At the site of the former U.S. Steel South Works plant, a team of investors, professors, and CEOs envision a sprawling, 128-acre campus that will become a national hub for quantum computing innovation. Construction for this facility—the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (IQMP)— began last fall. While supporters of the IQMP claim the influx of tech giants will stimulate the local economy and create jobs, critics argue that the park will create environmental and ethical concerns. Officials call it “history-altering,” but residents say the development will cause destruction in more ways than one.
Any large-scale development brings environmental concerns, and the IQMP is no exception. These issues are exacerbated, though, by the park’s planned location and tenants’ computing demands. The park will be built on the former site of U.S. Steel South Works, which raises concerns about leftover contamination like steel byproducts and contaminated soil. In addition, the development of several quantum computing facilities could make matters worse. The campus will require massive amounts of energy just to run the buildings, which, when compounded with the need for computing power, will drive up energy costs. Similarly, future tenant Related Digital plans to build a data center on the campus, which would inevitably require high amounts of water and power.
Beyond the IQMP’s environmental costs, the tenants themselves are also a cause of frustration. Anchor tenant PsiQuantum has partnered with the Air Force, the Department of Defense, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and Lockheed Martin to provide quantum computing technology for warfare. DARPA, part of the Department of Defense, plans to partner with several of the IQMP’s investors. Other tenants include IBM (a company with longstanding military partnerships), Infleqtion (which received $2 million from the US Army to apply machine learning to warfare), and Diraq (a quantum computing company partially funded by DARPA). Another tenant that has caused concern is Quantum Machines, an Israeli quantum computing company. Particularly concerning is Quantum Machines’ partnerships with the Israeli government, such as the Israeli Quantum Computing Center at Tel Aviv University. In the past, Quantum Machines has also received direct funding from Israel’s Defense Ministry. Across the IQMP’s major investors, it’s clear that a large portion of the innovation and discovery that will take place there will end up contributing to war and destruction worldwide.
AI has already become heavily embedded in defense systems, blurring the line between human and machine-made decisions. This makes it increasingly difficult to hold people accountable for wartime crimes, such as America’s actions in Iran. When the US bombed a school in Iran, killing nearly 200 children, people were quick to place the blame on AI, when in reality, the blame should be placed on the people who didn’t bother to check what or who they were targeting and the people who started the (illegal) war in the first place. The acceleration of computing developments through the IQMP would effectively allow military officials to get away with anything, as they could easily place the blame on AI—even if that wasn’t the case.
Despite the destruction quantum innovation would bring once further incorporated into the military, the IQMP’s investors claim that the development will benefit people through creating new jobs and revitalizing the economy. Southside Together, an organization of South Side residents, says otherwise: the facility’s construction is intertwined with both environmental justice and the rights of residents. They list concerns about water usage, power demands, and pollution, as well as displacement and surveillance. They also argue that no one wanted or asked for the park to be built–a referendum demanded by residents was removed from the ballot–and that the massive budget for the park could be invested in community resources rather than in surveillance and warfare in order to benefit the working class instead of warmongering officials. Unlike what investors claim, the only people who would benefit from the IQMP are CEOs and war profiteers. When profit is prioritized over ethics, resources that could be invested in communities and addressing inequality are instead used for destruction. The IQMP will force people out of the communities they’ve lived in for generations through gentrification, cause pollution, raise utility prices, exacerbate existing infrastructure and inequality problems, and overall hurt, not help, the community, despite promises of jobs and economic benefits.
