alt Hacker NewsSpaceX is a grift totally dependent on the USA untrustworthy government. The actual financials don’t add up revenue, profit and loss, similar to the AI model companies yes, the insiders will win, but no one else does.
Iceland and Norway win nothing, having giant data centers within their territories the only losers will be the common people of each country like having a strip mine on your land.
What is also interesting is that the tone death city slickers from other countries, particularly the United States, think they can waive money at Icelanders and Norwegians and have them jump to a tune of greed.
I've mentioned this in other threads, but a well managed data center policy from a functioning municipality can make data centers a boon rather than a nuisance. Loudoun County, Virginia (of MAE-East, AWS US-East-1, and Equinix fame) has navigated it in a way that has led to continually lowered property taxes combined with excellent well funded public services, and less downside than other industrial land uses would have. They also have noise and other regulations that mean that the data centers functionally just act like empty warehouses. They've kept up with grid capacity, so none of them rely on loud, polluting, off grid generators, and electricity and water are not noticeably more expensive than in other regions.
If Norway navigates this policy half as well as they've navigated their oil, this could be beneficial for the common people and help Europe detangle themselves from reliance on US or Chinese tech.