Hyperscale

Dissecting the Data Center Backlash Data centers have quickly gone from virtually invisible to the target of the public’s ire, such that Oakland recently passed a 45-day moratorium on new data center projects. Join Hyperscale author Paris Marx for a conversation with Alex Hanna about the tech industry’s buildout of hyperscale data centers, what’s driving the opposition to them, and whether we really need to accept the future being foisted on us by Silicon Valley’s billionaires. In Hyperscale, journalist Paris Marx uncovers the excesses of hyperscale data processing. He exposes the deceptive, exploitative ways tech companies are siphoning energy and resources from vulnerable communities in their pursuit of digital power, abandoning the pretense of social responsibility. Amid energy shortages and tech-induced battles over drinking water, Marx makes a powerful case for technology that promotes the social good over the bottom lines of tech billionaires. He joins the incredible efforts of people and social movements pushing back against the profit-driven interests of Big Tech, illuminating a path toward the sustainable future we all deserve. Paris Marx is a Canadian tech critic and host of the acclaimed Tech Won’t Save Us podcast. He speaks around the world about the politics of technology and writes the Disconnect newsletter. Paris is the author of Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires. Dr. Alex Hanna is a writer and sociologist of technology, labor, and politics. She is the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). With Emily M. Bender, Dr. Hanna is the co-author of The AI Con (Harper, 2025), a book about AI and the hype around it. They also run the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, playfully and wickedly tearing apart AI hype on their livestream and podcast. Her next book, under contract with MIT Press, is about ImageNet, a dataset of 14 million images which helped build modern AI practices.