State shifts PR focus to sell Alaska as home for data centers. This is not a PR problem. It's a leadership problem.

NEW PROPOSALS FOR Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed $9 million public relations campaign aimed at the leaders of resource development companies and investors are due today.

“The state of Alaska excels in marketing tourism and seafood but has a limited market presence in other key industries such as minerals, forest products, transportation logistics, and other burgeoning industries,” the RFP says.

One key thing to watch will be which companies apply this time that failed to apply in August. That will give an indication of whether the Dunleavy administration is trying to steer the contract to a company for political reasons.

In cancelling the first request for proposals October 25, the state claimed the RFP produced by the state was deficient from the beginning and the process should start over again with a new one.

The state failed to mention any specific deficiencies, however. The Dunleavy administration said the RFP it created in August did not mention “all factors of significance to the state.”

“Specifically, (1) an offeror’s capabilities in identifying and cultivating relevant industry decision makers and influencers outside of Alaska, both domestically and internationally, and (2) an offeror’s capabilities in creating new and leveraging existing opportunities to promote the department’s interests.”

There is nothing in the evaluation process for the new RFP that directly deals with those two alleged deficiencies. So this is reallly about something else.

The difference between August 15 and today is that the Dunleavy administration has reshaped the proposal to focus more on creating a public relations campaign that is supposed to attract high-tech companies from around the world to build data centers in Alaska.

This goal was missing from the RFP in August. Rather than deal with this change directly, the state invented a generic excuse about alleged deficiencies in the RFP.

The new RFP calls for a “sample project” to “Develop a public relations plan that promotes Alaska as a prime location for data centers. The goal is to identify, target, and influence key decision-makers and influencers in technology, infrastructure, and investment sectors that will emphasize the advantages of locating data centers in Alaska.”

This is not the job of a PR worker. It requires a miracle worker. Without cheap electricity, Alaska is not a prime location for data centers. It doesn’t have cheap electricity. It has talk about cheap electricity.

As I wrote here on October 21, the new Dunleavy data center drive started it with a September 5 form letter to top executives of the tech companies that was no better than junk mail.

The state employee or employees who wrote the letter for Dunleavy didn’t revise the text of each letter to mention anything specific about Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta or the other recipients in the body of the message, simply referring to each company as “your organization.”

The letter said the gas pipeline is “awaiting anchor tenants, such as your firm, looking for long-term contracts at a competitive price to create low-cost electricity.”

Until the Dunleavy administration provides something tangible, file this one with the 2018 plan to attract bankrupt gun companies and the 2023 plan to cut electricity prices to Alaskans to 10 cents a kilowatt hour by 2030.

“Now some people will say that’s incredibly optimistic, we can’t do that, etc., etc., etc. But I’ve gotta remind you of a couple of things done in history here in the not-too-distant past. 1961, John F. Kennedy said we’re gonna go to the moon by the end of the decade,” Dunleavy told the energy task force he asked to shoot for the moon .

“People laughed at him,” Dunleavy said of JFK. “Nobody can go the moon. That’s impossible. It can’t be done.”

“We went to the moon,” said Dunleavy.

In terms of Alaska’s electric future, no one is going to the moon. The Dunleavy dream of 10-cent power vanished without notice. The energy task force did tell him what was needed, however. “The ability of the state to achieve a moonshot goal requires a coordinated effort across agencies and through all programs that intersect with the goal,” it said.

This overview from the energy center at UAF about data centers provides a look at the multi-faceted problems that separate reality from fantasy. There is no Dunleavy plan to put the pieces together—cheap power, fiber optic connections, redundant power supplies, and more. “Right now, this opportunity is a long-term bet, but one that could pay dividends as Alaska seeks to leverage its geographical location,” the UAF analysis says.

A public relations campaign, which may cost $9 million with renewals to 2030, won’t work. As with so many other Dunleavy proposals, there is no coordinated effort to reach the goal, just empty talk.

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