Somewhere in rural Arizona, two SpaceX employees named Riley and Katie stood in an elementary school gym. With PowerPoint calm, they explained that a 6-gigawatt computer the size of a small country would lower everyone’s electric bill, use no water, and cut property taxes. The crowd responded the way people always respond when the gift is a giant humming building: they screamed. Riley and Katie stayed poised. Somewhere, a crisis-management consultant wept with pride.

So what happens now? Pick your future. Tell me in the comments which one plays out and why. I’ll be keeping score, soothsayers.

FUTURE #1: THE SHAKEDOWN

The new governors aren’t trying to kill AI. They’re trying to get dinner paid for. “Lovely data center. Shame if something happened to its air permit. Anyway, we’d like free electricity, three schools, and a splash pad.” Big Tech grumbles and pays, because it has more money than most continents. Everyone declares victory. The splash pad is named after a hyperscaler.

FUTURE #2: PERMIT PURGATORY

Nobody bans anything. Nobody approves anything either. Every civil servant in America realizes the safest career move is to let the approval stamp gather dust. Half-built data centers sit in the desert like very expensive Stonehenges, shrines to bureaucracy, waiting on one air-quality form. Future archaeologists conclude that 21st-century Americans worshipped a god called Pending Review.

FUTURE #3: THE LANDLORD WARS

Compute gets scarce, and the five companies that already own working data centers become feudal lords. Google evicts a tenant, moves in Gemini, and suddenly Gemini is winning races it used to finish fourth in. The AI labs that rent their brains by the hour learn the oldest truth in real estate: the landlord always wins.

Then Elon checks a spreadsheet, spots a 90-day exit clause, and the whole industry holds its breath like a cartoon character who just heard a twig snap.

FUTURE #4: TOKENS FROM ABROAD

America bans data centers at home and starts importing AI the way it imports electronics and avocados. Every ChatGPT answer ends with: “Lovingly grown in Malaysia.”

The $400,000 construction jobs move to Kuala Lumpur, and local governments get stiffed out of the tax dollars that would have fixed their roads. But hey, at least the potholes are locally sourced.

FUTURE #5: DR. DOOM’S CORNER

The government gets the premium AI. The rest of us get the version that apologizes a lot and won’t explain reality for fear of the long arm of governments around the world.

The Second Amendment was meant to level the playing field between citizens and an overreaching government. Now picture first-tier government AI versus your MacBook. That’s not a fair fight. That’s a brought-a-calculator-to-a-gunfight fight.

FUTURE #6: THE MINISTRY OF APPROVED THOUGHTS

A new Department of AI must sign off on every frontier model before release. The models come back covered in regulator margin notes, like a high school essay. The AI companies say “let’s work together,” everyone gets a moat, and the only casualty is anyone who isn’t already huge.

The good news for the incumbents? No future competitor will ever bother them again. The bad news? See previous sentence.

FUTURE #7: ELON IN SPACE

The data centers simply leave the planet. SpaceX has said it plans to launch them into orbit, and no county board of supervisors can scream at a satellite. It’s the ultimate NIMBY solution: Not In Anybody’s Backyard.

Game-theory-wise, the likeliest outcome is the most boring one: Futures #1 and #2 at the same time. The deals get tougher, the approvals get slower, and nobody pulls the plug, because nobody wants to be blamed for the recession or for the electric bill.

So which future are you betting on? Drop it below.