I would really want a measure of actual compute power, like teraflops per capita or something. Still imperfect, but better than just counting the number of buildings.
Yeah, almost any metric is more useful than this one, and I’m an American who “benefits” from this stat.
I think it is was supposed to come across as anti American not beneficial. People have been knocking data centers for their overuse of energy, thereby trying to say the U.S. is using mass amounts of energy. They just wanted to make a chart that showed the U.S. having way more of these “problem facilities” without any more thorough information.
I read it as the opposite. There’s a certain amount of processing and storage the world needs, and if the majority of that is happening in the US, that’s better for the US due to more jobs and more oversight by law enforcement (FBI, NSA, etc). It’s also indicative that the tech industry is stronger in the US than elsewhere, which can be good for investors.
That said, it’s a completely worthless if it’s just an indicator of population density among developed nations. It should be something based on per-capita use of/access to datacenters.
