Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, creator of the “Climate Pledge,” is now building what could become the single largest source of climate pollution in the United States.
The gas-burning plant — a dedicated power source for Amazon’s planned 8,000-acre data center site in West Texas — would have the ability to pump out a record-high 33 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to the New York Times. Emissions would be spread across 35 natural-gas turbines capable of generating a combined 7.65 gigawatts of power.
“Who decided this? Did they even think about us?” Emily Natividad, a Pecos County resident, told NewsWest9 when remarking on Amazon’s data center project in her Texas community. “What that could actually look like without regulation is basically forcing everybody to start smoking cigarettes,” said Victor Vela, another resident.
The development comes after Amazon has spent years attempting to sell itself as a corporate environmental leader, even as it generates pollution on a massive scale through its data centers, transportation fleets, overseas manufacturing partners, and disposable consumer products.
In 2019, Amazon co-founded and signed the so-called “Climate Pledge,” with corporate signatories promising to zero out their emissions by 2040. But instead of decreasing, Amazon’s carbon emissions have been rising for several years now — largely due to its frenzied construction of data centers, including those used to train and run artificial intelligence models.
“The world looks different now than when we co-founded the climate pledge,” Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan told the Times. She added that the company would continue to uphold its “commitment” to the environment.
Bezos, the company’s founder, executive chairman, and largest shareholder, has also sought to greenwash his personal image by donating a small portion of his $286 billion fortune to his eponymous “Earth Fund.”
Amazon’s secret California data center
In Central California, a farming community has been forced to contend with the construction of another hulking Amazon data center following a secret negotiation process between the company and a local official. From the Wall Street Journal:
Furious residents packing city-council meetings have become a familiar scene as proposals for data centers spark backlash in towns across America. But in Gilroy, Calif., known as the world’s garlic capital, there’s a twist: The $2 billion facility that residents are railing against is already being built.
“Many if not most residents first learned about this project after construction had already begun,” Coleen Crew, an elementary-school teacher, told the council at a recent meeting.
There were no public meetings or votes before a lone city staffer gave Amazon.com the green light last July to build a 438,500-square-foot data center on 56 acres of farmland 30 miles south of San Jose.
“Corporations like Amazon build billion-dollar business models by insulating themselves from accountability through a system of exploitative subcontracting.”
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani shared that comment while lending his support to a city council bill that would require Amazon to hire workers who deliver its packages to consumer homes, doing away with the company’s reliance on subcontractors for “last-mile” deliveries.
$1 trillion
Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package at Tesla hinges on him achieving a number of improbable goals, including the company operating one million robotaxis and selling one million of its still-fictional humanoid robots. However, there is a little-noticed contractual clause that could fast-track Musk’s payday — he just has to have SpaceX buy Tesla, according to the Wall Street Journal. The award would scale based on the purchase price. “This $1 trillion — that was supposed to be a stretch,” Boston College’s Mary Ellen Carter told the newspaper. “It turns out it isn’t really that hard. All you have to do is be bought.”
Tesla has already made Musk the most compensated executive in the world, paying him more than two-and-a-half million times what it paid its average worker last year, according to the AFL-CIO’s new Executive Paywatch report. Meanwhile, at SpaceX, Musk recently disclosed a 48.4% ownership stake in the rocket, satellite internet, and AI company.
Musk bankrolls group looking to repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system
From the Anchorage Daily News:
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has given $1.5 million to a group supporting the repeal of Alaska’s voting system, according to a report filed with the state Friday.
Ballot Measure 2, which will appear on the November ballot, seeks to repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting method, along with open primaries and campaign finance laws that were themselves adopted by ballot measure in 2020.
Musk gave $1.5 million last month to the Aurora Action Network, a Wisconsin-based political action committee that has already collected contributions from numerous billionaire megadonors, including Dick Uihlein, Jeff Yass, Timothy Mellon and Hilcorp owner Jeffery Hildebrand. Aurora Action Network then gave the repeal campaign $1 million in late July.
This Week in Musk:
xAI, the SpaceX subsidiary behind the Grok AI models, is facing another lawsuit alleging its deepfake technology was used to create child sexual abuse material, with the images involving a six-year-old this time. “It is deeply disappointing that we are now filing a third lawsuit involving these allegations, and we expect additional families to come forward,” said Derek Potts, managing partner of the law firm suing xAI. “No family should ever have to experience this type of exploitation.” (PR Newswire)
SpaceX and Tesla are planning to construct a 100-million-square-foot semiconductor manufacturing plant near College Station, Texas. With an estimated $16.8 billion in initial development costs, the companies plan to power the “Terafab” site by building a new natural gas plant. If built, the manufacturing plant would be among the largest buildings in the world. (TechCrunch)
Also in Texas, the broadband development office has paused the disbursement of funds for a federal program to improve rural internet access amid accusations that state officials are showing favoritism toward SpaceX and its Starlink service. State lawmakers have said they plan to audit the disbursements. (Texas Tribune)
You may have noticed that car headlights are becoming dangerously bright these days, even blinding. Among the worst offenders on the road are Teslas, with the company being forced to recall 20,000 Model 3s and Model Ys last week. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has stated the vehicles’ low beams “are too bright” and “can reduce visibility for oncoming drivers, increasing the risk of a crash.” (Electrek)
Zuckerberg promises that “freedom” and “privacy” will define Meta’s “superintelligence”
In a 6,500-word essay, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared what he believes the future of artificial intelligence should look like.
A principal part of his vision would include Meta serving as a benevolent provider of personal, open-source “superintelligence” to its users. Anyone would have access to personal AI agents capable of giving them “invention superpowers,” wrote Zuckerberg.
“Most other labs are focused on building AI for companies, governments, or other institutions, so if those labs lead, then the balance of power will favor larger institutions over individuals,” he added. “Meta’s mission since our founding has focused on putting power in people’s hands. If our beliefs and principles lead, then the balance of power will favor individuals and a better future for everyone.”
Meta’s technology has a history of being abused by individuals and contributing to genocide, child sexual abuse, and the wide dissemination of medical disinformation.
“Privacy is an important foundation for individual empowerment and freedom,” Zuckerberg added. Meta, through its surveillance advertising technology, has profited heavily by exploiting its users’ privacy.
On Monday, Meta launched an open-weight AI model called Muse Glimmer that can run on a personal computer, unlike the cloud-based models that dominate the chatbot industry. Open-weight large language models are more customizable, cheaper, and private than products like Claude and ChatGPT.
This Week in Zuck:
Another commitment Zuckerberg made in his essay was to a fund that would purportedly help people living near Meta’s data centers. The company has said it will invest $1 billion into the fund. However, in Louisiana, where Meta is building one of the largest data centers in the world, local communities are being kept in the dark about the extent of the project. On Wednesday, a Republican-led state commission overruled an administrative order that would have forced Meta to disclose the calculations behind how much electricity it plans to use and employment projections for the Hyperion data center. (Louisiana Illuminator)
Jury selection wrapped up on Wednesday in a trial over allegations that Meta’s platforms harmed young people. The company has accused the 29 state attorneys general who brought the lawsuit of seeking $1.4 trillion in damages. On Monday, an appellate court rejected the company’s request to halt the trial, which will go forward in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. Opening statements are scheduled for August 18. (ABC News)
A 387-foot yacht owned by Zuckerberg failed to provide aid to a small boat that had called for help after running out of fuel in Alaskan waters earlier this month. After Coast Guard officials aired a marine assistance request on behalf of the small boat, an adventure cruise ship was the first to render support, even though Zuckerberg’s yacht was closer to the scene. A spokesperson for Zuckerberg said his yacht’s crew was unaware of the incident until after the rescue “was already underway.” (Alaska Beacon)
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth recently scolded an employee who, during a staff Q&A, asked whether the company’s AI-fueled productivity gains would allow for more time off. “We got billions of people using our products every day. I get an extra hour. You know what I do with it? I put it into that,” said Bosworth. “Go to your parents and ask them: hey, like every time I get a chance to talk to my boss, ask me if I can have more days off. Ask your parents what they think of that as a career strategy.” (Business Insider)
Oligarch Roundup
Paramount CEO David Ellison threatens to pull the storied Hollywood company out of California. Ellison, the indulged child of centibillionaire Larry Ellison, made the threat in response to a California-led lawsuit against Paramount’s deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. He reportedly told members of his team that he would begin the Hollywood exodus as soon as October 1 unless California and its partner states begin negotiating a settlement to the lawsuit. (New York Times)
The State Department asks Peter Thiel’s Palantir for guidance on “freedom of expression” and “countering digital surveillance.” Palantir, a company that helps develop vast digital surveillance systems used by the US and Israeli governments, was chosen by the State Department as a partner for its Freedom Tech Excellence Program (FTEP). “FTEP brings private sector talent to the Department for limited-term assignments to advance diplomatic efforts on key issues including online freedom of expression, privacy-enhancing technologies, countering digital surveillance, and responsible AI governance,” the State Department said. (The Intercept)
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent $100 million attempting to torpedo California’s proposed billionaire tax. With a $267 billion net worth that makes him the fourth richest person in the world, Brin has poured his money into various organizations and causes to oppose the Billionaire Tax Act. His latest donation was $20 million to Building a Better California, a nonprofit that purports to protect “the California dream” by opposing the one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Californians will have a chance to decide on the ballot initiative in November. (TechCrunch)
Amazon has been using content from Twitch streamers to train its “generative AI content models.” Following a public backlash, Twitch, a leading online streaming platform acquired by Amazon in 2014, now allows users to opt out of having their “streams, VODs, clips, stream chats, and pictures and text on your channel be used in future training of a model developed by Amazon whose purpose is to generate or synthesize text, audio, images, or video.” (Ars Technica)
Wife of Anthropic’s billionaire chief executive sought funding from Jeffrey Epstein for her “luxury porn company.” Cami Clark, wife of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, reached out to Epstein for funding years after his conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. “We thought you and the ladies might enjoy the script/treatment for our first 4 films,” Clark wrote to Epstein in one email. “American Girl in Paris. A little nsfw.” Amodei and Clark are set to gain billions in wealth following Anthropic’s looming initial public offering, in which it is seeking a $2 trillion valuation. (Wall Street Journal)
Every one of these stories makes me feel more powerless. Nevertheless, I persist. Activism. Messaging. Avoiding their products (mostly). I grieve for my grandkids.
Thanks for the reporting - we need to know.
Another Musk atrocity. Read an AMAZING STORY of the lengths Elon Musk went to prevent the unionization of his Tesla plant in Sweden. For Musk, it's all domination, never cooperation.
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/corporate-power-approaches-escape