Financial Times: The AI boom comes to America’s loneliest place

Financial Times

In the lobby of the Silver Legacy, we met Russell Kuhlman, executive director of the Nevada Wildlife Federation. Piling into our vehicles, we sped away from the city and the last remnants of the Sierra Nevada foothills, past the industrial park and into the Carson Desert and the land began to breathe. Twenty miles down Highway 50, we stopped in Fallon, a town of 9,000 people and the last strip malls we’d see for days.

The prospect of industrialising an unspoilt stretch of Nevada is sacrilege to many here, whose cathedrals are remote valleys. The project has united in opposition hunters, wildlife conservationists, environmentalists, academics, certain bureaucrats and Native American tribes, all keen to safeguard their holy places. “In Nevada, it’s very hard to piss everyone off, and this has been about the closest example,” Kuhlman said.