Springer and Hasanbeigi relocate artificial intelligence from the immaterial rhetoric of computation to the territorial economy of electricity, land, water, transmission and emissions. Their iconic contribution is to treat the data centre not as a neutral container but as a rapidly expanding industrial load whose geography is shaped by cheap power, tax incentives, latency requirements and grid capacity. Scenario modelling becomes the central methodological operation: projected demand is compared across growth and efficiency pathways, revealing that technical optimisation cannot be separated from regional energy planning. The report is especially forceful where national abstraction gives way to uneven state exposure, with Virginia appearing as an extreme case in which data centres may become a dominant share of electricity consumption. Its wider theoretical importance lies in converting “AI” into a problem of infrastructural allocation. Computation appears as a claimant upon finite public systems, and therefore as an object of urban, environmental and distributive governance rather than merely technological innovation.
