I dont understand this part. What has nuclear base got to do with chip manufacturing? And surely, not all 600k students are learning chip design or stealing plans
About students, have you seen the microelectronic labs in American universities lately? A huge chunk are Chinese already. Same with some of the top AI labs.
There are things about China not to be celebrated but one cannot help but admire the way that they invest in their country as a whole. The US is all about "what's in it for me".
Is all that construction really worth it when we could be protecting neighborhoods and historic views?
And it's not an entirely binary choice on protecting neighborhoods and views; for example what's happening in south Memphis with the power plant that's powering the Grok center there is a classic case of environmental racism -- they are cutting costs on pollution regulation because they have a community that they can dump the externalized costs on via their emissions.
Nobody's saying Grok shouldn't have the power, it's just a small detail on how that impact is managed.