IBEW (Union electricians) have been doing really well this decade. Another option if you don't want to be a contractor or an Anthropic employee. But they've also gone years without enough work to go around.
Scroll down to this comment for a better discussion than I could give: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098874
This cry of "OMG dues suck" is so stupid for what you get in return. But go ahead and buy more into republican propaganda.
I’d go as far as to say that for someone in their teens electrician (or trades in general) is a more stable long term career path than software engineer.
While DC is driving electrons down the line, AC is basically just when you vibrate them around.
Anyway my point is the field (no pun intended) may change drastically in the increasingly electrified future. I'm personally excited for more wireless power in areas, and the concept of ambient energy - harvesting power out of the already vibrating electrons in the static in the air.
To add to this there are jurisdictions that will require you to still pay a small monthly fee to support the gas pipes if you cut off gas service.
It is really nice not having a gas bill and not requiring maintenance for gas appliances, but most people won't care if they lived with it for long enough.
The only case I see it working is in a disaster area or blighted areas where the builder decided to bulldoze and rebuild the houses. The southern California fires for example; the city gave priority to permits to houses that went all electric since the gas pipes were destroyed. Permitting and inspection is so much simpler with all electric.
HVAC and electrical (e.g. UPSes) need somewhat regular maintenance, so once build-out is done, if you're with one of the OEMs, you'll probably have regular work babysitting the gear.
Maybe it's a non-conductive oil? I recall seeing someone who overclocked their PC (circa 2005) to 5GHz, and ran the motherboard completely submerged in an oil bath.
"Projects I work on..."
Could you be more specific? Things are still competitive in the large commercial electrical market I am bidding in, if you’re bidding to make more than 10-15% you’ll get underbid by someone willing to accept a lower profit margin.
AI unemploys middle-class workers: AI is stealing jobs from the middle class!
AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!
And "AI" as a concept has has no agency. This is all about humans who seek to further concentrate wealth.
The people losing jobs to AI can't just pivot into the trades. When you think about it, companies announcing they're pivoting into some other area where they have no prior background is usually a bit of a desperation move, aided by the fact that companies don't need to be licensed in any way to offer particular services, other than maybe in the military/national security sector.
As for the second point, it's true that this is just old-fashioned supply and demand. I predict the outcome is that there's a rush into the construction/contracting sector followed by a bust due to either the tech bubble popping and construction slowing way down, or the replacement of construction workers by humanoid robots, or perhaps some better form factor like robot spiders that can squeeze into small places - all the benefits of child labor but with double the appendages and double the productivity!
However, I'm not worried about the possibility of a robot takeover. The American people's final safeguard against a robot uprising is the irrationality of imperial weights and measures. Robots are digitals and can't do fractions like us higher beings. That's why I'm building my data centers measuring everything in cubits.
What cheap labour? Tradespeople are not cheap (especially if you factor in the quality of the work). This just makes them even more expensive. Meaning a big impact on homes – you know, the things people and families live in, in order to survive. Pretty important
Maybe those people should pay their tradespeople better then. Everybody's all "workers should be paid more" until they're the one paying the worker.
Sounds like you're assuming people are paying pennies for labour. I don't think that's true at all
While we're at it, how much should small bathroom, 2 week renovation cost? $100,000 in labour?
The residential buyer is the source of much less repeat work, is harder to deal with, more price conscious and harder to collect from than the commercial buyer they could be working for.
Anyone that can competently market, manage, and execute that small job can do the same for better customers.
The crew that can build a driveway cannot build a parking lot, and they will never be able to break into that market because it requires experience that a driveway cannot give. From a parking lot there is then road building - the previous companies cannot break into them. Again there are just not enough projects of the size that sits in between to build experience.
Obviously much more than 2 weeks worth of work at a commercial job, since that's the worst possible kind of work you could ever offer any tradesman. Maybe 8x the hourly rate would be fair since it's intermittent work with generally horrible customers?
It's been interesting to watch the IT/engineering classes all of a sudden pretend to care about labor costs and outsourcing/job loss. As an industry they have been by far the most impactful in reducing wages, enabling outsourcing, and "gaining efficiency" via automation while as a class being paid top-tier wages for doing so. There is not another industry more directly culpable for blue collar job loss except perhaps finance and banking.
Only now when the shoe is on the other foot do such folks seem to care at all.
Learn to code indeed.
For any electricians/plumbers/etc. out there? Go get yours. When the shoe was on the other foot you were mocked and told to switch careers, lowballed on horrible residential projects, told to skill up and get better if you wanted to get paid more, there was no future in the trades, etc. Make hay while the sun shines and ignore the bleating. At least this time around the bubble is sharing a bit of that tech wealth.
Just learned of a new acronym today "NILF," not in the labor force with over one million supposed NILFs out there -- dropped out and gave up.
The blue collar job boom is great present day, but what they are helping build is their machine driven replacement.
Maybe this all sounds hyperbolic, but it's what Musk and all the AI overlords have said as far back as a 2013 or prior. Musk and Altman have noted the need for everyone to be on welfare (Universal Basic Income) since then. And no doubt we see this taking shape now within white collar jobs that once we held in high regard like programming being replaced by AI. I just created a whole startup web design, front-end, back-end development, native iPhone app, Android app and more using Codex (previously i hired others to help me a UI Design Front End guy).
But, Codex does and just by typing I just published a startup in python in two weeks using Codex and it's iPhone app will be available soon.
How do you not think AI will not destroy programming jobs if anyone can type to create anything they want?
> AI unemploys middle-class workers: AI is stealing jobs from the middle class!
> AI employs unionized middle-class workers: AI is stealing cheap labor from the rest of us!
Come on, you've got to know it's not going to employ those "unionized middle-class workers" for long. Their jobs are sort of like these jobs: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/business/ai-white-collar-... ("people participat[ing] in feeding their own careers into the A.I. wood chipper...Many people who contract for these companies understand that this is a short-term opportunity...before they themselves are automated out of the job").
And yeah, there's "sort of no winning" when you're gobbling up resources to build stuff people don't like.
I'm not even sure it's as simple as "stuff people don't like." Many of the anti-AI crowd use ChatGPT which kind of complicates the question of "do they REALLY dislike it?"
I guess you could complain that robots will replace electricians and carpenters, but it's still going to be a decade before anyone trusts an LLM to wire a house.
Not more "revealed choice" BS. There's no free choice: even if someone doesn't want to use ChatGPT, they may not be allowed to avoid it. I'm literally forced to use it at work, for instance. Others may be forced to use it due to market or other pressures.
Personally, I wouldn't mind of someone dropped a couple cluster bombs on each of these AI data centers, after construction is complete, and LLMs just disappeared as a practical technology.
> I don't think that ANY project employs electricians and carpenters for long, because they are there to build something that will ideally last decades or more...
See my reply to the other guy who made the same point before you did.
I'm not even talking about at work, I'm saying that a large majority of Americans are using AI of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful. The sheer number of people means that a lot of them must also say they're anti-AI, and my point is that whether or not they say they like it they're undeniably choosing to use it.
> Personally, I wouldn't mind of someone dropped a couple cluster bombs on each of these AI data centers, after construction is complete, and LLMs just disappeared as a practical technology.
This would be great if your goal was limiting AI access to the rich, but I'm pretty sure that would be much worse than democratizing access.
> See my reply to the other guy who made the same point before you did.
Yeah, and I still don't get it. Do you think that qualified electricians struggle to find work? They generally don't, these skills are in high demand and have been for decades. You really haven't made the case for "after they gain more experience on a difficult and high-paying job, they're gonna be unemployed." Everyone in these comments is complaining about waiting lists and backlogs and you're acting like the opposite is true.
I don't think there's really a contradiction there. You can recognize the utility of something while acknowledging that, on the whole, it'd be better if it didn't exist.
Datacenters are fine. They're better than most kinds of industrial buildings, by and large they don't illegally set up fields of gas turbines, and their water usage is really not that bad compared to other large users. They make for a few nice, high-paying jobs. Sure, they're ugly and large, but this is America and we have no shortage of ugly, large buildings.
No, one does not follow from the other. I might campaign against the building of a road because I believe the funds could be better spent on something else. If the road is built, am I a hypocrite for using it? No. The road is already there. Whether I use it or not, the funds are already spent. I may as well use it.
Something can be positive under a narrow lens, and a negative under a broader one. There's no hypocrisy in acknowledging both realities.
>Datacenters are fine.
Datacenters and AI are distinct things. Someone can be in favor of one and not the other, with no contradiction.
There's a word for that: hypocrisy.
I don't like the parts of the city that are full of concrete and (edit: lacking) trees. I still walk or drive through there instead of making a huge detour, I still use them because that's what's there, currently. I know processed food sucks, sometimes it's easiest to grab something that's quick to make or can be eaten instantly because the supermarket is full of them.
And even assuming it means hypocrisy, so? You think you'd withstand examination? Face the arguments, instead of using some abstract fantasies about some average AI critic that doesn't exist as an excuse. At least they're only hypocritical like everyone else including you, instead of acting like a 3 yo, "yeah but you're stupid, so".
Where is your data to back up such an assertion? I'm not even sure how you could determine "of their own free will in situations where it's not required but is genuinely useful," except maybe in a yes/no survey question, which is suspect.
It's also worth noting that AI is getting shoved down peoples throats. Want to do a Google Search? Congratulations, you're now using AI of your own "free will"!
> The sheer number of people means that a lot of them must also say they're anti-AI, and my point is that whether or not they say they like it they're undeniably choosing to use it.
Usually when people like you make points like that, they're trying to undermine the "anti" argument by implying hypocrisy. My point is "choice" can't actually reveal that, because the environment of that choice is too complex. The observation is a meaningless factoid.
And then there's the fucked up resource allocation: throwing around insane amounts of money, driving up the prices of things the people actually want, to build hated things for investors and billionaires, which is a separate issue.
The fucked up resource allocation is itself an indicator of wealth inequality. A generation ago growing companies had to go public to access funding. Now they can find all the capital they need in private markets.
Who on Earth are you to decide what is the "better" use for labor? And do you scrutinize every construction project or only AI?
Is it a waste when contractors build a temporary set for a trashy reality TV show? A factory that makes cosmetics for dogs?
Having someone the arbiter of what is the "right" use of labor is communism. In capitalism, people get to decide for themselves what they work on and what they buy.
> In capitalism, people get to decide for themselves what they work on
Feels like there are some mixed signals here.
FWIW I am a high voltage test engineer.
I used to be an electrician.
I would prefer to build the substations that power machines for the benefit of all mankind, rather than data centers that feed the already wealthy.
For example, keep the lights on for schools.
You have a warped view of the world if you believe anything should be allowed to be built just because someone has the capital to build it.
But now I see the light. Jesus was a carpenter, right?
I am imagining that Jesus, with his carpentry skills, is driving right now in his Chevy truck to the job site, to help erect that data centre for one of our billionaire overlords.
Just saying, it could happen, and is probably needed to happen, if this data centre build out is to get anywhere near completion.
It's explained in the Book of Revelations - Jesus comes back and kills everyone who isn't Christian (and actually most Christians too) with plagues and fire and violence and burns the world down to ashes. And then (something something multi-headed dragon something something Whore of Babylon) a giant cube-shaped crystal city drops down from space lit by God's radiance and all of the dead Christians come back wearing white robes to live there and eat and drink and praise Jesus forever and never leave because why would you?
And belief in this is legitimately a big part of why we will never take climate change seriously.
It doesn't matter that most Christians don't believe it. Most Muslims don't do violent attacks on civilians, yet they all seem to pay the price either in their home countries or in the US.
It seems world-wide, a hard-right extremist subset of religious believers are ruining things for everyone else.
You might have a point about Catholics in terms of sheer numbers, but... the only people still listening to Catholics are right wing chuds and Warhammer fans - and even the former aren't listening anymore because the Pope is too "woke" for them. The days when the Pope's word mattered are long, long gone. What happened when he gave his encyclical on AI? It made headlines for a day or two then the world proceeded to ignore the silly hat man as usual.
So I stand by my point. The Christians who matter as far as climate change policy is concerned don't care because as far as they're concerned this world just exists for God to burn anyway.
I don't recall this part what's the reference
The entire thesis of Christian eschatology is that everyone who isn't Christian burns in hell. And Matthew says regarding the end times "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
Maybe you should read your Bible again, it's pretty clear that Heaven is meant to be a very exclusive club that even most Christians won't get into.
It's in the context of describing false prophets? It makes sense.
>Heaven is meant to be a very exclusive club that even most Christians won't get into
This is just false. At least be accurate if you have a major problem with the bible? I'm not really sure this is a great context to discuss further.
I was just looking for your reference about Jesus coming back to kill all the christians. Unfair to spout these types of things without some sort of basis right?
I see no evidence from the text that false prophets are being described. False prophets don't cast out demons and do miracles. I know the prior verse talks about false prophets (and do please give me a definition for that which doesn't encompass most Christians) but it's just an assumption on your part that this verse is exclusively talking about false prophets. False prophets don't tend to do miracles, cast out demons, and witness. These are people who seem to put in more effort than most, and are sincere in their belief.
>I was just looking for your reference about Jesus coming back to kill all the christians. Unfair to spout these types of things without some sort of basis right?
I never said Jesus was coming back to kill all the Christians, I said Jesus was coming back to kill most Christians and all of everyone else.
And that is simply and unambiguously the canon. The only point that can be argued is how many Christians are a part of the body count. It certainly isn't zero.
I had the guy rocking up in his truck to spend a day doing carpentry for our AI overlords, and could not see the magic wand.
So now we have him solving the world's problems by killing everyone, apart from a few good people, so have we moved on from a magic wand to a magic wonder weapon?
We should be scared of this man coming back, not waiting patiently for thousands of years. Honestly, I try my hardest to understand it, but I see a greater chance of vast AI data centers in space due to a shortage of resources on earth.It is not going to happen.
i like how you differentiated "normal people"
I don't think we have to worry about "AI" being capable of replacing electricians and carpenters any time soon and that's ignoring all the unsolved problems with the robotics.
It's nice to have sci-fi fantasies and everything, but in the real world tradespeople are going to be around for a very very long time. They won't be building data centers for that long though. This is a short term hike in demand that just isn't going to last.
I hear China is doing a lot of this already to stave off their upcoming demographic collapse. I haven't seen raw details or videos though other than demonstration stuff (anyone have anything to share?)
Factories have been automating for decades. Last factory tour I took they said in 1950 this plant had over 2000 employees working, now (2019) about 200. Then he pointed to the laser cutter which alone replaced 150 workers with just 2. This factory is not considered very automated by modern standards either.
RAM manufacturers are falling, and today after the MSFT numbers are out we'll see additional CapEx worries.
I've had to learn a lot of skills this summer trying to get some repairs done on my house, and I've had to pay some extreme "fuck off" prices for work that I couldn't do myself.
My father-in-law is a construction manager for a large power company, and they've been expanding their footprint as well for these datacenters, and hiring like crazy to speed up their construction.
He said it will be a few years before the independent trades people become more available.
Quotes for other stuff like hardwood floor installation and finishing—a job I'd personally consider harder and requiring greater skill than installing a mini-split in a totally uncomplicated setting—was extremely cheap by comparison.
The electrical work I need done is because the previous owner (my grandfather-in-law) built the house and did absolutely NOTHING to code, and inspection found none of this. There are splices in the walls, there is yellow romex being used as power lines to sub panels across the lawn, strung from tree to tree to keep it off the ground. The electrical panel is installed 5-inches from the washing machine... where there is water, and lots of it. There are 4 sub panels strewn throughout the house - it is 1300 square feet. There are random nutted romex wires just poking out of holes in the walls. Basically we need the entire house to be rewired.
Same with plumbing, there isn't a single valve in this house. Everything is plumbed directly from the cold or hot lines. So when the shower sprung a leak, we had to turn the mains water off, rip out the shower to fix it, then re-install it. And that is all over the house, as well.
Don't buy a house built by a family member, even if that family member is a GC that builds houses for a living, because they aren't getting paid to build their own house, and will 1000% cut every corner known to man.
Its very much like an experienced coder going into established codebases and being able to more quickly make changes and improvements. No codebase is perfect and they all seem to have their own uniqueness just like no house is perfect and all have their own quirks. How good or bad it is can be determined by the experience and foresight of the person doing the work but there will still always be uniqueness and quirks.
Once I finally internalized it, I really appreciated the history of my home and the things people did to solve problems as time went on just like a mature codebase. I would argue as long as the property is generally good, its just a fact of life to have to deal with the rest.
That's not to say a good inspector will find every fault either. They don't tear walls open, and they don't have x-ray vision. They only inspect what they can see.
By all means go make money if the opportunity presents itself. I love to see well compensated trades. But be under no illusions that when the bubble pops (and it will) you’ll be tossed aside before you know what happened. So make money now, and milk these AI players for everything they’ve got, but just have a clear plan on what comes next.
Those prefab factories may not exist though, and companies want to build out now before the market is mature, instead of a long-term play.
If you want to know what is in demand, look at what nice neighborhood suburbanites are doing.
Amazon has hired so many journeymen electricians from our area that apprenticeship waiting lists have exploded. If you can assume that happens where the demand is being bought up, jobs could fail to emerge even if wages go up for existing experts.
In any case, the externalities like power and water draw or pollution rain down on the locals permanently, even if trades enjoyed a brief period of demand. It's not like a city emerging. It's a big warehouse that's pretty sparsely employed relative to its size.
If there is more sustained demand for electricians why on earth wouldn't more people become electricians?
Right now there's a supply crunch, but unless you think the US will keep building datacenters at this rate forever the problem will eventually go away.
My point was that journeymen often at an electrical shop who have apprentices are recently at Amazon without apprentices because Amazon is bidding wages so high they (to some extent) abandon the apprenticeship system. The waitlist I was talking about doesn’t reflect new demand from entrants so much as a backlog that is no longer clearing as people rationally defect and go work for the data centers who have different priorities.
Overall, it will balance out but I don’t think the NYTimes should be let off for carrying water for capital trying to fix data centers PR by misleading people thinking this will create jobs in their communities or some nonsense.
Why is this a bad thing? It sounds like giving folks more pathways to make money doing this work is only a good thing.
You are also subject to the economy more than most jobs. When things start going bad you are the first one cut.
It can still be a good career overall, but it does have downsides and isn't for everyone. I'm not leaving my job even though I know how to do construction.
If you're unlucky, the job will be far away but below the cutoff for a hotel, so you have to choose between driving home every night or paying for your own hotel. Younger people sleep in their car some times.
Any long distance site starts excluding more and more of the older workers and those with families. It's a younger workers game for the most part
Most of those data centers built in relatively remote areas. will have just a few people working at that data center. It’s not going to bring lasting prosperity to that midsize or small town.
Services that support farming.
So? What's your point? During the boom, laborers from all over went to North Dakota to work in the oil fields, and for the unemployment to say low there, most of them had to leave. And, IIRC, North Dakota wisely refused to build too much permanent infrastructure to support that population, because they knew it would be transient. If there was much effect on unemployment statistics, it was probably in other states (though I would guess the effect was more on wages than binary employment).
My point is boom jobs evaporate, and give a recent example.
As a preface, in Texas, anyone in Texas can apprentice as an electrician if one is willing to pay $50 for a license. This requires one to work for a master electrician and generally as a helper for a journeyman. After 8000 hours (4 years), one can take a journeyman exam. As as a journeyman, one can work solo day to day, but still must work under a master electrician. After 4000 additional hours (2 years) and passing the master electrician exam, one can become a master and work fully independently. Most states are similar, but they are licensed independently.
A few guys dropped out of the program to apprentice. They were getting paid $16/hour to haul parts for home generator installs. Journeyman pay was around $30-40/hr depending. We were told that journeyman union pay in large metros like Chicago was about $50/hr. I'm not sure if any pay differential exists for master electricians if they are doing solo work. The real money in electrical work was by becoming a master electrician because then you could hire journeyman and apprentices to work for you and tax their labor. As with any job, the technical training does not prepare one to run a business and some people are good at it and some aren't. However, at the end of the day, it's capitalism. One generally becomes wealthy by having other people do work for you and you keeping a portion of that labor. It doesn't matter if it's electrical work, yard work, or computing.
Anyway, if one wants to become an electrician, great! However, you're almost certainly not going to get rich from it. I met some guys who followed some of the disaster/building booms running communication wires and they all got stiffed on their promised pay. That doesn't mean you will, but please don't think it's guaranteed.
Journeyman union pay is over $60 an hour in Minneapolis and St Paul, $110 an hour if you include fringes. I feel bad for electricians in Texas.
Master electricians don’t earn any more than a journeyman, as an electrical PM I don’t care if you passed a test that lets you sign plans and open a shop. Union electricians have multiple levels, our locals use Journeyman, Foreman, General Foreman, and General Foreman in Charge. Each step up is $4-5/hr extra. The classifications are based on how many people they are supervising, but if you’re a good electrician, you’ll have no problem getting foreman or general foreman pay for solo work. Employers are only obligated to pay you foreman etc if you’re supervising but if you’re productive, they’ll pay you more to keep you happy since the company can make way more than $10/hr extra from a very productive electrician.
Trades work is hard. Traveling to a far away job site every day and doing physical labor in a building that isn’t heated or cooled yet is the complete opposite of our comfortable office or remote tech jobs.
If you’re dreaming about escaping meetings and annoying coworkers, imagine if most of the people you work around aren’t your coworkers at all. They’re other trades people from other companies who run the range of being understanding and kind to total DGAF about you or your job requirements because they know you being upset has no connection back to their job safety. This varies based on the site and who’s running it, but that also changes from month to month or day to day.
I say this as someone who spent very little time in trades related work before graduating college and who has career electrician family members. Trades work is hard. If you work on computers in an office, we have it so very easy.
most of my extended family was hardcore blue collar (ranchers, welders, oil hands, etc). When they got older their bodies were pretty broken, most couldn't walk from one end of their house to the other after about age 70. That work is hard on your body year after year and it eventually just wears out. For comparison, my father was the typical white collar worker. He's a minor pickleball celebrity in Florida at 80.
And lots of tradespeople do very well. Many of the bigger houses round here have work vans in the drives. Many of them are landlords too with significant assets. My street is slowly filling up with rentals, mostly by landlord tradespeople.
I was just chatting to a retired one yesterday at the station and he said he was going to have an extremely good retirement until he got divorced and she took half of everything.
If you know someone and you get into it, you can have a pretty good career I would not recommend being a non-union pipe fitter or even working for a non-union company in any trade (except a family business) not if you want to learn and do it right and have longevity and financial security, most of the unionized construction trades usually have educational training facilities thru the union or junior college for their apprentices coming up, non Union fire sprinkler companies are basically like picking people up from Home Depot.
Note: many junior colleges across the country have programs for the HVAC trade as part of their curriculum.
>Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc.
Data center are tip-up warehouses with walls made of reinforced concrete, metal bar joists, metal columns, and metal roofs. Any interior wall framing is made of steel.
I would bet that there is a ton of wood in these buildings that they are hiring thousands of carpenters for. They are not hiring carpenters to entertain the electricians.
I'd take your bet, while trying to hustle you to raise the wager.
But even for a steel and concrete datacenter you would want a few carpenters for the interior where humans (at least occasionally) work, more to help with scaffolding and other temporary buildings (e..g housing) during construction, and building framing for drainage ditches and other landscaping. I imagine wood-and-nails carpenters are quite in-demand for most datacenter projects.
HN doesn't like the reason for this infrastructure, but they'll like not having it even less.
Or to put it another way, a semiconductor, car or airplane factory wouldn’t really count as “infrastructure”, would they?
Then the public should make them look like fools and not pay for AI. But if people are paying for it, then they are probably capturing most of the value it produces. Paying Anthropic $20/mo is a trivial cost to recoup if it assists with your work, even at $60 or $100 it still makes sense for many.
I'm currently enjoying subsidized AI usage at relatively cheap prices from these same companies. It's cheaper than a cell phone bill and most people can afford it.
"Or to put it another way, a semiconductor, car or airplane factory wouldn’t really count as “infrastructure”, would they?"
No, but flying on an airplane 50+ years ago was only for the rich. Everyone I know now has flown somewhere, and it's very obtainable. I remember cell phones in the 80s being > $1 minute and a sign of being wealthy.
Capitalism can and does bring the costs of these things down.
Data centers will definitely benefit the public, as long as the government doesn't decide on creating their own monopoly.
If you are for green energy and the electrification of primary energy this giant wave of unlimited private investment is the best gift you could have ever dreamed for. The fact we are doing our best to squander it is amazing to me.
We have a generational chance to build entire industrial supply chains and rapidly catch up from multiple generations of lack of investment in our electric grid but instead we are going to resist it every single step of the way.
It just might have to do with where electrical grid interconnect happens to currently be with spare capacity. These corridors also happen to be where it's going to be easiest to put up even more long distance high voltage transmission.
Datacenter siting has went from "where the fiber lines run" to "where we can get power" rather rapidly. I have friends who's entire job is basically trying to find locations where there is still transmission capacity available, and if not immediately, where it can be built out rapidly over existing rights-of-way to avoid as much of the NIMBY as possible. Projects that were taking a decade or more are now being planned for completion in 1-3 years. Delays went from permitting, lawsuits, funding, etc. and are now seemingly gated by component availability. These manufacturers are ramping up as rapidly as they seemingly can do so.
Transmission lines are by far the hardest part of the puzzle to solve. And yes, datacenters are about the only thing that has accelerated their buildout in my lifetime. I've watched projects that were paused for close to a decade to bring wind energy from the southern part of my home state to the metro load center area all of a sudden get jump-started again due to there actually being immediate capital available to build them and make it worth dealing with the NIMBY folks.
Datacenter siting is obviously more complex than this, but yeah - if you can get 80% of your transmission line from a power generating locating closer to your urban load centers you would be an idiot not to jump on the opportunity regardless of the reasons why.
Wide scale infrastructure build-outs are always messy and wasteful. Every single one in history has been. This is how shit gets built - not 20 years of careful planning and consideration.
Some of us have been paying attention to the grid far longer than this latest AI bubble craze. This was always coming for us, demand simply got brought forward half a decade or more. Eventually you run out of the investments your grandparents made and have to actually build stuff again. The US simply has collectively forgotten what that looks like.
There will be plenty of stranded misallocated capital. That's just how these things go. But there will be plenty of reusable infrastructure left in it's wake like always. If the US is ever going to reindustrialize at all, then this is about the easiest and least impactful means to begin doing so.
Yes, they want to put these things near existing power infrastructure (ie cities), but per NIMBYs they cannot. To the extent they can use existing power infrastructure, they are using existing power infrastructure and then only adding what they need. In lieu of a significant bust, this is far more likely to be a negative externality than a positive one.
Of course people realize this, so they do not want to build data centers nearby, ergo data centers are increasingly likely to be sited "in bumfuck nowhere," even up to and including literal outerspace.
Here, the positive externalities are basically zilch regardless of bust or not.
I get the 30,000 foot view that you are describing, but I am saying specifically in this scenario, for this infrastructure, in the specific existing political/economic/land use context we are talking about, I don't see the argument.
Past infrastructure booms have built infrastructure in and around cities. You have just described why that is increasingly not the case, and even if it were the case, it's only a positive externality if there's a giant bust, which feeds back into people wanting to keep these things away from cities!
Please identify a few of the specific infrastructure booms that you think are analogous.
Dams: nope.
Telecom: nope.
Broadband: nope.
Electrification: nope.
Fiber: nope.
None of these look like "build infrastructure in middle of nowhere where if the project succeeds, it consumes everything it created, and if it fails, there's nothing very useful for others to consume that infrastructure in those locations."