Here’s a curious situation. Companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in data center construction across Texas. At the same time, a wave of political opposition is rising to meet them, and not from whom you’d expect. The resistance is from working families in conservative counties who voted for Trump. They are showing up at town halls, advocating for artificial intelligence (AI) data center moratoriums, and turning down deals that promise waves of economic growth. Some will say these communities don’t understand what’s good for them. That they are being parochial and resistant to “progress.”

Or maybe they understand the deal perfectly well and conclude it’s a stacked one. Soon, the rest of us will have our own math to do. The tech industry is preparing to send as much as $100 billion a year into philanthropy, its self-described “third wave” of giving. Is it giving or to distract from the harm that’s already happening?

Here, we look at what Texas can tell us before that money arrives.

The Technology Sequence We Keep Repeating

When a new technology creates massive wealth, there’s a predictable sequence: first, heaps of enthusiasm about what it will enable and solve; then, the wealth-creation phase—which shifts costs elsewhere; finally, the philanthropic phase, where some of that wealth cycles back, dressed as altruism.

Many of us have lived through a natural case study of this. In 2012, Facebook went public at a valuation north of $104 billion dollars. The narrative around that IPO was relentlessly optimistic. A new generation of internet wealth was about to flood into philanthropy. Founders would build new foundations, give pledges, and fund cures. And they have, kind of. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) now manages billions of dollars. It’s also important to note that the CZI has radically shifted both its focus and approach to grantmaking. Once a premier K–12 funder, it has pulled funding from previous K–12 commitments, climate change, and social justice, and now devotes much of its work to technology and biomedical research driven by generative AI.

Read the full article about tech philanthropy and extraction by Michelle Flores Vryn at Nonprofit Quarterly.