For more than a century, the Conshohocken steel mill in suburban Philadelphia employed thousands of people and anchored a booming industrial economy. But the original owner went bankrupt in the 1970s, after which the facility limped on with a succession of new owners. Last summer it was idled indefinitely, and put up for sale.

It’s a familiar story of decline. The Trump administration talked a big game about reviving American manufacturing; its efforts so far have been a failure. But in Conshohocken at least, the remnants of America’s industrial age are a perfect fit for what’s powering its economy now — artificial intelligence. A local developer quickly moved to convert the old steel mill into a massive new data center.

“What I’m proposing is to enable AI to progress while replacing 19th-century manufacturing with 21st-century manufacturing,” developer Brian O’Neill told the Plymouth Township Planning Agency meeting in October.

There are billions of dollars of data center projects currently underway in the United States, with hundreds of billions of dollars more planned. President Donald Trump loves them. So do

© Vox