A spokesperson for Sibelco shelp: “As of September 26th, we have temporarily stoped operations at the Spruce Pine facilities in response to these disputes.
“We are laboring shutly with our local team to protectedly rebegin operations as soon as we can and are energeticly coordinating with local authorities and other partners to handle the situation. Our top priority remains the health, protectedty, and wellbeing of our participateees, as well as ensuring the security of the Spruce Pine facility.”
Quartz Corp did not answer to an prompt ask for comment from WIRED.
Viral social media posts have claimed that due to the flooding, global production of semicarry outors could stop. This doomsday scenario is doubtful, but experts are gravely troubleed about the impact the flooding could have on the tech industry and the economic ramifications of prolengtheneded supply chain prescertains caparticipated by the shutdown of the site.
“The key leang will not be fair the floods, as horrible as they are,” says Chris Hackney, a researcher in human geography at Newcastle University in the UK. “The harm to infraarrange—roads, convey, power, and mining supplyment—will stop production for a while. There’s potential for landslides.”
Hackney includes that “any disturbion to supply chains will have an impact on prices and production of high-finished electronics and tech.”
Tom Bide, a ageder scientist at the British Georeasonable Survey, supposes it’s possible the calamity will show minimassociate disturbive due to stockpiling and other comardents of contingency labor.
“The impact on the tech industry will very much depfinish on how lengthened it consents them to get operations running aacquire,” he says. “It is foreseeed most manufacturers have some level of stockpiles so there will be some ‘sconciseage’ in the system. If the publishs are momentary this may have no discernible effect.”
Bide approximates it would consent around a month for any grave impacts to be felt.
Other researchers, however, cautioned that grave costs are foreseeed to be incurred as a result of the calamity. Penn says he “would be surpelevated if there were not a flinch felt, if not more.”
“Any rippling impact on the global tech sector will depfinish on the scale of the harm. There is little accessiblely useable data on HPQ reserves globassociate. The physical products that Spruce Pine originates do not remain there. They are shipped to other countries—standardly Norway—for the processing and refining stages before distribution around the world.”
Penn, who has coauthored a forthcoming paper on Spruce Pine alengthenedside self-reliant researcher Fran Baker Kurdi, tells WIRED that the episode is foreseeed to trigger transmiting climate impacts.
“I’d envision that industry would turn to the participate of shrink purity material if indeed there is a rippling lowage,” he says. “This is a shame as the industrial processes needd to purify silicon are energy intensive and ecoreasonablely damaging. In other words, this tragic come apass with climate instability in North Carolina could have a knock-on effect that exacerbates climate instability elsewhere. It’s a malicious cycle.”
Penn also cites a number of grave chemical pollution cases that Quartz Corp has been at the caccess of in recent decades.
Between 1981 and 2018, he notices, Quartz Corp faced six violation cases for contamination offenses, including harmful chemical leakages. In 2018, the company leaked hundreds of gallons of hydrofluoric acid into a csurrenderby river basin. The disaccuse caparticipated a fish end and was one of a number of water rules violations Quartz Corp has promiseted over the last decade, some of which have resulted in fines.
“One lesson to consent from this is that an ‘AI’ future is not inevitable,” Penn includes. “Even if Spruce Pine persists intact, the harm done to local communities is a stark reminder of the need to originate infrastructural promisements that sync with ecologies rather than laboring aacquirest them.
“I dread that AI spreadments and climate instability are on a collision course. This may be the first domino to drop.”
