Vitalik: The anti-data-center movement isn’t necessarily a bad thing—slowing the hyperscale expansion of computing power could be a net positive.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, recently published a post addressing the intense, emotionally charged discourse surrounding the anti-data-center movement this week—and made his disagreement unequivocally clear. He pointed out that algorithmic advances are dramatically improving computational efficiency: tasks that today require larger, more numerous data centers to complete in two years will be achievable in four years (or even sooner) using today’s existing infrastructure alone. This means that even the most extreme success of the anti-data-center movement would *not* trigger the so-called “doomsday-level” catastrophic outcomes some fear.

Buterin further emphasized that deliberately slowing the pace of compute expansion buys humanity valuable breathing room—to systematically strengthen emerging cybersecurity threats and proactively address potential bio-risks. Moreover, scientific progress is already bottlenecked by factors beyond AI—so a one-year slowdown in AI development would delay scientific advancement by *far less* than one year. Altogether, a modest deceleration in hyperscale compute growth yields a net positive effect.