It is an axiom amongst the proponents of AI data centers that they will lead to a better life for the communities that welcome them.  Senator Conrad Appel provided some commentary in that vein recently:

‘Louisiana has long been burdened with large swaths of rural areas that have little or no economic value. These areas offered little future, and the result has been growing poverty and out-migration Suddenly we have been “discovered” by Big Tech, as in at least five rural parts of the state we see the development of massive data centers bringing construction, maintenance and support jobs and hope.

‘ . . . These data centers must be viewed not only as a boon for rural areas, but also an opportunity for all of Louisiana to catch up to the other southern states and cities’ (‘Data Centers Hold Economic Promise Louisiana Isn’t Finding Elsewhere,’ thehayride.com).

There is an assumption here that mechanization, automation, digitization, etc., are always an improvement over traditional rural life.  That is disputable.  Considering the trajectory of society throughout the Age of the Machine, a man could be excused for desiring to find a way to escape the increasingly inhuman conditions being created for him to live within.  Fr Lawrence Farley, a priest in the Orthodox Church, described those conditions quite well:

‘A book by Paul Kingsnorth Against the Machine (an essential read for those wanting to understand the true threat to human authenticity in the world today) gives some figures for the relentless drive towards increased urbanization (i.e. the swallowing up of villages by the cities). In 1900 only about 12% of the population lived in towns and cities. By 2050 (i.e. by tomorrow), nearly 70% will. And, lest one imagine urbanites living happily in penthouses, about one third of the urban population will live in slums. Fairholmes, big or small, are on the way out. Soon you will live in a city.

‘Urbanization, however, does not simply consist in a change of location à la the sitcom “Green Acres” whereby one exchanges “fresh air” for “Times Square”. Rather it involves the change from comparative independence and self-reliance to becoming a cog in the machine. In the city, you will not survive on your own, through self-reliance or through the help of family. You will survive because the city will take care of you, whether you want it to or not. And despite the crowds in cities, you will be more isolated and alone than you were living next to your smalltown neighbours.

‘Take, for example, Kingsnorth’s experience of contemporary London. It features “till-less shops and cashless ice cream vans and train tickets purchased through smartphone apps and ever-present street cameras and proliferating 5G towers and soon-to-be-humanless train stations. Soon enough,” he observed, “human contact will be a luxury good and like all luxury goods it will sell at a premium”.

‘Part of the problem with this isolation is not simply that extroverts will feel lonely. It is that we will all be less connected to our neighbours and to the earth and to our history and will therefore be more open to whatever the City (an ideology and not just a locale) offers us and whatever lies it may tell’ (‘The fate of Fairholme: living in The City,’ orthochristian.com).

And what The City/The Machine that is being constructed by the Banksters/Globalists/Technocrats is offering us is not all that likable:

‘The U.S. clearly has something very big planned that would require so many data centers, more than 5,200 across the 50 states if you include all those that are up and running, plus those under construction. Even more are in the planning stages but not yet approved.

‘China, the country with the second-most data centers in the world, only has 1,818. Russia has only 181 data centers. The U.K. and Germany each have about 500 data centers. France has 321 and Japan has 222. These numbers are current as of late 2025/early 2026.

‘Why does the U.S. need 5,200 data centers when China, the acknowledged global master of AI, only needs 1,818 and other industrialized nations have only a small fraction of that?

‘Even AI experts have voiced their bewilderment as to what could possibly require so much data-gathering and data-processing in the U.S.

‘I believe I have the answer.

‘The only explanation is that the U.S. plans to serve as the nerve center for the coming one-world digital/programmable currency. Think about the computing power that would be required for a beast system in which every transaction worldwide is tracked in real time and entered onto a digital blockchain. Combine that with a social-credit scoring system that tracks, analyzes and assesses a grade not only to every financial transaction, but every video, every article, every social-media post made by everyone on the internet, and every internet user being 100 percent identifiable by their mandatory biometric digital ID. Without a digital ID, you won’t be allowed on the internet’ (Leo Hohmann, via Dr Joseph Farrell, ‘THE NEWEST PLO(Y/T): A.I. DATA CENTERS AS MILITARY FACILITIES,’ gizadeathstar.com).

It must never be forgotten that for whatever benefits AI may bring in efficiencies, new discoveries, and so on, we will pay for them many times over in the loss of our humanity and authentic freedoms and relationships as the techno-gulag rises all around us.

We must likewise never forget that the Church is the only real alternative to the various false ideologies and dangerous endeavors that are threatening us in this present age:

‘C. S. Lewis, ever discerning and prescient, saw the dangers of the collective clearly. In his 1945 essay entitled Membership . . . he wrote as follows. “Collectivism is ruthlessly defeating the individual in every other field [than religion]… [Modern man] lives in a crowd… Modern collectivism is an outrage upon human nature and from this, as from all other evils, God will be our shield and buckler… The Christian is called, not to individualism but to membership in the mystical body. A consideration of the differences between the secular collective and the mystical body is therefore the first step to understanding how Christianity without being individualistic can yet counteract collectivism… The Christian life defends the single personality from the collective, not by isolating him but by giving him the status of an organ in the mystical Body”. Briefly put, the antidote to the collective (and to the ever-devouring City) is the Church.

‘I would suggest that membership in the mystical Body of the Church is indeed the last and only real defense against the collective. In Christ we are not simply isolated individuals, cogs in the secular machine relentlessly grinding out “progress”, but members one of another, valued and called to truly authentic human existence.

‘In the Church we find an alternative to the collective with its atomized and uprooted individuals: a rival society, a family in which every member (i.e. member in the Pauline sense) has a role, a task, a ministry, and a value. It is a family where all bear one another burdens and so fulfil the Law of Christ (Galatians 6:2), a place where when one is honoured, all rejoice with together and when another suffers, all suffer together (1 Corinthians 12:26).

This means, however, that to fulfil its task and to be true to its own nature, the Church must live differently than the world does and recognize the dangers that the City represents. She must return to the truths and sanities enshrined in her apostolic Tradition, rejecting the world’s inversions of those truths along with (to quote the baptismal service) the rest of Satan’s works and angels and service and pride’ (from Fr Lawrence’s essay mentioned above).

Those ‘large swaths of rural areas that have little or no economic value’ at which Sen Appel directs condescending scowls actually hold a great amount of promise for an authentically human life if put to proper use.  Christian monasteries have always been associated with the strongest ages in the life of the Church.  Rather than turning over much of that good country land for the building of factories, data centers, and other pieces and parts of the Machine, at least some of it should be offered to monks and nuns, who could suffuse broken human souls and bodies, and the wider creation, with an abundance of God’s Grace.

The wonderful St Kevin of Glendalough in Ireland (reposed 3 June 618) gives a glimpse of the possibilities – for the formation of community, for turning the worshippers of false gods to the worship of Christ the True God, for the provision of plenty of earthly goods:

‘Kevin returned to society when a farmer, named Dima, followed a cow of his who would continually wander off. The cow would come every day, when the herd was sent out to pasture, to St. Kevin’s cave and lick his clothes and feet while he was in prayer. When the cow returned at evening, she would produced unbelievable amounts of milk. Dima, wondering greatly about this, one day resolved to follow the cow. When Dima stumbled upon Kevin’s cave, and saw what was the cause of this, he fell to his knees in penitence. Kevin raised him up, and, as Dima was a pagan, taught the farmer about Christ and the Gospel. Dima eventually begged Kevin to come out of his isolation and teach his family about Christ. After a day of prayer, Kevin saw that it was God’s will that he return to society to spread the Gospel. He began by teaching Dima’s family, but his tutelage soon grew to dozens of families and he began to attract followers. And so, seeing the need of a central place from which to teach, Kevin decided to establish a monastery’ (‘Saint Kevin of Glendalough, Wonderworker of Ireland (+618),’ johnsanidopoulos.com).

And that is only one example from the many that could be cited from the life of St Kevin and from the lives of the many other monastic saints.

We appreciate Sen Appel for his desire to improve life in Louisiana.  But relying heavily on AI data centers and other Big Tech developments for societal well-being is fraught with too many dangers.  The large build-out of them in Louisiana and other States is no different than building a prison system for us to inhabit.  With monasteries it is the opposite:  They encourage true freedom and personhood in Christ, the healing of the passions that keep us in bondage to the devil and to vices (the very things that spur mankind to build modern megaliths like AI data centers in the first place – greed, laziness, pride, etc.).

We’re not pushing for a total rejection of technology, but rather for a balanced view of the benefits and harms that it brings to mankind and the rest of creation.  If most folks accept such a view, we think there will be a desire for more churches and monasteries and fewer of the giant monuments to human pride and scientific power that we have been building over the last several generations.  And that would bring us closer to experiencing the good, fulfilling life for which people naturally yearn.