The U.S. Department of the Air Force is taking steps to potentially build one or more artificial intelligence data centres at three military installations in Alaska.
The service has identified approximately 4,700 acres of underutilised land across Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Eielson Air Force Base, and Clear Space Force Station for the project. A Request for Lease Proposal has been published on the federal contracting website SAM.gov.
Under the Enhanced Use Lease model, the Air Force would lease non-excess property to a commercial partner for long-term use, receiving at least fair market value in return. The selected developer would be responsible for all aspects of the project including financing, permitting, construction, and long-term operation.
Robert Moriarty, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for Installations, was quoted as saying: “This is a unique opportunity for a true public-private partnership. By making this land available, we are supporting the growing demands of the AI industry while generating value that directly supports our missions and the readiness of our Airmen and Guardians.”
Twelve parcels of land have been identified for potential development across the three sites. The U.S. Air Force will host a virtual industry day on 23 April to engage with potential partners and provide details about the proposal process. Site visits are scheduled for Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on 28 April, Clear Space Force Station on 29 April, and Eielson Air Force Base on 30 April.
Alaska’s cold climate and available land make it a potentially attractive location for data centres, which generate significant heat and require substantial space and power infrastructure.
Putting an AI data centre at a remote location in the artic sounds like the plot of a sci fi movie where all the people end up dead.
Really smart to put key infrastructure just 100 miles or so from Russian ballistic missiles.
The US has become so cocky it doesn’t think the enemy gets a vote any more. It’s just like the AWACS parked in the same spot every day in Saudi.
Didn’t you know the US doesn’t have a border with Russia one presumes a few miles of water makes all the difference despite the fact that Russia could amass forces on its side somewhat easier than the US could on its. Ut hey they mates now anyway so no chance of anything blowing up there.
On another note these data centres are to be used for what exactly. It seems presently on the civil side that the generation of data centres is causing rather a lot of mystery, consternation and controversy in the US as while they are mentioned on a massive scale, proposed on an equally impressive scale, it would appear surprisingly little is so far getting built, which many are claiming stinks of a scam. So very odd.
According to reporting by Bloomberg, approx half of the data centres set to open in the US in 2026 will either face significant delays or be cancelled outright with a third not having begun construction. That said, it seems that those proposing them have failed to understand supply constraints on the parts needed to build them – the RAM shortage is the best documented example of these.
But there is a scam going on.
The greatest successes of AI seen so far have been those built with a specific focus, such as DeepMind’s (🇬🇧) AlphaFold for predicting protein structures. Also the numerous commercial AI products for recognising cancer in mammograms.
When it comes to more general applications like chatbots, only 3% of the companies that use Microsoft’s Copilot actually pay for the privilege. And each generation of these requires more processing power and the employment of more human ‘data annotators’ to train them.
And these chatbots are still limited and nowhere near the holy grail of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Or to put it another way.
The people who made the most money in the California Gold Rush wasn’t the miners, but the people who sold the picks and shovels to the miners…
The world’s most valuable company isn’t an AI company, it’s NVIDIA, the maker of GPU chips used for AI…
If Russia is lobbing missiles at the US, a few data centers (out of thousands around the country) getting taken out would be the least of anyones concerns.