No you don’t. The US government has already completed projects at this scale without total economic mobilization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center Presumably peer and near-peer states are similarly capable.
Datacenter construction is a one-time cost. The intelligence the datacenter (might) provide is ongoing. It’s not an equal one to one trade, and well within reach for many state and non-state actors if it is desired.
It’s potentially going to be a very interesting decade.
A private company, xAI, was able to build a datacenter on a similar scale in less than 6 months, with integrated power supply via large batteries: https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/servers/first-in-depth...
Datacenter construction is a one-time cost. The intelligence the datacenter (might) provide is ongoing. It’s not an equal one to one trade, and well within reach for many state and non-state actors if it is desired.
It’s potentially going to be a very interesting decade.