Nothing artificial about Albanese’s intelligent intervention, and the urgency is real

July 18, 2026 — 5:00am

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The intelligence may be artificial, but the reactions to it are very real.

New York State this week announced a 12-month ban on the building of big new data centres.

The world was in the throes of an economic upheaval on a scale unseen in generations – “perhaps ever”, said the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul.

“These hyperscale AI data centres consume enormous amounts of power, truly threatening to outpace our grid’s capacity. They drive up costs for local ratepayers, and I refuse to let those costs get passed down to New Yorkers,” she said.

In the same week, some 40,000 workers at carmaker Hyundai struck back at company plans to introduce an intimidatingly large humanoid robot into its factories.

Hyundai’s “Atlas” walks and moves freely and can lift 50 kilograms. South Korean president Lee Jae Myung says of AI-driven robotics that it’s “impossible to avoid the giant chariot that is rolling on”.

Perhaps, but workers at Hyundai, the world’s third-biggest carmaker, have committed to only work half days until bosses guarantee job and wage protections against the android, which stands at 190 centimetres and weighs 90 kilograms. It’s a global test case.

And a historical first in war occurred when Iran launched missiles at data centres in two US-allied Gulf nations this year. It was the day after the US-Israeli attack began.

It “marks a sea change in warfare”, says the Centre for Strategic and International Studies’ Emily Harding, and it is the first known military attack on data centres anywhere.

The reason? Iran said it attacked the Amazon Web Services facilities “in order to identify the role of these centres in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities”.

And so “the strikes swiftly brought the war directly into the lives of 11 million people in the UAE,” as The Guardian reported. Emiratis learnt the hard way that neither the US nor their own government were able to protect them.

“Millions of people in Dubai and Abu Dhabi woke up on Monday unable to pay for a taxi, order a food delivery, or check their bank balance on their mobile apps,” as The Guardian said.

Australians affected by the recent Telstra failure would recognise the symptoms. One difference is that while Telstra restored services within a day or two, the missiles caused........

© Brisbane Times