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Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

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Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#51

Post by psychoslave »

helterskelter wrote: post #24
bombcar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem with going too far using "money" or "GDP" - you can roughly compare the WWII 45% of GDP spent with today - https://www.davemanuel.com/us-defense-spending-history-milit... because even by WWII much was "financialized" in such a way that it appears on GDP (though things like victory gardens, barter, etc would explicitly NOT be included without effort - maybe they do this?). As you get further and fur…

You don't even need to go that far back to run into issues, when I read Pride and Prejudice, I think Mr. Darcy was one of the richest people in England at around £10,000/year, but if you to calculate his wealth in today's terms it wasn't some outrageous sum (Wikipedia is telling me ~£800,000/year). The thing is that the economy was totally different back then -- labor cost practically nothing, but goods like furnitur…

~£800,000/year when compared to median value in current UK? Outrageous is relative sure, but for most people out there it should be no surprise they would feel that as an outrageously odd distribution of wealth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#52

Post by topspin »

palmotea wrote: post #49
topspin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-35 case is interesting. Lockheed Martin can, given peak rates seen in 2025, produce a new F-35 approximately every 36 hours, as they fill orders for US allies arming themselves with F-35's. US pilot training facilities are brimming with foreign pilots. It's the most successful export fighter since the F-16 and F-4, and presently the only means US allies have to obtain operational stealth combat technology. What…

> Lockheed Martin can, given peak rates seen in 2025, produce a new F-35 approximately every 36 hours ... it's a operating line at full rate production that could conceivably build a US Navy squadron every ~15 days, plus a complete logistics and training system, all on the front burner. That's amazing. I had no idea the US was still capable of things like that. I wonder if there's a way to get close to that, for thin…

"I had no idea the US was still capable of things like that."

It's more than just the US though. It's the demand from foreign customers that makes it possible. It's the careful balance between cost and capability that was achieved by the US and allies when it was designed.

Without those things, the program would peter out after the US filled its own demand, and allies went looking for cheaper solutions. The F-35 isn't exactly cheap, but allies can see the capability justifies the cost. Now, there are so many of them in operation that, even after the bulk of orders are filled in the years to come, attrition and upgrades will keep the line operating and healthy at some level, which fulfills the goal you have in mind.

Meanwhile, the F-35 equipped militaries of the Western world are trained to similar standards, operating similar and compatible equipment, and sharing the logistics burden. In actual conflict, those features are invaluable.

There are few peacetime US developed weapons programs with such a record. It seems the interval between them is 20-30 years.

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#53

Post by rcxdude »

therein wrote: post #5

I really dislike the term hyperscaler. Comes off very insincere. They came up with it themselves, didn't they? What's the official definition supposed to be now? Companies that are setting up as many GPU/TPU server clusters as possible for a demand that's yet to exist?

Hyperscale exists as a term pre-LLM-hype. It mainly exists to describe the kind of datacenteres that companies like google and amazon have been building for at least a decade now: very large, very highly integrated and customised hardware, with a focus on cloud deployment and management strategies. This is to distinguish from just a large datacenter built with commodity server parts from a set of vendors (i.e. the kinds of servers 99% of people will be able to lay their hands on. Another way to put it is that if you're not writing your own BIOS/BMC/etc, you're probably not hyperscaling).

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#54

Post by wisemanwillhear »

lukeschlather wrote: post #10

This seems like a total category error. The Railroads are the only example that actually seems comparable, in being an infrastructure build out that's mostly done by a variety of private companies. Examples of things that would be worth comparing to the datacenter boom are factory construction and utilities (electrification in the first half of the 20th century, running water, gas pipes.)

For some reason this reminds me of people at work who walk up and say we did x bazillion things in n time, and then pause and expect us to express shock at how amazing that is and how much more productive they are than other teams. So what. Without a proper comparison to something equivalent I can't evaluate whether it's exceptional. I could treat each molecule as a thing and tell people how incredibly many things I eat on average per minute, but if I explain no one would find this to be exceptional.

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#55

Post by keeda »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #23
lukeschlather wrote: post #10

This seems like a total category error. The Railroads are the only example that actually seems comparable, in being an infrastructure build out that's mostly done by a variety of private companies. Examples of things that would be worth comparing to the datacenter boom are factory construction and utilities (electrification in the first half of the 20th century, running water, gas pipes.)

Fwiw, Railroads were the reason for some of the biggest bank collapses in history. Panic of 1873 was literally called "The Great Depression" (until a greater depression hit). 20 years later was the Panic of 1893. Both were due to over-investment and a bubble bursting, and they took out tons of banks and businesses. We're seeing exactly the same thing with AI, as there is massive investment creating a bubble without a…

> We're seeing exactly the same thing with AI, as there is massive investment creating a bubble without a payoff.

...

And so far there's no evidence that all this investment has generated more profit for the users of AI.

If you look around a bit, you will find evidence for both. Recent data finds pretty high success in GenAI adoption even as "formal ROI measurement" -- i.e. not based on "vibes" -- becomes common: https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/special-report/2025-ai-a... (tl;dr: about 75% report positive RoI.)

The trustworthiness, salience and nuances of this report is worth discussing, but unfortunately reports like this gets no airtime in the HN and the media echo chamber.

Preliminary evidence, but given this weird, entirely unprecedented technology is about 3+ years old and people are still figuring it out (something that report calls out) this is significant.

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#56

Post by ElevenLathe »

guywithahat wrote: post #48
throwaway27448 wrote: post #46

Further evidence that the US, for whatever reason, lacks basic ability to rationally use resources.

If you adjust for GDP railroads were much more expensive, and I don't think they're viewed as a mistake https://x.com/finmoorhouse/status/2044985790212583699?s=20

It's not totally clear that the gigantic push to run rail lines through undeveloped parts of North America "ahead of demand" for reasons of genocide (aka "white settlement"), especially the transcontinental routes, was the smartest investment, even leaving aside the horrific crime it represents. We probably would have gotten greater ROI connecting more developed places on a piecemeal basis and extending the rail network more slowly in the West (and probably even more rapidly in the developed East) instead of founding new towns along brand-new rail lines. There is a reason the federal government was so involved in the finance of these things: left alone, private Eastern capital would not have done things the way they were done, which was chiefly to "open the frontier" aka accelerate the genocide.

I certainly think it was a mistake.

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#57

Post by rickydroll »

topspin wrote: post #52
palmotea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lockheed Martin can, given peak rates seen in 2025, produce a new F-35 approximately every 36 hours ... it's a operating line at full rate production that could conceivably build a US Navy squadron every ~15 days, plus a complete logistics and training system, all on the front burner. That's amazing. I had no idea the US was still capable of things like that. I wonder if there's a way to get close to that, for thin…

"I had no idea the US was still capable of things like that." It's more than just the US though. It's the demand from foreign customers that makes it possible. It's the careful balance between cost and capability that was achieved by the US and allies when it was designed. Without those things, the program would peter out after the US filled its own demand, and allies went looking for cheaper solutions. The F-35 isn'…

Now let's talk about the 155mm artillery shells

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#58

Post by RealityVoid »

measurablefunc wrote: post #35
losvedir wrote: post #31

Does anyone know what's included in "datacenter capex"? In particular, does that include spending for associated power generation? Because whether or not the AI craze pans out, if we've built a whole bunch of power plants (and especially solar, wind, hydro, etc) that would be a big win.

You can't run a data center on solar or wind (even w/ batteries included). Everything they're building runs on gas & coal like what Musk got running for xAI.

You can and _must_ if you want competitive costs. Musk famously overpaid in order to get speed of deployment.

I was reading geohot's musings about building a data center and doing so cost effectively and solar is _the_ way to get low energy costs. The problem is off-peak energy, but even with that... you might come off ahead.

And that dude is anything but a green fanatic. But he's a pragmatist.

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#59

Post by fyrn_ »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #44
dghlsakjg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The railroads and the interstate are arguably the biggest and broadest impact, especially in 2nd order effects (everything West of the Mississippi would be vastly different economically without them). I am not an ai-booster, but I would not be surprised at AI having a similar enabling effect over the long term. My caveat being that I am not sure the massive data center race going on right now will be what makes it ha…

Is there really that much inefficiency in our distribution of goods and services such that AI could have this much impact?

I think the bet is more labor replacement, not saying that's particularly reasonable either

Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects

#60

Post by bombcar »

psychoslave wrote: post #51
helterskelter wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to go that far back to run into issues, when I read Pride and Prejudice, I think Mr. Darcy was one of the richest people in England at around £10,000/year, but if you to calculate his wealth in today's terms it wasn't some outrageous sum (Wikipedia is telling me ~£800,000/year). The thing is that the economy was totally different back then -- labor cost practically nothing, but goods like furnitur…

~£800,000/year when compared to median value in current UK? Outrageous is relative sure, but for most people out there it should be no surprise they would feel that as an outrageously odd distribution of wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom

The point is that ~£800,000/year is high, even possibly "very high" but it is not "most wealthy man in Britain" high, and certainly nowhere near "hire as many people as worked for Darcy".
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