Ex-Pentagon official warns of national security risks from industry Trump won't regulate

Communities are fighting back against AI data centers being built around the U.S. as they use up water and power from nearby cities and towns. But one former Pentagon official is sounding the alarm that there's another huge concern.

Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Jason Rathje, a former director of the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital, who is now the president of Public at Web AI that data centers are presenting an "acute threat for our adversaries."

Aside from the usage of resources, Rathje pointed to the Iranian bombing of data centers around the Middle East. The impact, he said, is the complete destruction of a centralized AI system. So, if a government or weapons system relies on that data center, they're completely crippled by one strike.

"We're seeing organizations and the government become dependent on AI systems that enhance military capabilities or enhance our everyday way of life," he cautioned.

This week, WIRED reported another security issue that the Department of Homeland Security has flagged in a report that there is an emerging threat coming from anti-technology activists.

"More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers obtained by WIRED show a national shift taking place to surveil this new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat," said the report.

Trump's government has encouraged the Department of Justice to target anyone against American capitalism as extremists.

When it comes to the impact on the power grid and other critical resources being depleted, Rathje said it could very easily be crowdsourced. A good example is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), which never had enough computing power to analyze data on an individual's laptop. Rathje said the same could be true for AI computing power, where people could opt in as users to allow their home computers to be used to provide the computing power necessary for data centers.

NPR co-host Tamara Keith warned that this is a sleeper issue for the upcoming midterm elections because it's a concern for Americans regarding utilities and jobs.

Rathje swears that AI companies are evolving from the antiquated model of plunking down a data center to looking at "smaller, more efficient models that run on lower power devices."

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