How America's AI boom is reshaping surveillance and power

The American AI data centre buildout is hiding the expansion of the national security state in plain sight.

And those constructing the architecture aren’t bothering to conceal this.

Titans, the gods from ancient Greek mythology, are what Meta is naming its data centres after.

Meet Hyperion, the nearly Manhattan-sized site named after the Titan whose name means “watcher from above”.

Meta is planning to construct multiple of these “Titan superclusters”.

Is that just mythology, or a glimpse into how these companies see themselves?

Keeping with the ancient Greek theme, meet Stratos, Kevin O’Leary’s approved city-sized data centre.

At first glance, the name seems meaningless, but translated, it means Army.

And it was the Army that largely enabled the site's approval, calling it “strategic infrastructure” in support of its mission.

And what makes this relevant to the United States domestic population? Imperial boomerang.

The theory that techniques of surveillance, repression and violence employed by governments overseas will eventually return to the imperial core.

The “War on Terror” directly leading to the militarisation of American law enforcement is one of the best examples.

A more recent instance is Palantir. In Gaza, their software enabled Israel’s genocide. They also used it to train their AI models “on how humans respond under stress”.

This technology is now being deployed domestically to give ICE “near real-time visibility” into immigrants’ movements.

A city-sized data centre called Army is not normal.

Project Stargate. The $500 billion venture between OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to build the AI infrastructure to “secure American leadership in AI”.

And “protect the national security of America.”

Altman claims the project is named after the 1994 film Stargate.

Ominously, however, Stargate is also a declassified CIA project investigating telepathy and remote viewing.

In essence, the ability to surveil anything, anytime, anywhere. One might call that an oracle.

This is Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s vision for the future:

“Citizens will be on their best behaviour because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on.”

Stargate provides the infrastructure to do that. Protecting America's national security is the justification.

The infrastructure for the surveillance state Ellison describes is being built, and it’s not being hidden.

All you have to do is look at the names.