He talks tough about big tech, but he’s betting on their servers.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam is a new Democrat from Northern Virginia who has raised the alarm over the large data centres that have popped up in his district. He calls them “invasive” pollutant that could attract cyberattacks. These centers provide more than 78,000 jobs to Northern Virginia. Subramanyam may not want the centers in his neighborhood, but he has hundreds of thousands in stock in companies that own them.
Subramanyam owns at least $630,000 in stock in companies such as Amazon, Meta and NVIDIA. His holdings could be worth more than $1 million according to the financial disclosures of Congress. These companies are either the owners or the providers of critical support for a majority of Virginia’s data centers. These data centers store user data and power the internet, allowing some of America’s biggest companies to be online. Subramanyam has more data centers in his district than anywhere else in the nation. But during a recent hearing of a committee, he described them as a menace.
Subramanyam, said that the centers were “not good for communities.”
Subramanyam stated that “data centers alone can increase customer bills by as much as $276 per year in the next five years, and utility bills could double for people within 7-10 years, just to power them.” “And the impact on the environment is also real.” These green spaces disappear. Water supplies are becoming scarcer and pollution is increasing. “It’s almost impossible to reach our clean energy targets in Virginia.”
“And there’s also a risk to security,” the congressman added, warning that Russia and other malicious actors might be tempted by the data center hub that had developed in his district. You only have to look at the Ukraine War. What did Russia do when they failed to hack Ukraine’s telecom networks? “They targeted the data centres.”
Subramanyam’s stock portfolio would likely rebound if they moved elsewhere, but the area he represents would lose $31 billion in economic output. Subramanyam would see his stock portfolio rebound if they moved elsewhere. The area that he represents, however, would lose $31 billion of economic output.
Subramanyam holds at least $5000 in NVIDIA, and at least $130,000 in Amazon and Meta according to his latest personal financial disclosures.
According to DataCenters.com a third party monitoring website, Amazon maintains 93 data centres throughout Northern Virginia. According to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, Meta’s Sandston data center occupies 450 000 square feet, and costs $1 billion. NVIDIA is not a data center owner, but they are an important part of the ecosystem. NVIDIA’s NVIDIA DGX Ready Data Center program is a partnership with data centers that provides coveted certifications to ensure they are optimized for the demands and requirements from their parent companies.
Rep. Nick Langworthy, (R. N.Y.), sent a letter to companies that operate data centers in Subramanyam’s district.
He told the Washington Free Beacon, “We must focus on maintaining America’s competitiveness and powering our tomorrow.” “If Rep. Subramanyam’s district is too stupid to want these jobs, then bring them to my district!”
Subramanyam didn’t respond to an inquiry for comment.
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