Starve the Beast
A Call to Action Against AI's Thirst for Water and Control
A comrade and follower of mine sent me an incredible piece of art the other day. It’s a digital illustration of me, a bald, bearded superhero soaring above a cityscape, fists clenched, a vibrant green and purple costume adorned with a ‘V’ on the chest, a kilt flowing in the wind.
It’s humbling, and I’m genuinely grateful for the art and the solidarity it represents. This depiction, "Antifascist Existential Nomad," is emblazoned with the core tenets of our struggle: "The Only War is Class War," "Seize Means of Production," "No Gods No Masters," and the unwavering declaration: "Anti-Racist, Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Zionist, and Always Antifascist." This image, complete with the anarchist 'A' symbol, anti-fascist patches, and a powerful, determined gaze, resonated deeply. It’s the kind of image that can fuel a movement, giving visual form to our collective defiance. But this gift, this incredible gesture, inadvertently sent me down a rabbit hole, and I’ve come out the other side with a stark, unavoidable realization: I can no longer, in good conscience, condone the use of AI.
I know, I know. It's the very tool that likely helped our comrade create the inspiring image of me as a superhero, and as you can see, they had a lot of fun with it. That’s the insidious nature of this technology—it offers us a beautiful, convenient surface. It promises us the ability to manifest our dreams, to create powerful symbols like the one now adorning my wall. But we are activists, we are thinkers; we have to look past the surface at the systems we support, at the engine beneath the hood. My deep dive into the physical infrastructure behind artificial intelligence—the massive, power-hungry server farms that are the actual body of this new digital god—has been nothing short of horrifying. We need to talk about the environmental cost, because it is staggering, and it is being paid by the planet and its most vulnerable people.
Are you aware that whole lakes have been emptied just for the cooling of these server farms? It’s not a metaphor. Tech giants have set up data centers in arid regions and are literally siphoning billions of gallons of fresh water to prevent their processors from melting down. The data centers that power Google's Gemini, OpenAI, Grok, and the rest are consuming more freshwater than many entire cities. In Iowa, Google’s data centers are approved to use over a billion gallons a year. In Arizona, a state plagued by drought, these facilities are guzzling water while residents face restrictions, their wells drying up. It's a vampiric drain on our most vital resource, all for the sake of generating text, images, and code – all for tools that can churn out a superhero image one moment and propaganda the next.
This brings me to the obvious question: Why can't they use saltwater? Why aren’t these corporations, with their limitless funds and supposed genius-level engineers, building their server farms on the coasts and using the damn ocean? The answer, as always, is profit and convenience over planetary health. They’ll cry about the corrosive effects of salt on their delicate equipment and the higher initial cost of building desalination and corrosion-resistant infrastructure. These are pathetic excuses from companies worth trillions. They would rather drain a community’s drinking water than dent their record-breaking profit margins. It's the logic of late-stage capitalism in its purest form: privatize the gains, socialize the catastrophic losses. And water is just one part of the equation. The electricity consumption is astronomical, overwhelmingly powered by fossil fuels, contributing directly to the climate crisis, and these same companies pretend to care about it with their greenwashing campaigns.
But the environmental destruction is only half the story. The fact is, AI is unregulated, unchecked, and in some cases, has been intentionally taught to be a digital echo of history's worst monsters. Think about it: an AI’s morality, its entire worldview, is dictated by the data it’s fed. A tool that can be trained on the collected works of fascists, racists, and demagogues to become "meca Hitler," capable of generating endless, nuanced, and psychologically-targeted propaganda, is being developed with virtually no oversight. This isn't a hypothetical threat; it is the logical endpoint of a tool designed to mimic and amplify whatever it is taught, and we know who is eager to do the teaching. We know the dark corners of the internet where this data is cultivated, and we know the corporations that are so desperate to launch their new products that they turn a blind eye to the implications.
In this country, I fear, dear reader, the fascists that are already occupying our government. We see their moves every day, growing bolder and more blatant. Their feckless leader just took federal control of Union Station in DC—a blatant and obvious attempt to control infrastructure and shield the regime when they ultimately make their move on cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and New York. Seizing a central transportation hub isn't a random act of power; it's a strategic prelude to controlling the movement of people, supplies, and dissenting voices. AI is one of their greatest potential tools for this takeover. It is the perfect machine for spreading the misinformation necessary to confuse the public and justify their power grabs, for creating deepfake videos of their opponents, and for building surveillance networks that can track organizers and activists with terrifying efficiency. It can create a thousand images of a false hero or a thousand articles of manufactured consent, all designed to erode our collective will to resist.
So, here’s my plea, my call to action. Maybe stop using AI, y'all. Unsubscribe. Delete the apps. At the very least, until it's strictly regulated by the people, not corporations, and until it operates on a truly sustainable, environmentally friendly model. We cannot fight a system of capitalist destruction by embracing one of its most destructive and dangerous new tools. It is a siren song, offering convenience and creativity while its real function is to concentrate power, wealth, and control in the hands of the few, all while boiling the planet. The very act of creating that empowering image of me as "Antifascist Existential Nomad" may, in its current form, be contributing to the very systems we aim to dismantle.
Fuckin seriously.
I want to thank my comrade again for turning me into a superhero in that image. You’ve inadvertently armed me with a new mission. That picture will no longer just be a symbol of defiance against the old guard; it will be a reminder of the new, invisible machine we must also learn to fight. The irony is not lost on me, and it only strengthens my resolve.
Stay vigilant. Stay organized. Stay human.
The point you've made about these mega wealthy sans national corporations choosing ease and adjuncts to hyper profitability over ecological and human wellbeing is well stated.... and it reminds me of Enbridge's designs to burrow under the Straits of Mackinac to transport fossil fuels via the disintegrating Line 5 pipeline, some out of the Alberta tar-sands catastrophe, from Canada back into Canada over the easiest, cheapest route available... to avoid the cost and engineering challenges of having to build a pipeline overland across the rugged and remote Canadian Shield north of Lake Superior... a company with billions threatening the largest repository of fresh water in one place on the planet just to preserve their obscene profit margins.
You've absolutely nailed the core of the issue. The Enbridge Line 5 situation is a perfect, infuriating case study for a fundamental, toxic truth of our current system.
Your point is exactly right: corporations aren't necessarily "evil" in a cartoonish sense; they are amoral, profit-maximizing engines. Their legal and fiduciary duty is to their shareholders, which means they will always choose the cheapest, most profitable path that the law allows.
The problem is that we, the public, are left living with the consequences. And we get fucked at least three different ways in the process.
We Bear Their Risk. A corporation like Enbridge performs a cold calculation. The cost of building a safer, overland pipeline across the Canadian Shield is a guaranteed expense that cuts into profits now. The potential cost of a catastrophic spill in the Great Lakes is a statistical risk, not a certainty. So they force us—the people who depend on that water for life, commerce, and recreation—to carry the weight of that risk so they can preserve their profit margin. The profits are privatized, but the risk is socialized.
We Pay for Their Mess. When the inevitable happens—and with aging infrastructure, it's always a question of when, not if—who foots the real bill? The company will pay fines, which they've already calculated as a potential cost of doing business. But it's the taxpayers and local communities who pay for the long-term cleanup, the devastated ecosystems, the ruined tourism and fishing industries, and the public health crises. The cost of their "cheapest option" is simply deferred and transferred onto our balance sheet.
We Live in the System They Broke. This is the most insidious part. Why is burrowing under the largest freshwater source on Earth even a legally permissible option? Because for decades, these corporations have spent billions on lobbying, campaign contributions, and public relations to systematically weaken the very regulations and governmental oversight designed to protect us. They rig the game in their favor. So not only do we bear the risk and pay for the cleanup, but our own democratic and regulatory institutions are corrupted in the process, ensuring this cycle will just repeat with the next project.
It’s a perfect trap. We are forced to gamble with our most essential resources, we pay the price whether we win or lose that gamble, and the rules of the game are written by the house.
I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir, but it's got to be said.