Google just launched a refrigerator-sized satellite loaded with AI chips into orbit, racing to move data centers off-planet and beyond the reach of terrestrial accountability.
Fortune framed it as an innovative race to meet AI's "growing demand for compute," but the real story is the consolidation of computational power in fewer corporate hands. While outlets like the Santa Rosa Press Democrat dedicate ink to local street closures for a weekend footrace, Big Tech is building the infrastructure for total AI dominance in the one place voters can't touch: low Earth orbit.
On Oct. 1, Google's "Project Suncatcher" took off on a SpaceX rocket, packing four of the company's custom Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips. According to Fortune, the goal is to test if these chips can survive the vibration of launch and the radiation of space. The satellite, built with Planet Labs, runs on solar power but can only run its chips for 15 minutes at a time before shutting down to cool off—lacking the water or fans used on Earth.
Why space? Because on Earth, Big Tech faces "backlash from community members and politicians" over the massive power, water, and land demands of AI data centers. Moving them to orbit dodges the locals entirely.
Elon Musk's SpaceX is positioning itself as the logistics backbone, having filed FCC plans for a network of up to 1 million data-center satellites. Musk told the globalists at the World Economic Forum earlier this year that "the lowest-cost place to put AI will be space, and that will be true within two years." Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin also filed a proposal for 51,600 satellites under "Project Sunrise," proving the billionaire class is all-in on orbital compute.
The cost to launch is dropping—SpaceX has cut costs by 95% since 2008 to roughly $1,000 per kilogram, per ARK Invest. But the obstacles remain high. Jeff Thornburg, CEO of Portal Space Systems, told Fortune that the massive solar arrays required would be heavy and expensive to transport, and radiation can cause chip errors—something Google is actively studying.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat is warning Petaluma residents about road closures for the 14th annual Clo Cow Half Marathon. Police will shut down stretches of Kentucky Street and Western Avenue for the 13.1-mile race, with the California Highway Patrol assisting. It’s a stark contrast: local government managing the mundane details of a footrace while global corporations launch the architecture of AI surveillance into the sky.
If the servers processing your data are floating in the vacuum of space, who exactly regulates them? As Google, Musk, and Bezos stake their claims in orbit, the window for American voters to have a say is closing fast.
