It's a talent pool that many big employers want to tap into across a range of skills and industries. Cambridge is the best place to do bio-science and research. That is largely because the UK provides training and opportunities to its young people.
"I saw that 20 years go" is one data point that ignores the wider statistics. I'm not sure what else you can back your argument with.
UK is finished
Universities as they exist are not fit for the year 2026. THe year 1990? Yes, absolutely! The world has changed massively since then. It is less attractive to sacrifice years of earnings - which bring much greater experiences than what you get at uni + debt repayments of student loans to finance tuition fee's which have grown sharply from 3k/year to 9k/year and so on.
Wow, what a terrible, yet perhaps inadvertently accurate, metaphor.
If UK government wanted to properly invest in the AI, they would be developing chip fabs and embedding themselves in the supply chains.
It's a perfect time to build DDR5 factory, if GPUs are too large undertaking.
That's not how the economy works... Nothing gets "sucked out of the economy", and certainly not a productive investment that generated that income.
If a fund invests £100bn expecting 15-20% IRR, they're extracting multiples of that over the asset lifetime. That's the whole point - they're not philanthropists. The UK tax take is thin because these structures are explicitly designed for tax efficiency.
The deeper issue is where in the value chain the UK is positioning itself. Hosting someone else's compute is the low-margin end - it's being a warehouse. The high-margin positions are fabrication and supply chain. Taiwan, South Korea, and now the US via CHIPS Act understand this. They're not inviting hyperscalers to build data centres and calling it industrial strategy - they're building domestic fab capacity because that's where durable value and strategic leverage sit.
The UK is offering itself as a site rather than building itself as a participant. Those are very different things.
Compared to the fever dreams playing out in the US.
Partly it's because politicians think every dollar (pound) "invested" is the same, whether it goes on bricks and mortar or silicon or software.
UK has some of the highest priced electricity for industrial use on the planet. A result of deliberate policy choices. Who in their right mind would want to grow a vast datacentre estate there?
A large business is estimated to use 50MWh at £14,706 a year [2]. It'll cost in excess of £300k per year just to run electricity, not that the grid has that in spare capacity [3]. It's completely in contrast to their green energy campaign.
Then, they don't even have any kind of contract actually in place:
> Asked about the terms of the contract that Nscale had signed to build the supercomputer by the end of this year, the government did not reply directly. Instead, it said that Nscale’s entire $2.5bn investment was “not a formal contract, rather an intention to commit capital”, and “may well include equipment and capital funding”.
There's not enough serious capital invested to get this off of the ground (or even to break ground seemingly). And then there are basic questions, like:
1. Why would build a data center that is supposed to create tonnes of jobs, in a location where it costs a lot to employ people?
2. Why would you outsource your data center if you live in the US or EU, when there are better options available locally? These data centers sure as hell won't be used by British companies because the government are crushing them with tax.
3. The energy cost is far too high compared to locations with nuclear or hydro electricity generation.
This whole thing stinks. I think it's a complete and utter lie.
[1] https://uk.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/how-much-doe...
[2] https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas-and-electricity/busines...
[3] https://watt-logic.com/2025/01/09/blackouts-near-miss-in-tig...
- coreweave used the initial investment to buy gpus and put them in existing datacenters, rather than building new datacenters from scratch
- nscale is very behind on their planned datacenter, and will miss the deadline
- coreweaves new datacenter in partnership with datavita is probably on track, but its not clear how datavita will get the 1GW of energy to run it
I lean towards AI skepticism, but these dont seem thay bad to me. My guess would be the first 2 are the promises of silicon valley velocity hurtling headfirst into european administrative process.
And the third seems like just the challenge the firm has taken on, which could be solved with huge solar plant or something. We wont know until they try. Which is ambitious but theres nothing wrong with that.
If there were credible red flags as to the demand for the supply these datacenters will generate, or the projected 47b boost to the economy if that supply were produced, then thered be real cause to doubt. Because the whole value chain might not be well thought out. And thays the part i personally am not entirely sure about.
But if thats fine then just being negative because the companies didnt meet their how ambitions is a bit cruel. And this sort of attitude will just suffocate any silicon valley style dynamism that europe might be hoping to cultivate
All made up bullshit numbers
But in the UK? What UK AI orgs are there? Deep Mind is/was but they're owned by Google since a long time ago. Is there even a single large UK company taking money for AI that isn't just flagrantly scamming by any measure?
When was that? Seems I missed it, the market cap of cryptocurrencies in general seems to still be around ~2.5T USD, way above what I thought an "implosion" would mean.
But yeah, we need a power-hungry datacenter more than we need proper sewerage, proper water management investment, shorter hospital wait times, decent border patrol, or some of the fucking potholes fixed!
Still, it makes a change to just giving the money to the NarcoFührer clown in Ukraine, I suppose.
I don't know about all the other accusations you make, but this one is pretty off the mark, considering this has been the most unpopular government amongst the rich in a while. I mean, it's Labour, what did you expect?
