The maintenance and expansion of AI data centers are now as central to global politics as Gaza or Ukraine — and just as explosive.
This isn’t just about a voracious appetite for electricity. It’s a geopolitical grinder where uranium and water have become currencies more valuable than oil.

Behind the blessings AI brings to humans lies a trail of catastrophic consumption — of water, minerals, and air — and a technological arms race that already outpaces the Space Race.

Across the United States, invisible megacities have risen on the outskirts of towns — low, sprawling behemoths stretching for thousands of acres.
In Northern Virginia, which hosts the largest cluster on Earth (responsible for over a quarter of the state’s power demand — more than the whole of Ireland), and in Phoenix and Dallas, where cooling systems gulp water by the ton and gas turbines roar day and night, feeding the machine’s endless hunger.

Rising electricity prices and grid failures may turn out to be the least of our worries. Data centers are reshaping not only the physical landscape but also the political one — from the Siberian steppe to Silicon Valley.

CONSUMPTION

I’m writing this piece while consulting an agent from a popular AI app. Convenient, efficient — and slightly humiliating. Turns out my own research isn’t as deep as I thought, and with a touch of professional jealousy, I find myself accepting its structural edits. To me, AI has been a blessing — mostly because it saves me time.

And yet, I keep pushing away the thought that this “smart world” is devouring gigatons of water and electricity every second.
You open your laptop — and somewhere in Arizona, or maybe outside Frankfurt or Dublin, a thousand fans are blasting hot air beneath a steel dome. Miles of pipes, water tanks, backup gas turbines. All of it just to keep these few paragraphs alive.

Without noticing, we’ve wired ourselves into a new kind of addiction — digital comfort fed by an insatiable dependence on electricity, uranium, and water.

AI has only been around for a blink of history, yet it already consumes 1–1.5% of the world’s electricity (IEA, 2024). By 2030, it’s projected to hit 3–4% — twice the current power use of Germany.

These aren’t numbers from a futurist white paper. They’re entire nations, millions of homes, running just to make sure our ChatGPT doesn’t freeze. And that’s alongside PFAS pollution — worse than expected, barely tested.

This new country — borderless, stateless, and gluttonous — grows faster than any economy on Earth, producing nothing but heat.

Sometimes I think the politicians preaching about an energy crisis are actually trying to protect us. They shouldn’t. Because we’re busy building a “divine intelligence” — and we forget it runs on a wall socket.

GEOGRAPHY

In the U.S., data centers rise where the kilowatt is cheap and the grid can take the hit.

Northern Virginia — the infamous Data Center Alley — remains the largest cluster on Earth by installed capacity. Hundreds of facilities, growing faster than new transmission lines can catch up.

Dominion Energy and regional operators already warn: without rapid transmission build-out, expect overloads and connection delays.

Forget the “+25%” headlines — the real story is structural. Tariff pressure is mounting across the hubs: connection fees rising, grid charges ballooning, lead times stretching.

Projections converge on one point — unless America doubles its annual gigawatt buildout, it will hit a ceiling. Power demand could rise by 25% by 2030 and keep climbing toward mid-century.
NYISO and others already report shrinking reliability margins.

It’s not a blackout — it’s a hard growth cap.
The economy can’t outrun its own outlet.

If Virginia is the heart, Phoenix and Dallas are the scorched lungs.
In Arizona, water is scarce and the heat unrelenting: typical site consumption ranges from hundreds of thousands to several million liters per day.

Some facilities were granted permits for up to 15 million liters a day.

Pledges of “water neutrality” evaporate quickly in +45°C heat and non-stop evaporative loops.

In Texas, AI-driven load pressure keeps forcing gas turbines and backup units online — just to hold frequency.

Then there’s PFAS — the toxic ghost in the cooling and fire-suppression systems. These fluorinated compounds, the “forever chemicals,” barely degrade. Monitoring remains patchy; regulation lags far behind.

Europe’s drama is different — not heat, but power scarcity and grid anxiety.

Ireland and Frankfurt are the continent’s biggest hubs. Irish data centers already consume over 20% of national electricity.

A moratorium on new connections in Greater Dublin has been in effect since 2021, forcing operators to scatter builds across other counties.

Frankfurt faces the same bottleneck: overloaded substations, endless permitting delays.

The EU preaches “green data centers,” but between slogans and megawatts lies a canyon.

Mexico is moving the opposite way — fast and rough. The Querétaro region has turned into a hot zone: Microsoft, Oracle, and others are building campuses, but weak local grids mean temporary gas or diesel units keep them alive. Growth, for now, still runs on oil fumes.

Asia, meanwhile, is at full throttle.

In Johor, Malaysia, massive campuses are already operating or under construction: AirTrunk sites range between 150–270 MW (over 420 MW total nationwide), while STACK adds another ~220 MW from 2026.

The location is no accident — just across the border from Singapore, where quotas still cap new builds.

In India, the eastern coast (Andhra Pradesh, Visakhapatnam) is being reshaped by Reliance Jio; the “100% renewables” promise still collides with the fossil grid.

China is building smart server cities in Inner Mongolia, where wind and reservoirs aid cooling — but coal still powers most of the grid, and “carbon neutrality 2060” remains a horizon, not a reality.

AI is redrawing the world’s energy map.
Its new capitals emerge not in traditional tech clusters but on the periphery — where power is cheap and the grid can still stretch.
The cost: water, air, and miles of new transmission lines.

INVESTMENT AND INFRASTRUCTURE

While politicians debate climate goals and “green transitions,” corporations are simply building.

In 2025, Microsoft raised its capital expenditures to $80 billion — almost entirely for AI infrastructure: servers, data centers, and power networks. For the company, this is no longer investment — it’s survival.
Without electricity, there are no chats, no clouds, no profit.

The same instinct drives Amazon, Google, and Meta. They’re not waiting for permits — they’re redrawing the world’s energy map to fit their needs.

The loudest project is Stargate, a partnership between OpenAI and Oracle.
Reports suggest a network of hyperscale sites across Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and Louisiana — estimated load ranging from several to tens of gigawatts — the equivalent of multiple nuclear reactors. Even without precise figures, the meaning is clear: this is the first infrastructure built not for people, but for machines.

On the opposite side stands Blackstone, investing $25 billion in “clean” data centers across Europe.

But the continent is bogged down in permits and ESG paperwork: every project turns into a bureaucratic marathon. Against the American sprint, such investments look less like strategy and more like an act of conscience.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy is advancing pilot SMR projects in Idaho and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Officially, they’re demonstrations — but they’re widely seen as future power sources for hyperscale clusters.

In the private sector, a new trend is gaining momentum: behind-the-meter generation. Corporations are building their own gas turbines, solar farms, batteries, hydrogen modules — energy autonomy has become the new currency of digital capitalism.

According to the IEA, by 2030 data centers will consume around 945 TWh annually — roughly the current power use of Germany or Japan, or about 4% of global generation.

But here lies the limit: the grid can’t keep up. To meet this growth, the U.S. would need to add 80 GW of new capacity every year — twice the recent pace. Operators warn: NYISO and other East Coast systems are running tight, reliability margins thinning, new plants coming online slower than old ones retire.

It’s not yet a blackout — but it’s already a ceiling.

The economy can’t grow faster than its own outlet.

The money arrived before the megawatts — and while engineers try to cool the servers, financiers keep pouring fuel on the fire.

AI infrastructure is being built faster than the world can power it.
And if no one hits the brakes, this hungry intelligence might one day leave humanity in the dark.

NEW OIL, OLD PARANOIA

AI has stopped being just technology — it has become geopolitics.
Behind today’s data centers stand not engineers, but presidents.
Energy is the new oil, and those who can generate it decide who gets access to the intelligence of the future.

In September 2025, Donald Trump landed in London to meet King Charles III. The official agenda: a “Tech Prosperity Deal” — major investments in nuclear power for AI.

The real story: a workaround to bypass the U.S.–EU tariff war and turn Britain into an energy hub for American data centers.

The deal wasn’t signed — but it drew a new axis: a nuclear diplomacy race where megawatts are the new tools of foreign policy.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin announced construction of Russia’s first closed-cycle nuclear power system in the Tomsk region, slated for 2030.

The project aims to recycle up to 95% of spent fuel and reduce dependence on imported uranium — a direct response to sanctions and a bid for energy sovereignty.

Officially, it’s about a “clean atomic future.”
Unofficially, it’s a signal: Russia intends to remain an energy player, even when cut off from Western tech.

China is playing the long game. While others argue, Beijing quietly monopolizes uranium and rare-earth supply through deals in Africa, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia.

For SMR reactors that power AI clusters, China already controls up to 70% of global components.

On paper, it’s “energy stability.” In practice — a slow, strategic dependency: the world’s next choke point.

Europe, as always, stands between morality and panic. Bureaucracy, environmental anxiety, and public pressure stall new builds and transmission lines.

Brussels preaches “green transition,” while companies quietly move infrastructure to Eastern Europe and North Africa, where rules are softer and bills smaller.

The story repeats itself: Europe writes declarations — the world builds reactors.

It’s an energy crisis of a new age — chips instead of oil, data centers instead of rigs.

Only this time, there will be no visible war.

No tanks — just current.

No blockade — just shortage.

“The invisible war for energy has begun — and AI is its first casualty.”
— Foreign Policy, Spring 2025

Politicians still talk about digital sovereignty, but real sovereignty is now measured in megawatts.

Whoever controls the energy controls AI — and with it, the future.