.
Re:I hope it's mostly power-oriented (Score:4, Informative)
It would not be "transported to the destination site and fueled" - it would be fueled at the factory and sealed. That's exactly what Toshiba was looking to do. When you need to "refuel" you would install a second one next to the first, bring it to criticality and cut over, and then haul the old one out and Toshiba takes it back for recycling.
The SMR designs from NuScale et. al. are more permanent and require construction of sufficient plant around the modular reactor to not make portability feasible on any scale smaller than a naval application.
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That is even better. Just drop, plug in and go from there. Less idiocy that can happen on site.
Maybe these would be useful for rural towns, not just for grid integrity, but to allow EV charging in areas where even with HVDC, it would be prohibitively expensive to string high voltage wires. It also would be useful for farmers, where many farm vehicles could be replaced by EVs powered ny one of these in a nearby town, or if the farm is big enough, onsite.
Energy is money, and the more available energy, the
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The SMR designs from NuScale et. al. are more permanent and require construction of sufficient plant around the modular reactor to not make portability feasible on any scale smaller than a naval application.
Perhaps rather than float in the reactor we just float in the entire power plant. Russia is experimenting with this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I've seen a few different variations on floating in a prefabricated nuclear fission reactor core and they look appealing. To make that work means having ships that are shielded for radiation, and lifting a very radioactive core into it once the fuel is depleted. It may be wiser to simply leave the core on the ship when at the site needing power then only r
Re:I hope it's mostly power-oriented (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps rather than float in the reactor we just float in the entire power plant. Russia is experimenting wibinth this.
And it only took about 13 years and was only about six times its original budget. Based on the numbers in the Wikipedia article, it cost $414 million in US dollars and, since it was officially commissioned, it has produced about as much power as 30 3 MW wind turbines would have (at a typical 35% capacity factor). In US dollars, 30 3 MW wind turbines would cost about $73 million. Bear in mind of course, that's based on the US cost, Wind turbines may well be cheaper in Russia. Either way, wind turbines would be at least one fifth the price, and probably lower ongoing costs versus a ship with a nuclear reactor. Not to mention they could be put up in probably a few months.
So, overall, while a power ship certainly has its uses for emergency situations, as a general power solution this does not look all that practical or cost effective. Especially so if the location that needs power is land-locked.
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which really means nuclear.
You need to get a grip on reality.
Nuclear has a 20-year lead time, and recent nukes (Vogtle, Hinkley, Flamanville) are four times the price of wind and solar. The Summer plant in SC was canceled halfway to completion after squandering $3 billion when it was obvious it would never produce power economically.
New nukes are not a solution for data centers coming online in the next five years.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/uk-... [yahoo.com]
Your link is a political proposal to power data centers with SMRs.
Number of SMRs that exist: 0.
Number of factories under construction to build SMRs: 0.
Chance of SMRs being operational in the next five years: 0%.
We just want to have it bad enough.
Sorry, but wanting something really badly doesn't make it feasible.
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That's especially not true if we include the reactors on nuclear submarines in the definition of SMR
Sub reactors generate power for over $1 per kwh. That is absurdly expensive, even by the standards of the Vogtle and Hinkley debacles.
I'm open-minded about SMRs, but I'm not seeing much reason for optimism.
Re:I hope it's mostly power-oriented (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear plants cost 4 times the price of solar solely because environmentalist
Environmentalists didn't cause significant delays for Vogtle, Summer, or Flamanville.
Flamanville, in particular, had a streamlined approval process controlled by a pro-nuclear French bureaucracy.
Nonetheless, they were all financial debacles.
Re: I hope it's mostly power-oriented (Score:2)
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A Naquadah generator should do for a while, but in the long run we may have to go to a ZPM
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Got to go through the dangerous Naquadria phase first, though. That'll put ZPM development back by a few decades while the subsidy payments get ironed out. Plenty of time to outlaw reading and writing for the workers.
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Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Based on earlier stories, is this another grift from the Orange One?
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that money can now be funneled to him via one or more cryptocurrencies with effectively no oversight, expect everything to be a grift.
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is this another grift from the Orange One?
Lying and grifting is the only thing he knows how to do. Lots of big announcements. Zero concrete results.
A year or two from now, when this project is long since scrapped and forgotten, if anyone asks him about it he will blame someone else. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
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Based on earlier stories, is this another grift from the Orange One?
It's partially a sort of reverse influence peddling. The tech industry has always been pretty negative towards the Republican Party, but the best way to get the industry (albeit not the employees) on board is to literally buy their loyalty by giving them huge grants.
But mostly, the party that brought us the military-industrial complex is probably just repeating the process with tech and AI, creating a giant diversion of funds from useful programs to their C-suite buddies, who in turn will use it to pump up
$500 billion?! (Score:4, Funny)
Who's gonna pay for it... Mexico?
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The same people who thought Haitians were eating pets and complained about the price of eggs.
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They'll pay for it with the SS trust fund once they cancel benefits.
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Don's probably making up big numbers due to his hyperbole habit. "It'll be yuuuuge, gazillion billion covfefetillian dollars! The biggest AI ever seen!"
Stargate? When it comes to names, (Score:1)
Defender fits his style better.
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Defender fits his style better.
Personally, I'd argue that Pong is the best fit.
Let me rephrase (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump redistributes tax dollars to billionaires who pay little (if any taxes).
No news of grocery prices or inflation reduction? Isn't that why he was elected?
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I just bought some eggs, and they're still expensive despite his executive orders.
It's possible he doesn't have the power he thinks he does. We definitely know he doesn't have the power his idiot base thinks he does.
Re:Let me rephrase (Score:5, Insightful)
>>It's possible he doesn't have the power he thinks he does
Except that he knows his real power is to lie constantly while his followers suck it up like candy
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while his followers suck it up like candy
That's ... not a candy cane.
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I just bought some eggs, and they're still expensive despite his executive orders.
Trump has been sworn into office only hours ago, can you at least give it a week before complaints on his ineptitude in office?
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no. He was beyond inept 4 years ago and he is more openly corrupt and going senile. He ignored laws and the constitution ONLY HOURS AGO. Ethics was gone completely shaking down 250 million..300? for an event he canceled and left his people out in the cold who did show up... and it really wasn't that cold. His diaper wouldn't have even frozen!
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The only thing that trickles down is piss.
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I'm sorry economics is so difficult for you, that you think money just vaporizes when items are purchased.
When items are purchased, money mostly trickles up, not down. Trickle-down economics is a well-established hoax. The theory that giving more money to the rich will somehow result in more money in the hands of the poor is based on a flawed understanding of how people spend money.
The reality is that the more money you have, the more impossible it becomes to spend it all. By the time you reach the bottom of the top 1%, you're probably not going to do so in your lifetime. So most of that money sits there an
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Where else is the money coming from?
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No news of grocery prices or inflation reduction? Isn't that why he was elected?
That was part of his inauguration speech.
Nope that's not why (Score:4, Interesting)
The first is the Democrats insisted on running a woman. Preliminary research indicates just being a woman caused Harris 2 to 3 points. It's not a problem all the way up to the Senate but once you get top of ticket there is a substantial number of voters who will not vote for a woman under any circumstances and virtually no voters who are motivated to vote for a woman because of her sex.
Furthermore the Democrats did nothing to stop Republican voters suppression. We had multi-hour wait times to vote in Blue districts in swing states. Pennsylvania was particularly insane with waits going up to 7 hours. This is especially insane because in theory the Democrats control the elections because they controlled most of the secretaries of state and even the attorneys general. They could have done something about it but they just thought everyone was going to vote by mail or early so they didn't care and the Republicans took control of the local voting districts and did what they always did and send too few or broken voting machines to blue leaning districts.
I don't know if we are going to have another election or not. Not a real one anyway. But if we do the Democrats need to fucking learn. No more women at top of ticket. The voters have spoken and they said no. And they need to do something about how hard it is to vote on election Day if you're not voting red
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No news of grocery prices or inflation reduction? Isn't that why he was elected?
I thought that he finished the war in Ukraine already! Isn't that enough for you?!?
Goodbye US (Score:2)
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This is truly the high-point for most republicans who have lived by the motto, "starve the US government until it is weak enough to drown it in the bathtub" [wikipedia.org]
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Not sure what the Trump-tie in actually is.
Nor why OpenAI would want to partner up with that dried-up old vampire Oracle or BankSoft, which I never hear anything about except they're shutting down another company they bought for half a billion dollars 3 years ago.
$500B in gifts to the ultra-rich (Score:1)
AI is over-hyped crapware.
$500,000,000,000 could fix all sorts of real problems in this country, but oh no no no, let's hand it to Trumps billionaire buddies as a reward for backing him.
Of course Trump couldn't give a flying fuck about this money, because it's not his money, he's stealing it from taxpayers like you and I, which is his favorite pastime: stealing from people.
Remember, """Republicans""": We voted for Harris, all that happens now is YOUR FAULT and we won't eve
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Sure, buddy and what are you going to do when trump's BullyAI rigs all election results?
Re:$500B in gifts to the ultra-rich (Score:4, Informative)
A majority of voters chose Trump as the source of a number of federal policies
They did not. The largest minority chose Trump. He did not get an absolute majority.
Re: $500B in gifts to the ultra-rich (Score:2)
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Trump is definitely getting a piece of this, it certainly is his money as far as he's concerned. All money in the federal budget is now his money, just like all Russia's money is Putin's.
Quid pro quo (Score:2)
Stupid name (Score:2)
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How about GriftGPT
Fiscal Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when the Republican Party kept wanting to pass a balanced budget amendment? The "Contract with America" and all that in the late 90s? Then remember when a Republican got elected President and put two wars on the national credit card while cutting taxes?
Remember when the Republican Party was vehemently opposed to "corporate welfare" handouts during the Obama years while constantly going on about government spending with tired and wildly inaccurate "balance your checkbook" metaphors? And then in 4 years they stacked more debt on the national credit card than every previous President behind them managed in 8 years?
Remember when the Republican Party would balk at every debt limit increase, creating financial instability through the mere suggestion of letting the US Treasury default on debt and constantly cry and moan about deficit spending during the Obama years, somehow falling oddly quiet from 2017 to 2021, and then resuming the debt clamor for the Biden administration? To wit: not raising or suspending the debt ceiling on the CR just like a week ago.
$10 says when they put together their reconciliation package with all their partisan bullshit and pork tributes to Trump's tech-bro oligarchy - a package that under no circumstances would ever get cloture under normal Senate rules - it will also include a suspension of the debt ceiling so they don't have to take any more votes on raising it and having to explain to their constituents why they have to keep raising it when they were told how Elon and Vivek were going to cut trillions, but the budget deficit just keeps getting bigger from handing out the corporate welfare like candy.
And when (if?) Trump leaves office and is replaced by a Democrat, we'll start hearing about the debt ceiling again and how it's all the Democrats' fault that Trump managed to rack up trillions in debt by increasing spending while cutting taxes on corporations and the uber-wealthy. We need to cut spending NOW!
All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again. Mostly because there is a subsection of voters that can't see the pattern and still buy the bullshit.
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What you are missing (or just conveniently glossing over) is that he believes we can grow the economy as a way to get out of deficit. And that is entirely possible and has precedence. I am not positive it will work this time, but it likely will. For a while. The problem is that unlimited growth is not sustainable, so the responsible thing to do would be to grow while also starting to roll back expenses along with it to ride out the non-growth period that will eventually come. And that might also happen
Re: Fiscal Responsibility (Score:2)
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Re: Fiscal Responsibility (Score:2)
But you're looking at it wrong anyway- the key is not total debt, nor the rate that the total debt rises, but the service cost on the debt and its rate of change. There, we're not even breaking 3% of GDP, well within the possibility of something that could be funded by growth. Especially considering that we hold some of our own debt, meaning that a bunch of that 3% is nothing but redistribution and ripe for tax po
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Don murdered previous GOP and stole their elephant costume. GOP's now a cult ran by a giant orange toddler.
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! News (Score:3)
Re: ! News (Score:2)
The Forbin Project (Score:2)
Not Trump (Score:2)
So... not his personal money, not his legislative agenda, not his deal, not his plan, not even his idea. Just announced in his hallway.
Really, Stargate?? (Score:2)
"So, what's the closest we can name this thing to 'skynet' without freaking people out?"
"What about 'stargate'?"
Re: Really, Stargate?? (Score:2)