Drive north out of Phoenix and the desert opens up.
Scrub. Rock. Heat coming off the road in sheets. Nothing out there but saguaro and sky.
Giphy
Then you come over a rise and see something that does not belong. Cranes. Dozens of them. Concrete structures the size of aircraft carriers. Thousands of vehicles parked in the dirt.
That is tens of billions of dollars being poured into the ground, building factories to make the small silicon rectangles inside every device you own.
Which raises an obvious question. Why here?
It is a desert. It is hot enough to melt road signs. Water is the entire region's defining anxiety.
The answer is a very good lesson in how big decisions actually get made, and almost none of it is what you would guess.
Come look.