Interesting when you start to take this insight seriously. You could imagine data centers becoming important military targets in the future if the US ever balkanizes. Beyond that, securing compute could become a part of everyday trade agreements.

As things industrialize further, a state's net compute flow might become a topic of campaign promises. We may later find correlations between states' access to quality compute and the educational/financial outcome of younger generations.

To be sure, my leverage and inertia with a $200/mo ChatGPT Pro subscription is already a lot higher than it is without. We're not talking about just chatbots anymore, modern agentic models represent a quantifiable increase in individual agency. Whether or not the job market implodes, I am able to make progress on things even while asleep or busy with something else. This kind of agentic capital has never been available to the working class before at scale.

States like Texas, with their independent grid, might find themselves in a favorable position in such a balkanization event, but past events have proved that ERCOT is not ready to operate a statewide power grid. I was in Texas during the '21 cold snap and it was brutal. I was using my gas stove for heat. If resources for compute suddenly became constrained, and compute was deemed a matter of security and economic survival, it would be a cutthroat environment for operators of Texas' existing 400+ data centers.