Translator's note: Opening the AI Action Summit, 10 February 2025, President Emmanuel Macron vaunted France's 'comparative advantage' in hosting AI centres. Plentiful and 'clean' nuclear power is at the ready - supposedly. France already boasts over 300 centres, at the time ranking sixth in the world regarding capacity. Many more are planned, and bigger, at [...]

Jean-Luc Porquet has been a journalist at Le Canard enchainé since 1994, where this article appeared on 9 July. He writes a column on ecology and technocratic society, as well as theater reviews. He has written a dozen books, the latest of which, Le grand procès des animaux, is a satirical fictional account of the sixth extinction in progress.