The clash between AI and rural life in Montana now has a face: 43-year-old mom of six, Kassi Solberg. In a piece for the New York Times, Juliet Macur follows Solberg's one-woman campaign to slow or stop a proposed 5,000-acre AI data center campus near her 21-acre spread outside Broadview, population 140. The Houston-backed project, led by Quantica Infrastructure's Big Sky Digital Infrastructure arm, has a stated goal to generate 7,000 megawatts of power.
Macur gives context to these numbers: The datacenter "would be the size of about 3,800 football fields" and generate more power than "the Grand Coulee Dam, the largest power plant in the country." It will likely also require significant water in a region where residents' current water flow challenges prevent them from showering and doing laundry at the same time. Macur details how Solberg, new to town (she moved from Idaho in November) and new to tech (as of January she didn't know what a data center was), has become the de facto organizer, pressing officials for transparency, zoning guardrails, and answers on water and electricity—often to shrugs or open hostility.
Company reps promise jobs, community donations, and what they call "a data center done right," while some neighbors wonder what the fuss is about. Others, including a ranch owner and a Hutterite colony, quietly share her fears. Macur's piece ends with a sharp pronouncement from Solberg: "There's a monster coming. I'm just trying to warn everyone about it." Read the full piece here.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
