Have you ever suffered from water scarcity? Because I've lived it. This is a facile argument. Data centers are standing on the backs of so many others while at the same time using their piles of cash to force them to do more with less. And their argument about why is because the technology is so life changing and amazing.
It's so sad that money and power blind people when there are viable technological alternatives available.
My personal experience with suffering from water scarcity: Taking a loss on a crop of corn because the farm at the front of the ditch took more water than they were supposed to take. That same year, a ditch rider was threatened at gunpoint.
When your own personal livelihood depends on another business playing fair with water, these kinds of stories hit different.
It absolutely is a resource issue. It is also very much also a political issue.
Ag water rights is a really f'ed up issue in the US. It's very tangentially connected to whether there's a data center using up water though.
Besides which there are so many other f'ed up dynamics in the profitability of a commodity crop like corn- Gov't subsidies, gmo/pesticides, ethanol, factory animal farming, etc.
What I'm struggling to understand is why so many are working so hard to let big tech off the hook when it comes to developing better technology for power and cooling systems.
You're right that it is tangentially connected. But that doesn't mean we should let them off the hook.
It's unclear what you really mean here, but "suffer" from "scarcity" could mean a few things.
Tech is not immune from abuses of power, but most water scarcity that causes suffering (people being literally thirsty or can't wash their clothes) is not a resource issue (amount of water available)- it's a political/infrastructure issue. Don't build a data center that takes away people's clean drinking water. Build water infrastructure where people live.
But of course that's not the problem described by the article, even though the writer would like to lightly imply that might be the case.
Edit to add: Water and water rights in the western USA is a political issue that politicians would have you believe is not up to them. It's a scam and an advertising campaign that has people buying low flush toilets when a lot of the water is wasted by big Ag companies.