Blazing Reader,

Last week, Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com made this observation on X:

Something's totally off about the number of data centers being built (over 3,000 right now) and the sheer size and compute power they represent.

They are massively OVER-building capacity that can't possibly be met by customer demand for compute.

And customer revenues can't possibly recover the financial investment needed on these projects.

There's clearly some other plan afoot, and I don't yet know what it is. It involves massive compute, but not merely to serve inference or hosting databases and corporate data. There's a much larger plan at work here.

It may be just some big, dumb, investment Ponzi scheme, but the scale of operations sounds eerily like a scene from my novel, All the Humans Are Sleeping:

“Can you offer us an explanation?” Port asked.

Brent shrugged his shoulders... “Well, part of the delay was the diameter of those freakin’ conduit tubes. They’re three metres wide. We could be running a train through them. I still have no idea why you want so much cable going up north.”

“No idea was part of your contract,” said Port. “You weren’t hired to know why, just how to get the job done.”

“I’m just saying,” Brent responded, “that you’ve spent over four point five billion on just the Manitoba line. It has ten times the bandwidth of what’s being pumped into Winnipeg. I’ve done the math — God knows I’ve had the time — and the math doesn’t make any sense.”

“Costs are none of your concern, Mr. Sarris,” said Guillermo, leaning back in his chair.

“Well, I do find it concerning,” continued Brent. “It’s like some AI hallucination advised you to take on this project. I mean, Nunavut ain’t New York State. The whole region has like, what, 40,000 inhabitants? Some of whom don’t even own a cellphone. And most of them live on Baffin Island, where I hear you have another line running from Maine through Quebec. That line must be even longer and has to cross arctic waters. What’s that costing you? Six billion?”

Suzuki crossed his arms and spoke with a sharpness only a Japanese accent could produce, “You are not supposed to know about the Hibou Line. Who told you?”

“Let’s just say a little owl told me.”

He smiled. They didn’t...

“Listen, guys.”

And when he said “guys,” Suzuki frowned.

“Gentleman,” he corrected himself, “I get you want to bring the Metaverse to the Inuit — high-tech salvation to the natives and all that jazz. Personally, I’m not sure how many takers you’ll get. But even if everybody up north went online with those bandwidth-sucking implants you’re beta-testing, you still wouldn’t need a tenth of the transmission capacity and data speed you’ll be pumping through those lines. The specs are insane. It’s offering an entirely new level of low-latency cloud computing. Ultra-Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing blazing across 1200 kilometres of Manitoba wilderness, while your super-secret Hibou Line is—”

“That’s quite enough, Mr. Sarris,” interrupted Guillermo.

“No, it’s way more than enough. I mean, you have 240 freakin’ channels on the Caribou, each pumping 600 gigabytes per second.” Brent paused to complete the math in his head. “That’s a total of 144 terabits per second. Even if you account for the degradation on such a long optical network, you’re still gonna surpass 120 terabits. The Pentagon doesn’t even—”

“Alright, moving on,” said Port.

I really wasn't trying to predict the future.

Like Ray Bradbury, I'm usually trying to prevent it.

There's still time. You can purchase copies of All the Humans Are Sleeping for yourself, friends and family at AlltheHumansAreSleeping.com/

John C.A. Manley

P.S. Here's what Seán ÓLaoire, PhD had to say about All the Humans Are Sleeping:

P.P.S. And for the completely negative, two-star review (just to be balanced and all), check out this video:

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.