AI is eating your paycheck.
Data centers are pushing up power bills, soaking up tax breaks and raising the price of everything from groceries to phones.
Where your money is going
Of Americans worry data centers will raise their electricity costs.
Source: Reuters/Ipsos via NPR ↗What Georgia, Virginia and Texas each give away every year in data center tax breaks.
Source: Stateline / Good Jobs First ↗It's not just your power bill
AI pricing charged shoppers up to 23% more
Instacart's AI pricing tests charged different shoppers different prices for the same item, potentially about $1,200 a year per family.
Memory prices nearly quadrupled
As AI data centers bought up memory chips, one RAM kit went from $90 to $349.99 in about three months. Phone prices are projected to rise 6.9%.
Trump's Treasury waved off a bubble warning
A Treasury staff draft warned an AI crash could spread beyond Silicon Valley. The administration disowned it.
Your state may not even tell you
14 states, including North Carolina, do not report what data center tax breaks cost.
One firm funds the cameras, the weapons and the reactors
Andreessen Horowitz — the largest disclosed federal donor of the midterms — holds Flock Safety alongside a portfolio of AI defense and power companies. Their own list, their own money.
License plate readers in more than 6,000 communities. Andreessen Horowitz backed it to an $8.3 billion valuation.
Autonomous weapons. a16z wrote its first check in 2019 and kept investing.
Software that flies jets and drones with no pilot. a16z investor since 2017.
Drones sold to police departments. a16z led the Series A in 2016 and invested repeatedly.
Hypersonic missiles. On a16z's own “American Dynamism 50” list.
Autonomous warships. Also on a16z's list.
Nuclear microreactors to power it all. Also on a16z's list.
Who is allowing this?
Don't just scroll. Act.
Make Big Tech pay its own way: no more blank checks, no more cost-shifting onto our power bills, real protections for our water, jobs and kids.