Big Tech’s green shift to Javier Milei’s Argentina

In July of 2021, President Biden accused Facebook of “killing people” because Mark Zuckerberg refused the administration’s orders to censor “vaccine-discouraging” memes.

Fast forward three years. Biden has been forced into retirement, while Zuckerberg has watched Meta’s stock quintuple over the past twenty months on the heels of a strong debut for Llama – its horse in the artificial intelligence (AI) race. And though Zuckerberg is wisely staying away from U.S. elections these days, that didn’t stop him from dining with Silicon Valley’s new favorite politician: Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei.

Why are the titans of Silicon Valley cozying up to a radical anarcho-capitalist notorious for wielding a bureaucracy-slashing chainsaw? Mostly, it’s his promise of a low-regulation artificial intelligence (AI) hub and a “pressure cooker” of minerals. But more broadly, they realize it’s time to rebel against government overreach instead of bankrolling it.

After Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020, he responded by pressuring them to censor citizens’ opinions, weaponizing anti-trust lawfare, and is now trying to regulate AI to death. He’s mimicking the EU’s proposals, which are led by Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who justifies draconian regulations with lines like:

“Those of us who learned not to believe in the invisible hand of the market cannot now profess blind faith in the invisible hand of Artificial Intelligence. Invisibility is usually sought to do evil, not good.”

In response to the hostility, Meta and Apple have started withholding AI products from the EU market. It’s easy to see why Silicon Valley executives would want to ditch politicians who denigrate them as profit-motivated monsters for those who recognize that their wealth reflects their positive impact on society.

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Consider the climate crusade against AI. Due to staggering power requirements for AI data centers and coal-dependent supply chains, Meta’s emissions have jumped 66% since 2021, Microsoft’s 29% since 2020, and Google’s 48% since 2019. These sharp rises likely put each of their Net Zero goals out of reach, but this isn’t all their fault. It is true that they are using more power. But access to clean energy is limited due to government-induced barriers, including inefficient permitting, weaponized litigation, high interest rates, and insecure supply chains. These are failures of the government, not the market.

When the government fails, progressives instinctively blame billionaires, but Big Tech isn’t the problem. All the majors offset their emissions with renewables contracts, collaborate on nuclear energy R&D, and invest in products that make energy efficiency profitable. AI has the potential to multiply this potential. Squandering it because of Net Zero dogmatism is insane, but so is abandoning nuclear energy to protect the environment.

Mitigating climate change depends on how fast we innovate and scale various technologies so people can afford to move on from dirtier alternatives. AI will undoubtedly catalyze this process, but not if we can’t build the necessary infrastructure or access economic sources of raw materials.

Enter Argentina with its newfound potential to enable quick data center buildouts concurrently with cheap and reliable electricity from diverse generation resources. A business-friendly environment will enable it to finally capitalize on its high solar and wind potential, and abundance of natural gas from the Vaca Muerta shale patch, while also attracting emerging technologies like small modular reactors.

Argentina is also blessed with world-class copper and lithium. Data centers are particularly copper-intensive and increasingly reliant on lithium-based batteries to replace diesel generators. Argentina has failed to develop more than a handful of mines because of socialist policies that deterred investment. As Canadian mining magnate Rob McEwen said, “Argentina has been a case of ‘nice deposit but wrong country… Milei is Prince Charming who’s given it the wake-up kiss.” With dozens of exploration projects waiting for the go-ahead, Argentina is expected to rapidly emerge as a top supplier of the two most essential minerals for a clean and electrified future.

After meeting Milei in Buenos Aires, Anthony Blinken observed, “Argentina has what the world actually needs.” But the U.S. also has plenty of copper and lithium. We just don’t have a leader with a chainsaw and faith in the free market’s invisible hand.

Patrick Hynes is a fellow with ConservAmerica.

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