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Trump’s push for donors fund his $400M ballroom might cost him the whole project
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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politics
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I don't understand why they'd want to install that there?
The people running this are idiots and grifters so it could be a lot of reasons. Maybe to monitor DC specifically, maybe because they wanted to pack hard targets together, maybe they're just copying Israel badly. I don't know but it's data center sized, being built by a guy who designs data centers after they fired the normal architect. Lots of consulting with the military on it for a ballroom. Lot of power needs for a ballroom. Deep foundation for a ballroom
I know these people are deeply moronic, but damn, it seems like all the cooling needs for something that is supposed to also serve as a bunker would be very, very stupid. DC is a freaking swamp in the summer. I would understand build-outs in places like Iceland where they can power them with geothermal and cooling might be a lot less problematic...
Also, I honestly have no idea how long the supposed need for all this AI processing will even be around as a general rule. I thought they were already admitting they were running up against limits on finding data they could train on and the kinds of returns they were getting. Not to mention that breakthroughs in chip design/algorithms etc., might make all this hardware very moot and I guess I don't know if it could be repurposed for things (such as SETI or protein folding or crypto) or if it really is single purpose only...
They'll put it underground, heat the floor above with some power and dump the rest on the roof.
It's stupid but only about as stupid as google issuing 100 year bonds to buy hardware with a 3 year lifespan. We're at the point where all the coke head finance guys are realizing what happens if the bubble pops. The hardware can be reused. They're enterprise GPUs. Can do science or break them up and sell them to businesses to use for local AI as should be.
I can see it doing well for heat in the winter. That's how Cheyenne Mountain worked. DC can be so miserably muggy in the summer, so I sure hope they have a way of keeping that bunker livable for humans if it's dual-use.
On the GPU thing, I was under the impression AI hardware were ASICs, but I didn't look into it. I guess if they are GPU and were sold off to add to the power of Folding@Home (at one point, it was the largest supercomputer but not sure of the state of things now) and maybe really supercharge a lot of research...
DC is literally a drained swamp, yes it's funny, yes it's fairly symbolic that it's currently doing it's best to reflood itself as the climate and multiple hundred year old infrastructure fails.
Oh no that's crypto mining. AI has special cores in the GPUs but they're still good for general use, same workstation cards you would run CAD or physics simulations on.
Bunker isn't dual use. It's just servers. Living quarters bunker under the whitehouse is already there.