{"id":481532,"date":"2026-06-03T20:53:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T20:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/481532\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T20:53:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T20:53:26","slug":"ai-backlash-is-growing-and-tech-execs-know-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/481532\/","title":{"rendered":"AI backlash is growing \u2014 and tech execs know it"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI backlash is growing. However, if you listen to state and industry boosters, you\u2019d think the fate of the world rests on AI. To them, AI will solve everything \u2014 including the climate impacts of the industry\u2019s own data centre expansion, which requires immense land, energy, and resources.<\/p>\n

This techno-optimism feels like gaslighting. How can these resource-hungry technologies solve problems of their own making?<\/p>\n

Beyond environmental impacts, AI data centres are inflating a financial bubble. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella explained in Davos 2026 that the AI \u201cboom\u201d will bust without society-wide adoption. According to a recent article in The Economist, the major cloud providers are pumping $800bn into data centre infrastructure, driving them into major losses.<\/p>\n

You can see why tech elites \u2014 and the states and geopolitical blocs that have bet their economies on this technology \u2014 are concerned. In this precarious economic scenario, what is driving political obsession with AI?<\/p>\n

Industrial policy in the EU<\/p>\n

It helps to consider EU industrial geopolitics. The war in Ukraine and strained transatlantic relations have brought \u201cEU strategic autonomy\u201d in digital, energy, resource, industrial, and military sectors to the fore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The \u201ctwin transition\u201d industrial framework \u2014 digitalisation and decarbonisation \u2014 calls for reducing dependence on foreign energy sources and building domestic digital capacity.<\/p>\n

These aims were accelerated by the infamous 2024 ‘Draghi Report,’ written by former president of the European Central Bank and Italian prime minister Mario Draghi.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report compelled EU policy to competitively secure the bloc\u2019s position between a smouldering US-China trade war, earmarking direct support for AI infrastructure and adoption by European businesses and public bodies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The alignment of economic competitiveness and geopolitical security has since superseded climate commitments.<\/p>\n

Meaningful autonomy, however, is easier said than done, especially given the accelerated pace and concentrated ownership of AI technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The big three US hyperscale cloud providers (AWS, Google, and Microsoft) control 70% of the European infrastructure-as-a-service market \u2014 how companies (and states) outsource AI computing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While organisations can reduce dependence on US software, the underlying \u201cstack\u201d \u2014 including data centres and chips \u2014 is overwhelmingly owned and controlled by US tech multinationals.<\/p>\n

Weaponised interdependency<\/p>\n

In this AI arms race, political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman argue that the US under Biden and Trump has weaponised interdependency.<\/p>\n

In their analysis, win-win globalisation built on US infrastructure and friendly trade relations is over.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This arrangement was always underlaid by US military and economic power securing a supposedly free, fair world market and, more importantly, cheap resources and manufacturing from the global south for US firms and trade partners.<\/p>\n

Under Trump, weaponised interdependency has gone into overdrive. US military actions, resource grabs, and tariffs victimise allies and adversaries alike \u2014 including Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While major European powers have acted on this in recent attempts, for example, to move French government services away from US platforms, the reality is that even operating systems and cloud platforms are undergirded by the US stack.<\/p>\n

Ireland is especially vulnerable. Our FDI-led economic model rests on facilitating big tech\u2019s infrastructure, especially since the financial crisis, when the IDA got in on the ground-floor of the cloud boom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This has caused an immense concentration of data centres, which use 22% of national electricity \u2014 making Ireland a world outlier.<\/p>\n

Climate dependency<\/p>\n

FDI dependency constrains our climate and energy policy. Ireland\u2019s grid, on average, relies on half fossil fuels, a proportion data centre expansion isn\u2019t helping.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the Government removed the de facto moratorium on Dublin grid connections, introducing policy suites to unlock data centre growth. Afterwards, Eirgrid admitted that it would be in a \u201cchallenging\u201d position until at least 2028.<\/p>\n

By then, data centres are projected to utilise nearly 30% of national electricity, and even more energy. The Private Wires Bill will enable data centres to source and even build their own off-grid electricity, especially fossil gas generation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along with policy interest in banned nuclear power, long-standing public energy legislation is being re-written by and for AI growth.<\/p>\n

\n Data centres undermine our climate commitments, and hyperscalers repeatedly show that climate action cannot come at the expense of digital growth.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

Most attempts to \u201csolve\u201d the data centre energy problem have furthered their integration into our energy system, towards privatisation and\/or fossil fuel lock-in.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as a recent Friends of the Earth report shows, household energy bills skyrocket largely due to data centre demand. We pay twice what these companies do for electricity.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the St. Patrick\u2019s Day trade mission to the US was laser-focused on energy and data centres. At the White House, Trump bullied the Taoiseach to buy US fossil gas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Afterwards, Martin absconded to an AWS-hosted trade expo, where he reiterated the Government\u2019s commitment to solving energy problems for data centres, to a room full of companies publicly moving away from climate action.<\/p>\n

\"TaoiseachTaoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin at the official launch of the Echelon Data Centres campuses last year. The Private Wires Bill will enable data centres to source and even build their own off-grid electricity, especially fossil gas generation. Photo: Peter Houlihan<\/p>\n

The twin transition promises a \u201cwin-win\u201d of digitalisation\/decarbonisation, whereby one supports the other. In Ireland, beholden to monopolistic tech companies, undergirded by hyperscale data centres, this has looked more like win-lose \u2014\u00a0not only from a climate standpoint, but in terms of public energy security and AI-related job losses.<\/p>\n

Why are we still buying this? It\u2019s not just lobbying, and it\u2019s certainly not public enthusiasm for AI.<\/p>\n

Securing supply<\/p>\n

The answer is the economy \u2014 and specifically, State strategies to secure AI competitiveness in line with EU industrial ambitions while utilising the infrastructural \u201cadvantage\u201d of US FDI and data centres.<\/p>\n

Amidst \u201cAI wars\u201d between the US, China, and the EU, it becomes a geostrategic imperative for Ireland to maintain these economic arrangements. In this context, the viability of the Irish economy is inextricable from our geopolitical alignments.<\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s FDI-led development model already means that public infrastructure is developed towards FDI needs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s history of postcolonial under-development and public policy designed for attracting FDI has made infrastructure anachronistic and imbalanced \u2014 high-tech energy systems for multinational data centres exist alongside a creaking electricity grid and stalled energy transition.<\/p>\n

The Government\u2019s blinkered enthusiasm for AI and its infrastructures can only be explained by the context of EU industrial strategy and our national history of US FDI lock-in \u2014 infrastructure and energy must be for economy and security, rather than for the people and collective flourishing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"(Left(Left to right) Niall Molloy, CEO of Echelon Data Centres, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin, Senator Pat Casey and Graeme McWilliams, COO at the official launch of the Echelon Data Centres campuses last year. A recent Friends of the Earth report shows household energy bills skyrocket largely due to data centre demand. Photo: Peter Houlihan<\/p>\n

The economic interests of AI companies become conflated with Ireland\u2019s national interests.<\/p>\n

Political economist Ilias Alami argues that geopolitical competition around AI encourages an \u201cirrational use and allocation of resources\u201d into monopolistic industries designed to cultivate and grow consumer demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

State policies incentivise these industries despite climate crisis and geopolitical insecurity.<\/p>\n

A more environmentally just and even rational industrial policy would privilege meaningful adaptation to climate change, supporting economic activities that directly benefit people in Ireland \u2014 not those that are designed to automate jobs, hoover up resources, keep us way too online, or commit genocide.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers must reconsider the policy imperatives inserting these undemocratic and environmentally destructive technologies into our economies and public life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The growing popular rejection of AI represents a struggle over the future of economic development in a rapidly warming and increasingly volatile world. <\/p>\n

Patrick Brodie is an assistant professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI backlash is growing. However, if you listen to state and industry boosters, you\u2019d think the fate of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[72756,220,218,2334,219,2885,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-481532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-sustainability-business","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-climate-change","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}