Look! Up in the Sky ... It's a Bird, a Plane ... an AI Data Center!

Jim Hightower
Tue, 13 Jan 2026 23:00:00 -0800
Opinion

In my childhood years, I got to experience something I've cherished ever since: starry nights.

I was lucky to spend time during the summers on my Aunt Eula's and Uncle Ernest's tenant farm in Northeast Texas. With no TV or electronics, we made our own entertainment in the evenings, including "turning on" nature's Big Show. This meant rolling an old bed outdoors as darkness fell, so we could lie back, look up and marvel at the endless expanse of constellations, comets, the Milky Way, planets and other wonders of the cosmos. Today, though, 80% of Americans never see the starry night, for the artificial glare of city lights blots out nature's spectacular display.

But wait — billionaires to the rescue! Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and other high-tech demigods who're spending trillions to foist a brave new world of artificial intelligence on us, claim that their scheme will actually relight the night sky!
Updated: Wed Jan 14, 2026

In my childhood years, I got to experience something I've cherished ever since: starry nights.

I was lucky to spend time during the summers on my Aunt Eula's and Uncle Ernest's tenant farm in Northeast Texas. With no TV or electronics, we made our own entertainment in the evenings, including "turning on" nature's Big Show. This meant rolling an old bed outdoors as darkness fell, so we could lie back, look up and marvel at the endless expanse of constellations, comets, the Milky Way, planets and other wonders of the cosmos. Today, though, 80% of Americans never see the starry night, for the artificial glare of city lights blots out nature's spectacular display.

But wait — billionaires to the rescue! Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and other high-tech demigods who're spending trillions to foist a brave new world of artificial intelligence on us, claim that their scheme will actually relight the night sky!

For real? Of course not.

It turns out that they can't get enough cheap land and energy on Earth to supply the phantasmagoric sprawl of data centers their AI hustle will demand. So, they're going to put massive clusters of these systems into orbit, tethered to miles of solar mirrors stretching across our sky. While that means nature's stars-and-stuff will be even more obscured, they say that instead of watching the cosmos, we Earthlings can enjoy the artificial twinkle of their corporate data centers.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... Lest you think that, surely they wouldn't do this, note that those arrogant billionaire Lords of the Night are already investing humongous sums of money in space data centers. As the CEO of one called "Starcloud" bluntly says: "It's not a debate. It's going to happen."

FORGET JUSTICE, OUR SUPREME COURT RULES FOR THE RICH

BY JIM HIGHTOWER

Interesting fact: While all federal officials take an oath that they will support the US Constitution, Supreme Court justices must also take a second (and very profound) oath of office.

As The New York Times judicial columnist Adam Liptak reports, each of the nine "Supremes" must swear that they will "do equal right to the poor and the rich." Yes, class fairness is not only a core element of justice, but it's supposed to be a formal measure of Supreme Court behavior.

Every justice is aware of this consequential, ethical requirement, since each one took the oath. How damning, then, that the Court's right-wing ideologues feel no twinge of conscience about flagrantly and frequently violating their own word of honor! Call the roll: Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. In case after case that pits corporate power against workers, consumers, small business, voters, communities, our environment, farm families — i.e., you and me — this plutocratic cabal rules for the rich.

This month, an independent study of decisions by the Roberts Court revealed that two-thirds of its rulings favor wealthy powers over middle-income and poor people. Thus, our so-called "court of justice" is a primary pusher of inequality, especially through its far-fetched decree that unlimited corporate political cash is "free speech," and that corporations are "people."

Chief Justice Roberts smugly proclaims that the Constitution tells him whether the corporate giant or "the little guy" should win. "That's the oath" I took, he sniffs.

This is Jim Hightower saying ... Bovine excrement! It's obvious that plutocratic ideologues like him are using the Constitution like a ventriloquist dummy. And — hello, your honorableness — what about that other oath you took about equal fairness for the poor?