The owners of these GPUs who have lost the *least* money are the ones who rushed into buying GPUs without ensuring they'd have electricity to power them, and have been forced to leave their GPUs to age in warehouses. The minute they plug in those GPUs, they'll start losing money, and the more they use them, the more money they'll lose.

3/

I'm sorry. As a technology writer, I'm supposed to be telling you that this bet will some day pay off, because one day we will have shoveled so many words into the word-guessing program that it wakes up and learns how to actually do the jobs it is failing spectacularly at today. This is a proposition akin to the idea that if we keep breeding horses to run faster and faster, one of them will give birth to a locomotive. Humans possess intelligence, and machines do not.

4/

The difference between a human and a word-guessing program isn't how many words the human knows.

I'm sorry. I know that when we talk about "digital sovereignty," we're obliged to talk about how we can build more data-centres that we can fill up with money-losing chips from American silicon monopolists in the hopes of destroying as many jobs as possible while blowing through our clean energy goals and enshittifying as much of our potable water as possible.

5/

I don't have any advice for how to do that. I'm sorry!

As Canada contemplates our response to the collapse of the American empire and its alliances with the world, the cornerstone of our current strategy is sacrificing our dollars, water and energy in order to become more dependent on America, in a weird and improbable bet that we will figure out how to make millions of Canadians unemployed. I'm sorry, that just doesn't sound like a great idea to me.

6/

If I can beg your indulgence, I'd like to propose an alternative.

Back in 2012, Canada passed Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act. It's a law that bans Canadian companies from modifying America's digital tech exports. We passed it because the US threatened us with tariffs:

pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who…

7/

Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't sell jailbreaking kits for phones and consoles, which would let Canadian sellers offer goods and services to Canadian buyers outside of US app stores, sidestepping the 30% app tax that Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony and others impose on our digital economy.

8/

Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't sell mechanics a universal diagnostic tool that turns every "check engine" light into a useful error message. Instead, Canadian mechanics have to send $10,000/year/manufacturer to America for a proprietary car diagnosis kit.

9/

Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't offer ink cartridge manufacturers software that will ensure their cartridges work in the printers Canadians buy from the American inkjet cartel. As a result, Canadians have to spend $10,000/gallon on ink, making it the most expensive fluid a Canadian civilian can purchase without a government permit.

10/

Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't sell our farmers software that lets them start using their tractors as soon as they've fixed them. Instead, after a Canadian farmer fixes their tractor, they have to wait for a service call from a rep for a US ag-tech monopolist who'll type an unlock code into the tractor's keyboard and charge the farmer a couple hundred bucks for this "service."

11/

Thanks to Bill C-11, a Canadian company can't revive one of the most successful technologies in history: the home video recorder. Remember those? First we had VCRs, then we had digital successors like the Tivo. Canadian law says you're allowed to record the video that comes into your home, whether by broadcast, cable, satellite or streaming. But Bill C-11 bans a Canadian company from selling you a gadget that lets you save the video you get in an app or from a set-top box.

12/

It's crazy: we have actually *uninvented* the VCR! You know how everyone is pissed off about their favourite shows being yanked from the streaming services? Repeal C-11 and you could just save those shows forever. Repeal C-11 and you'd kill the grinchy little racket that services like Prime pull, where Christmas cartoons are in the free tier from March to November, and cost $3.99 to watch between November and March. Just tape 'em in August and save 'em for later!

13/

It doesn't stop there. Remember when Facebook banned all links to the news in Canada? Repeal C-11 and a Canadian company could sell you an alternative Facebook app that puts the news back into your feed! Repeat C-11 and Canadians could get an alternative app that replaces *all* the streaming services, letting you search and stream every service you have an account for in one place, mixing in Canadian content from the NFB, public broadcasters, and commercial services.

14/

Virtually every Canadian ministry, corporation and household is locked into a US Big Tech silo. Any of these could be shut down at a single word from Trump to any of the tech giants who've lined up to do his bidding. Repeal C-11 and we can extract all our data from these walled gardens/prisons and get it onto auditable, trustworthy, transparent open source software, hosted in data-centres located safely on Canadian soil.

15/

If there's one thing Canadians are good it, it's going to other countries and extracting their wealth. We're world champions at it.

America's tech monopolies have sequestered *trillions of dollars* worth of monopoly rents on their balance sheets. This is dead capital, being pissed up the wall on nonsense like stock buybacks and data-centres and grotesque executive bonuses.

As Jeff Bezos said to the publishers: "Your margin is my opportunity."

16/

America's tech trillions represent a rich and readily accessible seam that we can extract - safely, from our own country! - and turn into *our* billions, and an exportable line of products that the whole world would beat a path to our door to buy.

17/

Look, I'm sorry. I don't have any ideas for how Canada can get to a better future by lighting billions on fire in a bet on a failing technology whose dubious profitability depends on ruining our job market, our power grid and our water supply, which will tie the American political situation to our ankles.

18/

All I've got is an idea for how we can make *insanely profitable products* that people *really want to buy*, that will insulate us from cyberattacks by US tech giants who are in thrall to Trump, and that *Americans* will pay us to use in order to free themselves from the tech giants who abuse them, too.

19/

I'm really sorry. I know it's out of step with the times, but all I have is ideas that *make* money, make us safer, make us richer, and make our technology better.

On the other hand, those chatbots sure are cute. It's funny when they "hallucinate."

20/

I'm coming to Colorado! Catch me in #Denver on Jan 22 at The Tattered Cover:

eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow…

And in #ColoradoSprings from Jan 23-25, where I'm the Guest of Honor at COSine:

firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/

Then I'll be in #Ottawa on Jan 28 at Perfect Books:

instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/

And in #Toronto with Tim Wu on Jan 30:

nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doct…

eof/

Perfect Books on Instagram: "❗BIG ANNOUNCEMENT TIME❗ We are SO excited to present author and activist Cory Doctorow as part of what we are now calling The Perfect Books Lecture Series. This event is presented in partnership with The Other Hill. We hope

Cory Doctorow, renowned science fiction author, activist, and journalist, will present his latest book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, at The Perfect Books Lecture Series.

^Instagram