1. Announce plans to build shitload of datacenters
2. Sign deal with NVIDIA to buy chips for those centers
3. NVIDIA's stock goes up. NVIDIA invest profits in AI companies
4. AI companies use this money to offer tokens below market price
5. AI companies say usage is up so they will need more datacenters
6. Repeat until everything explodes
7. Profit

I don’t understand why they’re building all this infrastructure in the USA.

It probably has something to do with most of the world's software industry being there

It must be due to the groundswell of grass roots support from the local communities where they're trying to build them. I hear simply everyone wants one in their neighborhood, because it was just too peaceful, quiet and power was so cheap, the electric was literally leaking out of the outlets and staining the rugs.

The USA has great data infrastructure and comparitively cheap power compared to anywhere else that has a vaguely credible grid.

Staff barely matters, the handful of folks they need is a rounding error in the scheme of things.

Real estate in rural America is pretty cheap too. Since they don't care about proximity to anything day to day, they just need to make sure there's credible access to power, data, and water.

Meanwhile, they have a government that varies through different degrees of support and pretty much never wavering toward the side of making life difficult so long as they stay at home, but will make things more complicated.

If they did build somewhere that was cheaper, it would be unreliable for their customer base due to network connectivity, and they'd probably have a problem keeping their datacenter suitably powered, and some the US would get pissy about exporting that much compute.

Because other countries actually have environmental refulations with teeth. Though i do recall a company wanted to build a huge data center in Kenya https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsofts-usd1-billion-kenya-ai-data-center-project-hits-a-major-hurdle-as-the-government-says-it-would-require-switching-off-half-the-country-to-meet-power-needs