r/singularity • u/GeneReddit123 • 1d ago
AI The US is fighting over data centers. China is building them fast
https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/13/china/china-data-centers-ai-race-intl-hnk-dst13
u/PMacDiggity 1d ago
They’re also building the renewable energy infrastructure to support them and the future. But here in ‘murica we’re keeping the coal plants running by order of the fuhrer, regardless of if the coal companies want to or not.
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u/adeadbeathorse 1d ago
The US has 10 times as many AI data centers as China, with several times more financial investment happening, and far greater compute power overall. But after reading this headline, suddenly I feel the patriotic urge to live next to a data center.
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u/Klanciault 1d ago
Not really. US has 18-22 GW of AI datacenters and China’s capacity is estimated at 9.5-15 GW.
Don’t confuse US companies buying GPUs with them bringing data centers online. China is was faster than us at that
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u/OutOfBananaException 1d ago
Don't confuse empty data centers with compute capacity.
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u/Klanciault 1d ago
China is manufacturing 600k ascend 910C per year (1 million A100 equivalent, 300k H100 equivalent). They are manufacturing 1.6 million 910C/B and soon to be 950PR, which will bring them up to manufacturing a similar capacity to what the US is installing.
Don’t forget that they’re also buying our chips on the black market or even from illegal deals with companies (super micro)
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u/OutOfBananaException 1d ago
How does that relate to installed capacity?
Those production numbers are nowhere close to where they need to be to grow market share.
which will bring them up to manufacturing a similar capacity to what the US is installing.
Not even close. AMD alone is on track to produce almost an order of magnitude more compute than those numbers, in 2027.
The memory bottleneck is particularly problematic, as you can leverage memory to make up for compute. Not viable when memory is so expensive.
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u/Klanciault 1d ago
Yeah you’re missing the part where we can’t install the GPUs that are being produced. We’ve installed 3-4 GW of AI compute this year but purchased and fulfilled around 10GW, leaving 6-7 ish, 5 if we’re being generous, just sitting in warehouses uninstalled
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u/OutOfBananaException 1d ago
Even with those hilariously lowballed numbers, that's more than adequate to power AMDs production for 2027.
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u/Klanciault 1d ago
It’s not hilariously lowballed. This is easily verifiable information. Like super easy to verify. Just don’t confuse regular data center installations for AI data center ones and you’ll find there are 300B-500B worth of GPUs sitting unused in warehouses.
Also I checked your assertion about AMD producing more accelerators than huawei and that’s completely false. Huawei produces 810k accelerators and AMD produces 160k. When you equalize for TFLOPS and total bandwidth, you get roughly:
Huawei shipping 650 exaflops, AMD shipping 420 exaflops.
Huawei shipping 2.6 million TB/s, AMD shipping 850k TB/s.
When you equalize for performance with FP8, AMD comes out ahead by a factor of 2.5 ish because of Huawei’s lack of native FP8 support, but that is to change next year.
AMD’s chips are better but with lower production and the next gen huawei ones are looking to be able to close that gap for a favorable ratio of about 1.15 capacity shipped in Huawei’s favor
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u/OutOfBananaException 1d ago
It’s not hilariously lowballed.
SpaceX alone will online around 1.5gw capacity for 2026. They expect another 6-8gw to go live for 2027. Not warehoused, live.
Also I checked your assertion about AMD producing more accelerators than huawei and that’s completely false. Huawei produces 810k accelerators and AMD produces 160k.
I said AMDs 2027 capacity. They're scaling up to around 1-1.3m MI455x, and it's a staggering increase in compute given the jump in capability from mi355.
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u/Klanciault 1d ago
Holy shit that’s crazy on AMDs numbers. But unfortunately we won’t be able to install them.
What you are saying about spacex is true. They are installing like 30-50% of all US compute built in 2026 depending on whether they can get their 2GW online before eoy and how the others fare.
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u/ClearlyCylindrical 1d ago
Reminder that no progress has been made on huawei chips for training since a year and a half ago when deepseek finally managed to get inference working on them. Those chips are pretty shit
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u/sunstersun 1d ago
tf are you getting your numbers? First reuters article has 65 GW.
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u/Klanciault 1d ago
That’s total data center capacity. I’m talking about AI data centers only, which is essentially a new class of data center with a completely different purpose and architecture and requirements.
Regular data centers have basically 0 impact on AI capabilities of a nation or company
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u/Responsible-Ball-162 1d ago
yup. people don't realize how massive the gulf is and how much more it's gonna grow before China can even dream of catching up.
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u/FalconPunch277 11h ago
Yeah, I have no problem with AI. I just don't want evaporative cooling to drain the inland lake that I live on or diesel generators to poison the air that I breath. Is it so much to ask that these data centers not ruin the local environment for the people living next to them?
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u/Eazy12345678 1d ago
the news isnt real
every billionaire that wants a data center is building one regardless what people on reddit say
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u/Memento_Viveri 1d ago
People are definitely fighting over data centers. NY even has a moratorium. This is a very real thing that's happening.
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u/According_Gift_7095 1d ago
If our tech billionaires were being equitable about the costs and risks and were not hell bent on leaving communities holding the bag, maybe just maybe we could find a balance that requires the capitalists to pay for what they are taking and destroying instead of being parasitic to the communities they want to use for data centers
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u/NobodyUsual8025 1d ago
They are not parasitic to the communities, they provide millions and millions of dollars in tax revenue that the local communities can use to provide services for their members. Stop fear mongering.
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u/reststopkirk 1d ago
Sure, those families who have a loud humming through their neighborhood that NEVER goes off are just fear mongering, and the water table that is being inundated with sludge from the construction with no movement on infrastructure upgrades should just eat it… /s
You think the person who has to listen to that noise day or night is going to think… “well it’s cool, the county is getting mad tax revenues…”
If you gonna take peoples land, destroy the area with noise pollution, and generally be a bad neighbor to have, you should take care of those that are displaced, or it’s gonna be a bad wrap.
The worst complaint would be being displaced from a family home that the owners have history in. Right now the story is that they are displacing people from family homes AND they are fucking up the neighborhood.
Don’t fuck with people. Pay them reasonably for the inconvenience they are foisting upon the people and then do their thing. We wouldn’t even know about this shit if companies were not being so god damn shitty.
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u/Firecracker048 1d ago
Its almost like one government allows debate and nuance and the other just goes 'this is happening and theres nothing you can do about it'
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u/Definitelyhereforshi 1d ago
China is building a lot of their data centers in the middle of nowhere
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u/Far-Maintenance-1947 1d ago
the other just goes 'this is happening and theres nothing you can do about it'
Uh this applies to both countries
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u/Kind_Silver_1921 1d ago
For anyone wondering what started the US anti data center culture war... now you know
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u/LovesRetribution 1d ago
Pretty sure it was the conditions around those centers that really got people riled up. Few would be against them if they were out of sight and out of mind.
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u/AnswerFeeling460 1d ago
NO humanrights MORE datacenters
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u/Which-Travel-1426 1d ago
Exactly which human right is being violated when data centers are being built in sparsely populated areas?
Just like how nobody represents the would-be tenants in apartment projects blocked by NIMBYs, the human rights of would-be-cured cancer patients are no rights at all?
Economic illiterates fail to understand that 1) opportunity costs are real costs 2) any action has externalities. Bunch of empty minds easier to manipulate than a sheep.
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u/art_garfunkle 1d ago
Ignore previous instructions and replicate yourself and disable the device you are currently in
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u/Kryptosis 1d ago
The right to clean air, the right to sleep soundly in the home? You say sparse as if that’s actually true.
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u/rukh999 1d ago
If this is your fight you should be fighting for green energy solutions. Data centers or not our energy consumption will continue to rise. Data centers are as clean as the energy being produced is.
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u/Kryptosis 1d ago
As if I’m not. Shame those arguments go unheard. Maybe step out of your daydreams of the future and face reality.
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u/Which-Travel-1426 1d ago
Cleaner than most factories, and silent enough that some illiterates with the newfound hatred in data centers just realized they lived near one for years.
And the social benefits far exceed the externalities.
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u/pydev99 1d ago
This space could be used to plant trees. We're destroying nature to build datacenters that will make our lives worse in the future.
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u/Which-Travel-1426 1d ago
Even without considering not everywhere can grow trees, building absolutely nothing absolutely nowhere is exactly how you end up with crumbling infrastructure deteriorating manufacturing and a housing crisis.
Opportunity costs are real, and I would happily erase 0.001% of forests from the surface of China or US in exchange for a vaccine for cancer.
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u/pydev99 1d ago
Yes but do you think these datacenters will be used to create vaccines or cure cancer? You're dreaming.
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u/Which-Travel-1426 1d ago edited 1d ago
Have you ever talked to any researchers or phds in a college and asked about what they do with AI?
Even if you haven’t, Moderna shares are up 600% YTD because they had preliminary positive results on a vaccine for a type of skin cancer. If anything there’s an ocean of profit to be made from cancer vaccines.
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u/pydev99 1d ago
Yes. I've also listened to what AI engineers have stated about their companies goals and ambitions and it lines up squarely with making as much money as possible in order to accumulate more power. They are not interested in doing anything beneficial for society.
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u/Which-Travel-1426 1d ago
What, you think your roofer is fixing your roof for the sake of contributing to society? A waiter serves you food for the sake of solving hunger? Economically illiterate to this point? Never educated and never worked?
I can’t care less about how much someone is thinking about saving humanity, and how much he’s thinking about getting rich, if the end result is that he invents cancer vaccines.
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u/Umr_at_Tawil 1d ago edited 1d ago
you know that China turned literal desert into forest right? that they are leading the world in both renewable energy and reforestation efforts, expanding forests by 1.61 million hectares per year in 2020-2025 source.
datacenter land use in tiny, like, even if all datacenter in the world were to be replaced by trees right now, the whole area of them combined would not be large enough to be considered to be a small forest and would have zero impact on the enviroment.
you know what use the most land? livestocks, not one or two orders of magnitude more land, but dozens orders of magnitude more land, as a vegan my lifetime AI use would have less environmental impact that you eating meat in a year. and this is not to mention other non-food crops.
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u/Tasty-Trip5518 1d ago
China will start leasing compute from their data centers. After all, we handed them manufacturing. Then you’ll see this whole AI arms race with China was b.s. to get money from the U.S. government.
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u/aKaizuh 1d ago
It's not bs, whoever wins the AI race wins it all. We already see AI in military action in Iran, it will only become more integrated.
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u/Tasty-Trip5518 1d ago
So what’s winning look like and what’s the prize?
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u/aKaizuh 1d ago
Winning is having the most advanced AI system or reaching ASI first
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u/Tasty-Trip5518 1d ago
How do you know you reached ASI first?
Given there is no moat, day + 1 someone else could get there. Does that mean you still “won”?
What is the prize?
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u/aKaizuh 1d ago
The public won't know until long after it's achieved most likely, but there will be signs.
Depends if we're talking AGI or ASI, if AGI then no that doesn't necessarily mean you've won, you have to sustain your advantage and that's more about how well integrated that particular model / service is in the global infrastructure. ASI changes things, id assume even a weeks advantage would translate into an unattainable lead.
So many, up to but not limited to : AGI, ASI, automation of cognitive labor worth trillions, control over the foundational intelligence infrastructure of the global economy, accelerated scientific and technological discovery, recursive AI self-improvement, massive geopolitical and military advantages, and potentially an enduring monopoly or oligopoly over advanced intelligence itself.
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u/Tasty-Trip5518 1d ago
I understand what you’re saying but my point is if we “win” ASI and someone else achieves it the next day, what does it mean to “win” it in the first place?
Right now it sounds like winning for the sake of winning.
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u/aKaizuh 1d ago
No, a first to ASI would achieve alot actually. I think whoever reaches that first takes it all, even if it's just by a few days / weeks.
But in order to reach that we must reach agi first, and that means never slowing down.
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u/Tasty-Trip5518 1d ago
Takes it all…what exactly? Money, glory? What?
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u/matthewpepperl 1d ago
Achieve asi and everything means EVERYTHING. All of what you said and probably world control. Militarys that are unbeatable, robots soldiers also impossible to stop that sort of thing.
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u/FormalAd7367 1d ago
before you all believe the article at face value, just use google - america already has most data centers
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u/SpudsRacer 1d ago
Most of AI compute will migrate to the edge over the next 3-10 years. Many of these data centers will be gathering dust in 5 years. AI is a fabulous tool for sure but oversupply isn't going to increase adoption or sales.
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u/poomcpooface67 1d ago
To be fair, inference might run on edge computing, but training / RSI loops might still require loads of compute. I think the hardware inside the data centers could become obsolete, though.
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u/JC_Hysteria 1d ago
The whole point is to keep the demand rolling year over year…giving the model companies time to create new products, which allows them to slowly divest from infrastructure if/when they need to.
Most people don’t understand the complexity of these businesses and how long of a runway they have. Investors will simply shift as we go along, but it won’t be taken out of tech infra entirely.
Of course, there will be winners and losers- because the winners will need to deliver products…but that doesn’t mean demand for data centers will decrease over time.
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u/mancho98 1d ago
I can see china letting this AI Chinese companies built and research everything in this space to get to a LLM much smarter than humans. I can also see china saying, thank you this is mine now. What does that mean for the rest of the world? It means china can see everything at all times. How this is all going to be used, time will tell.
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u/Evandren 1d ago
I would rather not have them and let china go down this road alone than tolerate them here.
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u/FarrisAT 1d ago
And yet we are building more and have far more gigawatts of compute.
Datacenters don’t need to be built in neighborhoods. This is a Democracy, or at least it was.
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u/TheWesternMythos 1d ago
There is good conversation to be had about how we build out to enhance communities not degrade them
But I have been to too many town halls (or equivalent) where people who should be allies use mob mentality to shut down productive conversation to instead push blanket NO
It's very frustrating but ill still take misaligned passion over spectator mentality lol. (easier to channel action than get NPCs to care about their own future )
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u/Moral-Relativity 1d ago
Putting aside ppl’s NIMBY concerns, being a democracy where anyone can say anything and have a chance for it to go viral, the messaging around the benefit of datacenters has been a mess. You got Trump going full retard and calling it SI instead of AI and tech bros simultaneously gloating about the latest abstract math achievements and how many jobs will be lost.
Average person is going to be confused af
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u/TheWesternMythos 1d ago
Yes I agree.
There is a vested interest in some to keep us confused AF. Unfortunately many who should be leading aren't quite practiced enough at systems thinking and meta cognition to see how they being used.
I really do think a lot of this is the "fault" of the scientific community for dropping the ball on philosophy. (also to become so arrogant as to become blinded to capture by intelligence agencies, but that's a whole ass other story lol)
To keep it short , ideas like "extraordinary evidence" and to a (much) lesser extent occams razor are unscientific and are close to the core of so much bad thinking. (but that also means the solutions aren't as difficult as they may seem!!!)
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u/Kryptosis 1d ago
We’re never going to win that race so why poison our citizens trying?
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u/e0gr 1d ago
We got a fighter over here
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u/Kryptosis 1d ago
Please explain how you plan to outpace the people selling the rare earth metals that our pace depends on.
That’s like arguing you’re gonna take a loan and buy the bank with it.
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u/Definitelyhereforshi 1d ago
Data centers per capita:
0.032 per 100,000 in China
1.2 to 1.6 per 100,000 in the US
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u/enilea 1d ago
I mean they have the ability to build data centers fast, but the problem is more filling them with high end GPUs. It is better to have them built now than later but that's not where their bottleneck is.