In the desolate, gray expanse of Central New York—a region whose primary export for the last three decades has been sadness and rusted aluminum—the ghouls of industry and the professional scolds of the non-profit sector have finally found a common playground. Micron, a corporation that exists primarily to ensure your smartphone has enough RAM to ignore your family more efficiently, is planning a $100 billion 'megafab' in Clay, New York. It is, we are told, a triumph of the CHIPS and Science Act, that bipartisan masterclass in corporate welfare where the government takes tax dollars from people who can’t afford eggs and hands them to multi-billion-dollar conglomerates so they can build factories they were going to build anyway. But wait, there is a hitch in this technocratic pantomime: the activists have arrived, and they want their cut of the moral high ground.

A coalition of local activists is currently clutching its pearls and demanding a 'Community Benefits Agreement.' They want Micron to be 'held accountable' for its promises regarding the environment and the inclusion of 'communities of color.' It is a truly breathtaking display of administrative theater. On one side, you have a global memory-chip titan that views the planet as a source of raw materials and the local workforce as a necessary evil to be automated away as soon as the technology matures. On the other, you have activists who genuinely believe that a legally binding document will force a trillion-dollar industry to prioritize a local wetland or a DEI seminar over the quarterly earnings report. It’s like watching a group of field mice trying to negotiate a non-aggression pact with a combine harvester.

Let’s look at the environmental angle, shall we? Micron’s project is being billed as a marvel of modern engineering, yet it requires staggering amounts of water and energy—resources that do not exactly grow on trees, despite what the press releases from the Governor’s office might imply. The irony is as thick as the smog in a Shenzhen factory: we are subsidizing a 'green' future by pouring millions of tons of concrete and drawing billions of gallons of water to create the hardware necessary for AI, which will, in turn, accelerate the heat death of the universe by generating more 'content' that nobody asked for. The activists want 'accountability' for the environment, but they are operating within a system that views the environment as a line item. If Micron poisons a local creek, they won't stop the line; they’ll just pay a fine that amounts to a rounding error in their marketing budget and call it 'the cost of progress.'

Then we have the 'equity' demands. The activists are pushing for guarantees that the jobs created by this massive injection of taxpayer cash will go to marginalized communities. It’s a lovely sentiment, perfect for a LinkedIn post or a campaign brochure. In reality, these mega-fabs require highly specialized labor—engineers and technicians with degrees from institutions that the people in these 'marginalized communities' have been systematically priced out of for generations. Micron will fulfill its diversity quotas by hiring a few middle managers from the suburbs and putting them in the front row of the annual report photos, while the actual local population will be lucky to land jobs cleaning the floors or security-guarding the perimeter of the very facility that drove up their property taxes and priced them out of their neighborhoods.

The CHIPS Act itself is the ultimate joke. It is the purest form of 'Both Sides' stupidity. The Right loves it because it’s 'tough on China' and funnels money to defense contractors; the Left loves it because they can attach vapid 'social justice' riders and 'green' stipulations to it. Neither side cares that the entire endeavor is a massive bet on a future where we are all more dependent on the very digital chains that have already rotted our collective brains. We are building the cathedrals of the 21st century—massive, sterile boxes of silicon and steel—and we are doing it on the backs of a public that has been convinced that 'jobs' are worth the wholesale surrender of their economic and environmental sovereignty.

Ultimately, this 'hurdle' the activists have placed in Micron’s path is nothing more than a speed bump on the road to a predetermined destination. The 'Community Benefits Agreement' will be signed, the cameras will flash, and the activists will go home feeling like they’ve wrestled a titan. Micron will get its billions in subsidies, the Governor will get her photo op, and the actual people of Central New York will get a front-row seat to the slow-motion destruction of their landscape in exchange for the privilege of buying a slightly faster iPhone in five years. It is a perfect, closed loop of human futility. We deserve every bit of it.