Coming soon, from the people behind the ICE detention camps: Data Center Company Towns

Remember when they were still trying to sell us their AI as a force for good? Remember panels and keynotes? Remember the claims that this still-developing technology has the noble goal of infusing it into every aspect of our lives. cures the disease and conversing with terrestrial beings? Those initial promises are now mostly fuzzy blackout memories, quivering in our collective snake oil hangover. But more and more American cities are emerging from the fugue state and address AI data centers as an urgent environmental and existential threat, which is ahead on the other side of the fight. Last week was one of the most “masked” of the AI ​​industry so far Consequences of the OpenAI Pentagon agreement still ongoing and brilliant reports on how the technology is “turbocharged” American and Israeli attacks on Iran.

But a clarifying link for those still not connecting the dots between these companies and the rise of global fascism TechCrunch taken recently Bloomberg story helps explain everything.

Draw a straight picture Taylor Sheridan seriesA Bloomberg article details the rise of “human camps” built to facilitate the construction of data centers. Pop-up villages full of amenities in remote areas used to serve as carrots oil industry contractors. The model has since been expanded to make it easier cryptocurrency and is now developing the AI ​​industry.

Since many of these extractive workers come from a military background, the human camp intentionally resembles a Forward Operating Base (FOB). A far cry from the traditional company town that tries to claw back workers’ wages via scrip, these men’s camps offer free steak dinners and rounds of simulated golf to rough necks from a long day’s desert construction shift, Bloomberg reports.

Featured on Bloomberg, the camp is being built to house and entertain more than 1,000 workers needed to build a 1.6-gigawatt data center in Dickens County, Texas. According to TechCrunch, the slum will cost taxpayers $132 million in government contracts paid to a company called Target Hospitality. While the Bloomberg story glossed over the fact that Target “also handles immigration detention for the government,” TechCrunch identified the facility as the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, located south of San Antonio. Reopening after signing a target a 5 year contract with CoreCivic In March 2025, the Dilley center was already notorious for its treatment of juveniles it held in custody. measles epidemiccrushing 911 calls about children having trouble breathingand worm-hole meal just one example of the controversy that arose during the center’s first year of operation.

Eye-watering with the budget of technology companies $700 billion to expand data capacity It’s only 2026, and with industry evangelists swearing they’re just getting started, it’s no surprise that Target Hospitality is trying to wash away the scent of this ICE deal by targeting data centers. It’s a bountiful future, described by the company’s chief commercial officer, Troy Schrenk, as “the biggest, most impressive pipeline I’ve ever seen.”

Will Target Hospitality’s gravy train continue to run ever more edgy and smooth? shameless population making it clear that they do not want either ICE or data centers near their communities? Looks like we’ll all learn together.