Data centers are going to space faster than the rules that govern them.<\/p>\n
Over the past month, six American companies and a Chinese firm have expressed interest in building orbital data centers, citing environmental benefits. While experts see potential upsides, they warn the projects could open governance loopholes \u2014 especially for countries with little say in how they are run.<\/p>\n
For many developing countries, where governments already struggle to assert data sovereignty, orbital data centers could place critical infrastructure beyond regulatory reach and deepen digital dependence.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a country with an overstressed power grid, \u2018outsourcing\u2019 heavy AI training to orbit could be a massive win. The danger is that the Global South becomes a \u2018consumer-only\u2019 tier,\u201d Olubayo Adekanmbi, founder and CEO of EqualyzAI, a Washington-based artificial intelligence company, told Rest of World over email.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t have launch equity, you\u2019re just renting intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t have launch equity, you\u2019re just renting intelligence. We believe orbital infrastructure could be the \u2018leapfrog\u2019 moment similar to how mobile phones bypassed landlines, but only if we treat orbital compute as a Global Public Good, like GPS.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the World Economic Forum\u2019s annual meeting<\/a> in Davos last month, American tech billionaire Elon Musk said it was a \u201cno-brainer\u201d to build energy-hungry data centers in space, given the availability of constant solar energy and vast cooling capacity. \u201cMy prediction is that it will be by far the cheapest place to put AI,\u201d Musk said on a recent podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n Musk runs two companies at the intersection of this novel direction: SpaceX, with the largest space program in the world, and xAI, one of the most consequential AI startups. SpaceX reportedly plans to venture into solar-powered AI data center satellites with the funds from its upcoming IPO<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n At least five U.S.-based companies have publicly shown interest in the expedition, including Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin.<\/p>\n China has also launched a national plan to build supercomputers that live in space. The country has set a five-year target, building a new frontier in the U.S.-China tech war. At least two private Chinese companies are invested in this expedition.<\/p>\n Training large models demands massive amounts of electricity, pushing grids already under stress to a breaking point.<\/p>\n In South Africa, persistent load-shedding \u2014 or controlled power blackouts \u2014 has complicated hyperscale expansion, forcing operators to secure private power deals or rely on backup generation resources, adding cost and carbon intensity. In India, data centres are among the fastest-growing industrial users of water and also polluters<\/a>, intensifying pressure in drought-prone regions. In Brazil\u2019s northeast<\/a>, rising temperatures and periodic energy constraints complicate cooling, while facilities compete for water also needed for agriculture.<\/p>\n Traditional upgrades are slow and costly, and regulatory friction from data-localization laws and export controls adds complexity for cross-border computing.<\/p>\n Orbital data centers propose an alternative. But they would also move data outside the reach of local regulators. That\u2019s where sovereignty concerns begin: For countries already dealing with the environmental impact, moving the infrastructure that shapes their data out of reach raises new questions of control and equity, Payal Arora, professor of inclusive AI culture at Utrecht University, Netherlands, told Rest of World.<\/p>\n If citizen-generated data is processed in orbit, sovereignty becomes ambiguous.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cData localization policies have been a lever for domestic bargaining power on Earth, but orbital compute could render these mechanisms moot,\u201d Arora said. \u201cIf citizen-generated data is processed in orbit, sovereignty becomes ambiguous: Is it with the country of origin, the state that launched the satellite, the operator managing the orbiting data center, or the cloud provider controlling access?\u201d<\/p>\n While the orbit may be physically global, its governance and ownership are not, Colin Thakur, who teaches the fourth industrial revolution and digitization at the University of South Africa, told Rest of World.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless new multilateral frameworks are built, orbital compute risks becoming an extension of existing terrestrial monopolies with power projected upward, not redistributed,\u201d Thakur said. \u201cOrbital infrastructure is an opportunity only if developmental states actively participate as investors, co-owners, and rule-shapers. Otherwise, the compute divide may shift from temporary to structural.\u201d<\/p>\n Like every piece of frontier technology, orbital data centers still largely revolve around China and the U.S., with some interest from France, and it might be impossible for many emerging economies to venture into it, Jane Munga, Africa fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Rest of World.<\/p>\n \u201cSovereignty tends to follow infrastructure ownership closely,\u201d Munga said. \u201cIf countries cannot participate in owning this infrastructure, they must at least participate in governing it. Otherwise, they risk being relegated to data producers \u2014 without meaningful agency over how their citizens\u2019 data is stored, processed, or controlled.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Data centers are going to space faster than the rules that govern them. Over the past month, six…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-301564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}