The latest American midterm elections told us, among a thousand things, that from now on AI data centers will be the next waste-to-energy plants or nuclear power plants with the dispute between those who want them and those who oppose them. In the USA, meanwhile, a good part of the various political candidates, especially among the aspiring governors, have asked the question and given themselves an answer: “Not In My Back Yard” (literally: “Not in my backyard”), renewing the NIMBY catchphrase. Data centers consume too much energy and water, polluting and taking precious resources away from the entire community.

The trend has changed. If once upon a time there was the myth of the silicon epic, with all the rhetoric of the golden age of Silicon Valley, today we are witnessing the birth of a counterculture that sees the CEOs of Big Tech as the main enemies and evildoers of humanity. They are the same ones who, on the occasion of Donald Trump’s re-election, rushed to the Mar-a-Lago court, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars for the Tycoon’s electoral campaign.

The golden age of Silicon Valley and the awakening of consciences

Twenty years ago the narrative around the large digital platforms bordered on mysticism: Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google wanted to democratize human knowledge with the motto of «Don’t be evil” (“don’t be evil”; later replaced over the years by a more neutral “should do the right thing”, literally “do the right thing”); Mark Zuckerberg presented Facebook as the social platform that would connect the entire planet; Elon Musk was the revived Tony Stark who wanted to bring man to Mars and who saved the planet with the electric car. An era in which the masses were convinced that Silicon Valley would elevate humanity and the entire planet by virtue of an innate philanthropy and through email services and social platforms free for all. Then we began to understand that “if you don’t pay for a product, you are the product” and, from scandal to scandal, from revelation to revelation, we have learned that the most precious asset is our sensitive data which, through the analysis and processing of big data, allows entire sections of the population to be profiled for various purposes: from marketing to political propaganda. The greatest conspiracy, in the end, was there for all to see (other than the reptilian Illuminati or chemtrails). So much so that today the masters of silicon are the object of open public hostility.

Hollywood dismantles their hagiographies (with films like The Social Network on Zuckerberg or the censored, at least on In the United States we are witnessing a real rebellion against the consequences of technological development: from the enormous consumption of energy and water resources in data centers, to the absence of rules on sensitive data and electronic surveillance, moving on to the negative effects on the psycho-physical health of children and adults resulting from social media addiction, up to the millions of jobs threatened by AI.

The victory of the democratic governors should force – if the latter were to keep their electoral promises – the AI ​​tycoons to change their projects, looking for other places to set up data centers (China has already made itself available to host as many data centers as possible). Therefore, there could be a sort of AI delocalization phenomenon, just as there was the delocalization of industrial production to the East in the past.

The silence of Italian politics in the face of the AI ​​cyclone

Themes related to artificial intelligence should also interest our country and should animate this start of the electoral campaign in view of the next political elections. But that’s not the case. In Italy a disconcerting silence reigns on both the right and the left. The center-right and center-left appear incapable of understanding the impact of AI on the social and economic fabric and instead mostly debate twentieth-century issues, while two threats are already looming on the horizon today: the transformation of the labor market by virtue of the introduction of AI in production cycles – both in the industrial and service sectors – and the ecological impact of data centers.

Apart from getting excited and curious at the videos spread via social media on TikTok of Chinese robots dancing, fighting or playing football, or marveling at the androids that look like attractive young women in latex, we are not addressing fundamental issues that will be on the agenda between now and the next five years. Generative AI not only replaces repetitive tasks, but affects cognitive work: the entire tertiary sector, from Public Administration to accounting services, up to editorial and intellectual ones. Italy, with a fabric of micro-enterprises with low digitalisation and without large-scale public professional retraining programmes, risks an unprecedented job uprooting in the face of which there will be no social safety net that will hold up. Equally serious is the blindness and silence on environmental issues.

To this day we continue to argue about waste-to-energy plants or about the convenience or otherwise of setting up nuclear power plants (the positive answer, among other things, is obvious), when instead on the agenda there is now the question linked to the possibility of hosting data centers which are vital for the development of AI (among other things, Europe today is the stony guest at the global table of artificial intelligence and this is very serious). Enormous infrastructures are needed to make the computational models work. The installation of new data centers on national soil, while on the one hand it could attract investments, on the other it would lead to appalling energy and water costs. In a country marked by weak energy autonomy and a territory tormented by continuous hydrogeological instability and with large areas characterized by long periods of drought, deciding to host server cathedrals means committing vital resources for the entire community, with the consequent worsening of conditions of fragility. Well, all this should be among the main points on the agenda of each political party, from right to left. But to date there is no trace.

“Poor” politics in the face of AI

This inaction arises from the cultural weakness of our political class. Italy suffers from a “poor” policy: devoid of industrial vision and resources for research, dramatically subordinated to large private conglomerates. Faced with the influence of Big Tech and technological and publishing players, the entire constitutional arc assumes an attitude of total subservience. The rush to attend the events of the powerful on duty is a well-established constant. If an improvised and bizarre editor is enough, at least according to his public appearances in the mass media, to make all the political leaders of the parliamentary spectrum flock to his feet, think what could happen if one of the various AI powers were to arrive (remember, for example, how the visit to the Capitol and around the Roman buildings of power by Elon Musk’s brother created confusion; then it became known that he wanted to propose a little game of drones that designed plays of light in sky). To date, fortunately, only Peter Thiel has arrived to speak to a small circle of followers of the Antichrist.

In short, when politics is reduced to a welcoming committee for private investments and for the powerful of the moment, it loses its function of guarantee for the people it claims to govern. Finally, what makes the situation grotesque is the gap between the reckless enthusiasm for AI – only in words because, in the meantime, here politics is silent on the subject – and the digital fragilities not only in Italy but in Europe. Our infrastructure rests on precarious foundations. The recent wave of hacker attacks in Europe (the most recent chapter of Russian hybrid warfare) has shown the inconsistency of our defenses. Rushing towards AI without securing public and private servers, without making the population literate and without protecting data sovereignty is an act of recklessness. If America begins to deal with the social and energy costs of tech dominance, Italy risks being overwhelmed by the avalanche without being aware of it. This is also what politics should talk about. And yet he is silent.