Very brief thought on AI 2040 as a Canadian: Canada seems to be quite hostile to both data centres* and the US right now. I’m not sure any politician is going to survive agreeing to being the place the US nukes if China defects from an international agreement! I’m also not sure how much this matters at all in the grand scheme of things.
*except Alberta, which might be the only province that matters anyways...
[edit: the post originally read ”...agreeing to be the place China nukes if the US defects...” because I got confused writing down where the data centres are. but the core argument still applies]
The intention is not that the data centers would get nuked upon deal dissolution. From the scenario (emphasis mine):
To accomplish this, they agree to build the datacenters in the third-party countries least secure against their rival’s military intervention: China’s new datacenters will be in Canada, and America’s in Mongolia, with both hosts compensated via monetary payments, jobs, and a share in the new AI economy. If the deal dissolves, they reason, America and Canada will immediately move to take control of China’s datacenters in Canada, and China will self-destruct their compute rather than let it fall into American hands (and vice versa). Thus the idea of “Mutually Assured Compute Destruction” is born.
Alberta is more conservative than the other provinces, and has a weird relationship with the rest of the country. The rest of the country often blocks oil pipeline projects Alberta has, and Alberta essentially pays transfer payments to the less wealthy provinces, which makes people in Alberta bitter. So when the rest of the country wants one thing, Alberta tends to want the opposite.
Alberta also just has a bunch of cheap power it could use for the data centers.
Very brief thought on AI 2040 as a Canadian: Canada seems to be quite hostile to both data centres* and the US right now. I’m not sure any politician is going to survive agreeing to being the place the US nukes if China defects from an international agreement! I’m also not sure how much this matters at all in the grand scheme of things.
*except Alberta, which might be the only province that matters anyways...
[edit: the post originally read ”...agreeing to be the place China nukes if the US defects...” because I got confused writing down where the data centres are. but the core argument still applies]
The intention is not that the data centers would get nuked upon deal dissolution. From the scenario (emphasis mine):
What’s different about Alberta?
For one Alberta has been a strong trade partner with the US for energy (and also seems to entertain separatism more seriously than other provinces)
Alberta is more conservative than the other provinces, and has a weird relationship with the rest of the country. The rest of the country often blocks oil pipeline projects Alberta has, and Alberta essentially pays transfer payments to the less wealthy provinces, which makes people in Alberta bitter. So when the rest of the country wants one thing, Alberta tends to want the opposite.
Alberta also just has a bunch of cheap power it could use for the data centers.
it has no rats
I don’t understand the nuke reference