
Image is not generated neither is the post :)
The physics of AI compute has a geography problem.
Training a frontier model requires sustained power at a density that most grid infrastructure cannot support. Running inference at scale requires low latency to end users across multiple continents. These two requirements pull in opposite directions, and the current answer – data centres in cities with access to cheap power – is already producing bottlenecks that are becoming structural.
The conversation about data centres in space is, for most people, science fiction by another name. I do not think it is. The economics of satellite-based solar collection have been modelled seriously enough that both national programmes and private capital are treating them as a 15-year problem, not a 50-year one. The cooling problem in space – counterintuitive but real – is solvable through radiative dissipation in ways that terrestrial cooling is not.
What shifts, if orbital compute becomes real, is the geopolitics of AI infrastructure. A data centre in a jurisdiction is subject to that jurisdiction's laws. A data centre in orbit is subject to the treaty framework governing the orbital slot – a very different legal architecture, largely unresolved, and actively contested.
I am not predicting we will run the next frontier model from geostationary orbit. I am observing that the constraint making orbital compute worth thinking about seriously is not rocket science. It is that the demand for AI compute is growing faster than the terrestrial infrastructure built to serve it.
The teams thinking about this now are mostly defence and a small number of infrastructure investors. In ten years I expect that list will look different.
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