Greenland stuff doesn’t make sense even if they believe into the climate change. The US already has military bases there which are barely used. It’s just plain imperialism.
Oil will not stay expensive for a long time without some carbon tax. Even if Hormuz will remain closed for years production will rise elsewhere. The main reason production is not increasing significantly right now - investors are not sure that prices will stay at the current level for a long time (3+ years) and expect prices to fall before they’ll get enough to recoup investments. The longer prices will stay around $100 the more will be invested into new oil wells.
> Oil will not stay expensive for a long time without some carbon tax.
Which the EU already does.
> Even if Hormuz will remain closed for years production will rise elsewhere.
There aren't that many places outside of MENA that produce oil in reasonable quantities. European reserves are effectively at capacity, can't really build out any more. The only ones who can expand are the US but they have to ship their oil elsewhere to refine it (and in turn get refined products back), the US is only net self-sufficient but not gross self-sufficient.
Even if the US were to increase shale oil/fracking... it wouldn't help the markets too much.
> There aren't that many places outside of MENA that produce oil in reasonable quantities
AFAIK all these countries can increase production given enough investments:
US
Canada
Guyana
Venezuela (high political risk but with high oil prices the risk will be taken)
Brazil
Whether the US is self sufficient or not is not that important as net production and its dynamics.
> Whether US is self sufficient or not is not that important as net production and its dynamics.
Unfortunately it is. When there is no oil coming to the US any more that US refineries can handle and process into the stuff the US needs... all the reserves and production capacity the US has don't matter. The US cannot process its own oil.
Today? No. A year or so, with the right economic incentive/certainty? Sure.
Most US produced oil is the easiest to refine stuff. It's got some of the highest demand on the global market. Makes sense to sell it.
The stuff we're set up to refine mostly? The hardest stuff to refine. The cheapest shit out there. We can add the most value buying that stuff and refining it. It also gives a lot of "byproducts" which are useful for plastics and other things which help give even more returns per barrel.
It's really not that hard to change a refinery to go from the heavy and sour junk to the light, sweet stuff. You essentially just end up bypassing a lot of equipment that's just no longer needed, with some other changes in processes. It's very expensive and complicated to go the other way, needing lots of new equipment among other things.
If we absolutely needed to, it wouldn't be incredibly challenging to retool to refine US produced oil. It doesn't currently make sense economically for most refiners, so they don't. And even a several month hit, it doesn't make sense to retool. A persistent expected future where we just won't get that heavy sour stuff anymore, sure, they'll retool. The biggest "cost" is they'll have a bunch of expensive machines sitting unused, and a bunch of new pipe to install to bypass it.
> It doesn't currently make sense economically for most refiners, so they don't.
Agreed. And that's where I see the biggest problems. There is no economic incentive for refineries to retool - if there is a supply crunch, they can make much, much more profit with the captive audience that is the utterly car-hooked American population.
The government would have to order refineries to retool, but that is extremely, extremely unlikely to happen in the next two years. After that, maybe.
Side note: you mentioned earlier that it might be possible to extend production in Venezuela... unfortunately, I don't think that's possible. Their infrastructure is horribly outdated and by all accounts more broken than even in somewhat of a working order. And thanks to Iran blasting a lot of MENA refinery equipment, the manufacturers of such equipment are booked out - there's estimates that it may take half a decade to rebuild all what was destroyed. And the demands of Russia are further adding strain on the supplier market.
> if there is a supply crunch, they can make much, much more profit with the captive audience that is the utterly car-hooked American population.
This only holds true until the first big refinery bothers retooling, then you're late to the party and suddenly aren't in place to produce nearly as much as your competitors.
> you mentioned earlier that it might be possible to extend production in Venezuela
I don't recall saying that, at least any time recently. You must be confusing me with someone else.
I do agree with you though. Rebuilding those fields would be incredibly expensive and take a while to produce some of the lowest quality oil out there. Things would be so much nicer if relations never fell apart and the US and Venezuela kept those fields operational.
> I don't recall saying that, at least any time recently. You must be confusing me with someone else.
Indeed, sorry, didn't realize that the username I replied to had changed. My bad.
> This only holds true until the first big refinery bothers retooling, then you're otw to the party and suddenly aren't in place to produce nearly as much as your competitors.
Well... theoretically there would be an agency responsible to follow up on violations of antitrust regulations. Practically it's been toothless before the current Presidency, nowadays it's degenerated into being yet another weapon to wield. Hand the President enough money and he'll not care what you do.
It's so tempting (because it's valuable) to give a model access to the internet (via harness) that the only way to stop people from doing this is some enforceable legislation or stricter liability when people will not be able to avoid responsibility by saying it's not me, it's AI on it's own.
OpenAI case was actually an exception. Agents had no internet access because they were evaluated for a benchmark. In real life agents have access to virtually everything, most people use them like that.
If any of you actually know how to make agents secure (without limiting everything) you can be a billionaire.
Sure, we can make them very secure at the cost of some convenience by enforcing narrowly scoped permissions/capabilities for everything with human approval. But that takes some effort so people actually want YOLO mode without any trade-offs or risks which is impossible.
If you decide to do it anyway then you bear the consequences of those decisions. First comparison that comes to mind is driving drunk and hitting someone.
It’s a global commodity unless there are export restrictions. Russia maintains petrol/diesel prices way below world level thanks to export ban among other things. China did impose temporary export restrictions too. I would not be surprised if Trump will eventually impose export restrictions on refined products to maintain low domestic prices.
It does. Oil export is down after repeated attacks on ports and export infrastructure both on Black and Baltic sea and attacks on tankers in Black (and even Mediterranean) sea. Russia exports less oil than it extracts and will start shutting down oil wells soon (may be doing this already).
Attacks on refineries also have impact on worlds petrol/diesel prices - one of biggest exporters turned into an importer at a time when there is world shortage of refining capacity and cracks spread is at or near all time high.
> It also limits their ability to fund the war.
It does but it also makes petrol and diesel more expensive around the world.
Does it matter? I don't think anyone expects the current LLM generation to be profitable in the next few years. The bet I think is that OpenAI will be the first to develop ASI or at least among the leaders of the race.
The bet is the "total addressable market" that is: theres enough demand to payout trillions and trillions.
The type of AI is arbitrary. The money is to create a huge dependency layer and its a huge drlusion youre seeing as data center fights.
In other words, if AI really demands these values, what are the product and will there actually be buyers at that price point. The singularity then is not about self improving AI, BUT self improving capitalism where one business controls all the resources and one person consumes them all and the rest of use pray for trickle down economics.
I would expect that a golf course construction is relatively rare event. And there is definitely no explosion of new golf courses. Total DC power consumption growth is practically exponential for the last 5 years.
>I would expect that a golf course construction is relatively rare event
That's just status quo bias, given that they're an ongoing source of water consumption. "oh it doesn't matter that [thing] is guzzling water, because it's already there!".
Exactly right. It's a lot easier to prevent an asshat venture than it is to dismantle it. Now that the public is aware, I wouldn't be surprised if new golf courses start getting the same treatment.
They haven’t been. I’m aware of new golf courses being planned in my area and I hear nothing but enthusiasm. Literally no one brings up water consumption as a concern.
This whole thing is a sublimation of vaguer anxieties about AI (which are perfectly rational!) into areas where people feel like they can make more concrete objections that are likelier to succeed. The water thing is completely fake, whether people think so or not.
Not entirely. Lack of regulations mean recycled water facilities can end up being consumption facilities with pollution risk. Also Meta plans to restore as much water as they use by 2030. Which, seems like a while to break even. That's primarily because ai data centers require a lot more cooling water and power than traditional ones. So, you can scream fake news all you want, but it is a concern and it is a good way to oppose ai in general. And power consumption, noise pollution, and pollution are also serious issues. "Whatabout this worse thing" is a pretty terrible argument. You can whatabout anything, but it doesn't make that thing any less bad. aka two wrongs don't make a right.
It’s not just whataboutism, it’s pointing out that the people up in arms about data center water usage don’t even know about the long list of things that use way more water than data centers, and when told, they don’t care.
I think it’s pretty reasonable to conclude that their beef is not really with water usage as much as a general hatred of AI, big tech, etc, and water usage is an easy thing to focus on.
OpenAI leaked financial data (2025) suggests this - it has $5.7 billion for marketing which 44% of revenue. It’s hard to explain where these billions go other than into subsidised subscription plans and a free tier.
reply