In Chips We Trust? Remembering the Environmental Impacts of Hardware Manufacturing

Melissa Gregg

Abstract

This essay will focus on the climate impacts of high performance computing and the physical infrastructure required to support it through such measures as the US CHIPS and Science Act and its composite parts, the “Endless Frontier Act” and the “CHIPS for America Act”. Considering the land, water and airways affected by both data centre development and silicon manufacturing facilities, digital technologies are shown to contribute to climate injustice in at least three ways. First, the ongoing capture and enclosure of land for industry. The patriotism fueling government incentives accelerates manufacturing expansion and ensuing biodiversity loss in what amounts to a new wave of digital sacrifice zones. Second, the syphoning of energy and water supplies in local communities. The politics of corporate sustainability depict finite and contested resources as unproblematically renewable when the bulk of supply is prioritised for corporations. Third, the consecration of elite computing as not only common sense business practice, but a means to demonstrate competitiveness and military supremacy. In these ways, digital technology development is shown to exacerbate both economic and geo-political divides without clear benefit.