[ExI] Trump Says a Smart President Is All That’s Needed to Rein In A.I.

Fri Sep 18 20:07:19 UTC 2026

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
Sent: Friday, 18 September, 2026 11:52 AM
To: spike at rainier66.com
Cc: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Trump Says a Smart President Is All That’s Needed to Rein In A.I.

On Fri, Sep 18, 2026 at 2:36 PM <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> > wrote:

> That wind farm (for which you mourn its passing) was not for a data center, it was for the local proletariat.

>…As I said before, that is a silly thing to say because electrical energy is fungible….

But in the case of data centers, fungibility is specifically countermanded.  They are to generate their own power.  As far as I know, they are allowed to sell power to a local city in an emergency.  But they may not buy power from a facility like that offshore wind farm, for that would run up the local price of power.

John I detect you have a powerful obligation to attack the enemies of your tribe.  I don’t.  I just am not a big believer in offshore wind facilities.  There have too many and too powerful adversaries, which are getting more numerous and more powerful.  Notice the attitude California has developed against wind power of any kind anywhere.  Our power rates went crazy after the mandate.

If we can get wind turbines out there far enough to where they cannot be seen from land, they might have promise however.  I had an idea.  Imagine a floating ring, a scaled up hula hoop, with the tube ten meters in diameter with a ring diameter of about 1000 meters.  Outside that hoop is a second ring also 10 meters diameter.  Imagine a platforms connecting the two rings.  Make the platforms 20 meters wide and 100 meters long.

Second iteration, instead of round rings, create octagons, so the tubes can be extruded sections, ten meters diameter, 100 meters length, ends sealed (so that if one section leaks, it doesn’t flood the others.  Four 100 meter sections, 45 degree connector, four sections, all the way around.  OK so that octagon has a width of about 1000 meters, close enough, and has about 32 platforms each about 20 meters by 100 meters.  The whole thing floats, and is connected loosely so it can flex with the waves.  It is towed out to sea and anchored.

On those platforms we put coal burning plants, some wind turbines* if we wish, and our data center, along with all the cooling hardware, which I am imagining as a suspended heat exchanger which dumps waste heat directly into the seawater.

We have everything we need: power generation, waste heat removal, lots of power and lots of GPUs, little or no bother from the environmentalists or government.

spike 

* …The local luxury high rise (eight floor) condos put solar panels on the roof.  Their advertisements call attention to those, assuring the local market that their apartment building is partially powered by renewable resources, solar!  Hey, marketing.  OK sure, partially.  Do the estimate.  I am getting a small fraction of one percent of their power could be generated from those solar panels.  But the panels are good for marketing purposes.  Likewise, we could bolt on a wind turbine or two out there on a floating coal fired data center and claim it is partially powered by renewable resources, wind!  But not solar, for that is poorly suited to offshore use.  Hey, marketing.

And I don't believe you would ever say such a silly thing if it wasn't for the powerful obligation you must feel to defend every single action the most powerful member of your tribe has made regardless of how overtly ridiculous it may be. 

And there aren't many things more ridiculous than giving $2 billion of taxpayer money to a foreign corporation to get them to STOP the construction of a power plant that was 90% complete!

John K Clark

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