News Trump and TSMC pitched $1 trillion AI complex — SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son wants to turn Arizona into the next Shenzhen

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We weren't much cooler in Green Valley, AZ... 114degF (45.5degC) yesterday. measured at my home.

There is also the issue of AI, Oracle and Softbank having trouble actually raising $500 Billion. I mean that amount of money is a significant portion of the GDP of countries like Spain, Mexico, South Korea, Brazil, Australia, and Canada (all below $1 Trillion).

Let that level of investment in AI by this consortium sink in for a minute. Located here in the USA and it's approx a 1/4 of either the Canadian or Mexican GDP.

Just imagine if that amount of money were applied elsewhere.

<edited becuase the original post had some misinformation regarding GDPs... always check... AI generated material is garbage... dig deeper for correct information.>
 
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hotaru251 said:
potential issues:
water& power.
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As an AZ resident and native of the state, I can certainly attest to both. We have no sustainable water supply and the Colorado River Compact has been revised so that all of the states need to make cuts for prolonged sustainability (and to help refill Lake Mead). Given those circumstances, I don't see how this works. As for the power element, yes, we do have the nation's largest nuclear power plant in terms of power generation, but even that has most of the juice it generates going to California.

This isn't going to work. Even TSMC's massive plant is a huge boat anchor on the aforementioned.
 
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SkyBill40 said:
As an AZ resident and native of the state, I can certainly attest to both. We have no sustainable water supply and the Colorado River Compact has been revised so that all of the states need to make cuts for prolonged sustainability (and to help refill Lake Mead). Given those circumstances, I don't see how this works. As for the power element, yes, we do have the nation's largest nuclear power plant in terms of power generation, but even that has most of the juice it generates going to California.
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Also, I'm assuming it uses a steam turbine, for electricity generation? In that case, it's just another big water consumer and scaling it up would likewise be problematic.
 
ezst036 said:
Where will they get water?
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TSMC has reused their fab water in Taiwan due to water concerns there. Presumably they could do even more to reuse water if it's a real issue.

The article is talking about robotics manufacturing. It's unclear how much of that $1 trillion would be going to more fabs. Fabs aren't the only thing that use water, but other manufacturing processes could also use recycled water.
 
bit_user said:
Fabs are energy-intensive, which means more power-generation would likely be needed. Unless they plan a lot of wind & solar + storage, that will also be a big consumer of water.
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A large solar array + batteries, like some of the smaller solar substations in AZ, may do the trick. May pay for itself in electricity costs in the long run.
 
US/Arizona are allowing Saudi Arabia to lease massive fields and plant wheat for thier own countries consumption and getting the water from newly dug wells... starving other communities of water as the water table drops. It bypasses all normal trade mechanisms (no american farmers and all of the regulations that surround that). Just one current example.

So your answer is big corporate, big government, big royalty doesn't care one iota about Arizona's water supply... let's see what the current administration does with all of those covenants the states have signed to protect the Colorado River...

I suspect the plan for energy is bigger nuclear becuase, well it's just the Sonoran or Mojave desert.... but again... water for cooling it.
 
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bit_user said:
Also, I'm assuming it uses a steam turbine, for electricity generation? In that case, it's just another big water consumer and scaling it up would likewise be problematic.
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Absolutely it does as do all nuclear power generation plants. They're supposedly using mostly recycled/reclaimed waste water from a nearby water treatment plant for most of it; for reactor cooling and steam generation, they use de-mineralized and de-ionized well water (pumped from underground aquifers). I have to imagine a ton is still being pumped in that's not replenished in any positive way for cooling and steam. The plant has been looking for a better means to move off from the recycled water for a while now but there's really no viable solution.

The plant uses about 65 million gallons a day, more than 23 billion gallons annually, to generate power. Palo Verde is the only plant in the country that doesn't have a nearby (river) water source. Crazy, right?
 
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SonoraTechnical said:
US/Arizona are allowing Saudi Arabia to lease massive fields and plant wheat for thier own countries consumption and getting the water from newly dug wells... starving other communities of water as the water table drops. It bypasses all normal trade mechanisms (no american farmers and all of the regulations that surround that). Just one current example.

So your answer is big corporate, big government, big royalty doesn't care one iota about Arizona's water supply... let's see what the current administration does with all of those covenants the states have signed to protect the Colorado River...

I suspect the plan for energy is bigger nuclear becuase, well it's just the Sonoran or Mojave desert.... but again... water for cooling it.
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The Saudis and their alfalfa fields aren't going to be getting away with stealing our water anymore. Governor Hobbs killed most of that and blocked lease renewals to those companies, with most of the leases expiring within the next few years. No new leases will be granted, either.

https://apnews.com/article/saudi-ar...-agriculture-0d13957edaf882690e15c0bd9ccfa59f
 
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SkyBill40 said:
The Saudis and their alfalfa fields aren't going to be getting away with stealing our water anymore. Governor Hobbs killed most of that and blocked lease renewals to those companies, with most of the leases expiring within the next few years. No new leases will be granted, either.

https://apnews.com/article/saudi-ar...-agriculture-0d13957edaf882690e15c0bd9ccfa59f
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Thank goodness.. I had no idea what Ducey was thinking when he allowed that. I guess if you could follow the money, you'd learn what was really going on.
 
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