Published: September 8, 2025
Soon after our semester came to a close, Paramount Pictures and Tom Cruise released Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. The eighth movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise and reportedly the last (although I’ll believe it when I see it). The movie follows secret agent Ethan Hunt and his Impossible Mission Force team members as they pull off one last impossible mission. The movie continues with the villain of the prequel Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning, a sentient rogue artificial intelligence with the ability to manipulate social media, news reports, and even broadcasts all over the world. M: I8 had all the selling points that the conclusion of an eight-part super spy series should have: enough recap for new viewers to understand the plot, enough tension to keep the diehard fans entertained through the flashbacks, call backs to earlier prequels, the threat of nuclear fallout, surprise returning characters, and even the loss of a fan favorite. But underneath this action movie’s suspense-filled plot and Tom Cruise-level crazy stunts, there’s a serious conversation: What is our end goal when it comes to the rapid progression of Artificial Intelligence?
In the previous movie, Dead Reckoning, governments and special forces agents from every country fought to obtain the rogue AI dubbed “The Entity” to use as the ultimate weapon of control. Ethan Hunt was tasked with securing the Entity for the United States— but went rogue, understanding that no one should have that much power. Ethan sets out to destroy the AI; however, we learn in the Final Reckoning that it’s not that simple, destroying The Entity would destroy all of cyberspace along with it. As The Entity’s infection grows, governments around the world enforce martial law, and the very concept of truth is threatened. The Entity also grows a strong and dedicated doomsday prepper following who believe that after The Entity completes its mission of global annihilation, the surviving humans will build a better world. These Entity acolytes infiltrate every level of government to ensure total world destruction. Although this plot point is a common one, it didn’t feel corny. M: I8 succeeded as an action movie not just with its fight scenes and impressive stunts, but also with its suspense-building and overall feeling of impending doom. The world ending in an action movie is as common as a fork in a kitchen, but in M: I8, it felt like the end was always around the corner, and with every turn, Ethan and his team somehow found a way.
As much as I enjoyed M: I8, I would not classify myself as a fan. I watched all eight movies over summer break because my partner is a fan. But as the movie’s plot progressed, and returning character Erika Sloane, played by Angela Basset, was introduced as the president of the United States, I paused the movie and declared that Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning was woke. Although the movie began production in 2022, two years before the former Vice President Kamala Harris would become the first Black woman to run for President of the United States, and the rapid progression of readily available AI like ChatGPT, I was shocked that a Tom Cruise action movie could be so on the noise— intentionally or not.
I’m not here to tell you that artificial intelligence super villains are just around the corner; we’ve been producing movies about the dangers of AI since before the 1980s, and the Terminator hit the big screen. The biggest threat AI is posing to us now is to our resources.
Reminiscent of computers’ early days, when they could fill an entire room, tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google are building enormous data centers for their artificial intelligence chat services to operate out of. These data centers use massive amounts of water to cool the servers; additionally, operating these enormous facilities indirectly takes from the water supply, according to Bloomberg News. The New York Times reported that within months of Meta’s 2018 construction of a two-million-square-foot data center in Mansfield, Georgia, residents near the facility began having problems with their water quality and water pressure due to sediment buildup, leaving entire sinks and bathrooms unusable and their water undrinkable. Meta claims the problems with residents’ water are unknown. The same New York Times article reported that “data center companies have yet to disclose how much water they use, which has left some policymakers in the dark when it comes to regulation,” citing Georgia-based nonprofit environmentalist Chris Manganiello. After securing access to some of the data from these facilities, Manganiello said, “one data company was asking for nine million gallons of water a day, equal to 30,000 households.” These facilities are being constructed worldwide, not just in the United States.
These AI data centers are guzzling our water, but they also seem to be accelerating the price of electricity. In an interview with PBS, Electricity Law Initiative Director of Harvard Law Ari Peskoe explained that ” these facilities are using so much energy that utilities are building billions of dollars of infrastructure to support them and spreading those costs to all of us.” Peskoe cites two reasons data centers are causing prices to rise, using real-life examples. One, tech companies build more data centers, and power companies spend money updating infrastructure in anticipation. Two, energy companies usually operate with a shared cost system, meaning when the power goes out in your neighborhood because of a tree from your yard, the whole neighborhood pays the cost of getting utilities fixed. Similarly, if a new neighborhood is built and the utility expands its system, everyone’s cost goes up, not just the houses in the neighborhood. The problem with this system is that the data centers, according to Peskoe, use “as much electricity as large cities, and they happen to be supporting the wealthiest corporations in the world.” We shouldn’t be footing the bill.
So, although Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning was fun, its message about the dangers of Artificial Intelligence is very real. Billion-dollar corporations hiding the truths about their massive data centers sounds too close to a rogue AI hiding truths from the world. #stopusingChatGPT
