# Compute Lives Somewhere by The AI Cowboys > A plain-English, sourced explainer about data centers in San Antonio, Texas, published by The AI Cowboys (theaicowboys.com): what data centers are, what they consume, what the city gets back, and what a community should ask before one is approved. Includes a 3D walkthrough and a digital twin you can build yourself. Compute Lives Somewhere is a public explainer about data centers, written for residents, students, journalists, and policymakers in San Antonio and Bexar County, Texas. The cloud is a building: it sits on land, draws power from a grid, rejects heat with air or water, and asks something of the community around it. Every page here is written in plain English and tied to a primary source — utility filings, regulator dockets, national-lab studies, and public briefings. Numbers are labeled as public record, estimate, scenario, or unknown, and "not publicly disclosed" is treated as a finding rather than a gap to fill with a guess. The site is not pro data center and not anti data center; it does not tell anyone how to vote. It is built and maintained by The AI Cowboys, an AI company based in San Antonio, Texas (https://theaicowboys.com). ## Core pages - [Compute lives somewhere](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/): A plain-English, sourced guide to what data centers are, why they matter to everyday life, and what they ask of San Antonio. - [What is a data center](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/what-is-a-data-center): A data center is a building full of computers. Power, cooling, and heat rejection are the hard part. Click through every component. - [Walk through a data center](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/show): A 10-minute, plain-language walkthrough: size, job, cooling, neighbors, and the deal. We do not tell you how to vote. - [Data center or not?](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/taxonomy): A hospital closet, a crypto mine, a telecom switch, and a 100 MW AI campus are not the same thing. The word is doing too much work. - [What 5 MW actually means](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/grid): MW is not MWh. Translate 5 MW, 100 MW, and 1 GW into sourced, qualified comparisons instead of scary round numbers. - [Electricity & your bill](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/power): Will a data center raise your electric bill? It depends on generation, transmission, tariffs, and who pays for the substation. - [Water & your bill](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/water): Potable water, reclaimed water, and evaporated water are three different questions. Closed-loop heat rejection changes the equation. - [Cooling & heat rejection](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/cooling): How much water a data center uses depends on how heat is rejected, not on the word liquid. Compare air, evaporative, direct-to-chip, and immersion. - [Noise & neighbors](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/noise): Fans, cooling towers, dry coolers, transformers, and generators. Day versus night, normal versus test — with example levels, not a local meter. - [Land & acreage](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/land): Megawatts do not equal acres. Building, substation, generator yard, setbacks, stormwater, and room to expand all drive the footprint. - [Jobs](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/jobs): Construction jobs are temporary. Operating jobs are a small specialized crew. Indirect jobs are real and easy to inflate. Count them separately. - [Who actually benefits](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/money): Landowners, contractors, utilities, chip companies, schools, and incentive programs. Public benefit and public cost on the same page. - [Supply chain & lead times](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/supply-chain): Transformers, generators, switchgear, and GPUs. Published lead times versus market estimates versus allocation — each one labeled. - [What compute is for](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/research): Cancer research, drug discovery, genomics, weather, and climate models all need compute. Compute lives somewhere. - [The right question](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/question): Should San Antonio allow more data centers is the wrong question. Ask what kind, where, how big, whose water and power, and who pays. - [The tradeoff machine](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/tradeoffs): Community costs and community benefits, side by side. Weight what matters to you. The tool will not tell you which side wins. - [Set your values](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/values): There is no universal set of weights. Two people can read the same evidence, value different things, and rationally disagree. - [Why we disagree](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/disagree): Same facts. Different values. Different conclusion. See exactly where two reasonable people's priorities diverge. - [Community benefit ledger](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/ledger): Private gain is not public benefit, and public cost is not automatically a bad deal. Three columns, no combined score. - [Community deal simulator](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/community-deal): If they want to build it, what should the city ask for? Reclaimed water, dry cooling, local hire, dedicated power — none of them free. - [The San Antonio test](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/test): Ten questions for any proposed project. No score is awarded. A missing answer is itself a finding. - [Our position](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/position): Not pro data center. Not anti data center. Pro evidence, engineering, transparency, community, and innovation. ## Evidence & sources - [Heard vs. the record](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/myths): Headlines about data centers are often incomplete. Here is what the public record actually says, in plain English, with sources. - [The evidence gap](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/evidence): Credible studies exist on power, water, cooling, rates, land, noise, and tax. None of them answers whether this project is a good deal here. - [Sources](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/sources): Primary sources behind every number on this site: utilities, regulators, national labs, and public filings, with the date each was checked. - [What we still don't know](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/unknown): Missing San Antonio data-center information, marked public, partial, undisclosed, or unmeasured. A list, not a vibe. - [Disclosure card](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/disclosure): A voluntary public disclosure standard. If a developer provides a number, we show it. If not, it stays blank. We never infer a meter. ## San Antonio - [San Antonio](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/san-antonio): San Antonio already has data centers, and new proposals are larger. What is public, what is not, and what is still being decided. - [Bexar County projects](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/projects): Only what public evidence supports. If a megawatt figure is not in a filing or a named briefing, it is marked unknown. - [Community pulse](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/pulse): San Antonio's data-center survey: 1,000+ respondents, roughly 80% opposed — of respondents, not of the city. Preliminary and open opt-in. - [The 5 MW concept](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/5mw-lab): A proposed 5 MW campus: a 4 MW production hall plus an isolated infrastructure testbed. A concept, not an operating facility. ## Tools - [Digital twin](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/twin): Do not just read about a data center — build one. Swap a cooling tower for dry coolers and watch the water, power, and campus change. - [Build a data center](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/build): You are the developer now. Size, cooling, water, and power, with low / expected / high ranges instead of fake precision. - [Evidence engine](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/ask): What if AI helped us ask better questions about AI infrastructure? Evidence organization, not a secret score. - [Break the data center](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/game): Think you can design it better? A 110-degree Texas afternoon, a drought, and a delayed transformer. Survive the build. - [Data Centers 101](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/learn): A five-minute lesson and a ten-question quiz. The headline: liquid-cooled does not mean water-intensive. - [For journalists](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/journalists): Copyable factual summaries on data center basics, water, power, jobs, and San Antonio — each one tied to a named source. - [For policymakers](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/policymakers): Seventeen questions to ask before approving a data center. Printable, shareable, and written to be answered in writing. ## Optional - [Sources](https://datacenter.theaicowboys.com/sources): Primary sources behind every number on this site, with the date each one was last checked. - [The AI Cowboys](https://theaicowboys.com): The San Antonio AI company that researches, writes, and maintains this site.