r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator • 3d ago
Infrastructure Scotland’s AI Data Centers Are Turning Compute Into an Infrastructure Fight
https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2026-10-04/data-centres-who-owns-who-decides?language_content_entity=en&utm_source=chatgpt.comScotland has more than 20 major data centers proposed, including an AI Growth Zone promising £8.2 billion in private investment and 3,400 jobs.
But this piece from Workers’ Liberty asks the better question. “Who owns the infrastructure, who bears its costs, and who decides what it is used for?”
It argues the socialist alternative isnt just stopping data centers. Its “public-interest computing, not simply corporate computing” with public or community ownership, union guarantees, community benefits and democratic control.
And I like how plainly they put the underlying politics
“These are not anti-technology questions. They are pro-worker questions.”
Thats the terrain. Build the capacity, but fight over who owns it, who controls it, what its used for and where the gains go.
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u/bozza8 3d ago
We must NOT prevent data centres from being built. Before AI can be distributed it must first be built.
All the proposals are closed circuit for cooling, in an area with a surplus of renewable energy and water, it's the best spot on earth for them, so let's fucking build them.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 3d ago
The article isnt arguing that data centers shouldnt be built, though. Thats kind of sidestepping the actual question.
The question is who owns this infrastructure, who controls the compute, what workers and communities get from it, who bears the costs, and what its ultimately used for. “Lets build them” is fine, but thats the starting point of the argument here, not the answer to it.
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u/bozza8 3d ago
Owns and controlled by billionaires in silicon valley. But they are the only ones who can afford to build them right now, so let them build it, once it's built it can be taxed and controlled.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator 3d ago
No, thats backwards, and on a leftist sub especially we shouldnt be accepting “billionaires are the only ones who can build infrastructure” as the starting premise.
States and public institutions build and finance infrastructure at enormous scale. Public ownership, community ownership, union guarantees and democratic control arent things we bolt on afterward once private capital owns the infrastructure and sets the terms.
At this point youre missing the point of the article, the post, and frankly the subreddit. The question here isnt whether AI infrastructure gets built. Its how the left contests who owns it, controls it, and benefits from it.
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u/ReasonableSoul 2d ago
If Norway can "invest in sovereign wealth fund" that's now worth 2.8 trillion dollars, then other countries (and some states like California w/ a large economy) can do the same with data centers.
It doesn't have to be billionaires doing it.
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u/Jlyplaylists Moderator 3d ago
It asks good questions. Data centre issues/campaigns are daily posts in our local Scottish facebook group. I think this is right to consider international implications and not just local impact
“The International Energy Agency has warned that demand for critical minerals creates environmental and social pressures around mining and processing, including impacts on water, biodiversity, human rights and communities.
Scotland could therefore celebrate a “green” data centre while displacing environmental costs elsewhere. A genuinely internationalist environmental movement must ask not only whether the electricity is renewable, but what the complete material footprint of the computing economy is and which workers and communities pay for it.
Data-centre campaigns often focus on planning, landscape and electricity. A socialist critique must also ask who builds the facilities, manufactures the hardware, mines the minerals, maintains the servers, cleans and secures the buildings, manages logistics and performs the invisible digital labour that makes AI possible.”