Why aren't we asking for a share?

I live in Las Cruces. I run an AI consulting practice here. And I have been watching the Project Jupiter debate with growing frustration, not because people are wrong to raise concerns, but because the conversation is stuck on the wrong questions.

The opposition focuses on water and emissions. These are legitimate issues, but solvable ones. What nobody is talking about is the one concession that could transform New Mexico's economy for a generation: guaranteed access to the AI compute that this facility will produce.

Some believe the deal is already done. Others think the pipeline denial killed it. Neither is true. Project Jupiter still needs air quality permits, pipeline approvals, and LEDA incentives to move forward. The air quality decision has been pushed to July. There is still time to shape this deal.

Water has a precedent. Forty miles away, the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant in El Paso produces up to 27.5 million gallons of fresh water daily from brackish groundwater. The same aquifer system runs beneath Doña Ana County.

The county has already authorized $25 million in state funding applications for a local desalination plant, with matching funds from Project Jupiter. The water problem is being engineered.

Emissions should shape the deal, not kill it. Natural gas turbines raise real concerns. But data center operators choose gas because AI infrastructure requires near-perfect power reliability, and renewables cannot yet guarantee that alone. Battery storage is closing the gap. Microsoft and Apple already run data centers on battery-backed solar.

Southern New Mexico has some of the highest solar irradiance in the country. Instead of blocking the project, we should design state incentives that make the renewable path the economically rational choice: tax abatements for on-site solar, expedited permitting for battery storage, and co-investment in storage research at NMSU.

But here is the real miss. Project Jupiter will host the compute that produces AI output for OpenAI, measured in tokens and sold as a service. Oracle has committed $320 million in direct community payments and over $600 million in tax revenue. That sounds like a lot. But it is the traditional playbook: cash, jobs, and infrastructure — the same deal any county would negotiate for a warehouse.

This is not a warehouse. This is a Stargate facility for OpenAI. It will produce the raw material of the intelligence economy. And not a single provision in the public record guarantees that New Mexico's students, businesses, or researchers will have any access to what this facility produces.

No government anywhere has secured an enforceable commitment to compute access from an AI data center. But OpenAI's own policy blueprint proposes allocating compute to public universities near data center sites. In Greece and Norway, OpenAI has signed memoranda that include language on AI credits and priority compute access. These are signals of intent, not binding contracts. New Mexico could be the first to walk through that door.

None of that intent is in the Project Jupiter agreement.

NMSU is 45 minutes away. Doña Ana Community College is in the same county. Thousands of small businesses in Las Cruces and El Paso could use subsidized access to frontier AI tools. We should be negotiating for dollar-denominated API credit allocations for university research, subsidized enterprise access for New Mexico businesses, and workforce development built around access to AI tools.

This is achievable. Community benefit agreements routinely include in-kind contributions like broadband expansion and workforce training. Commercial frameworks for measuring and enforcing access to AI compute already exist. OpenAI maintains formal service credit terms. Enterprise contracts include service level agreements with up-time guarantees and usage monitoring. This is a drafting exercise, not a legal frontier.

The communities engaged with this project have leverage right now. The pipeline right-of-way was just denied. Air quality hearings are pending. LEDA negotiations continue. Every one of those conversations is a chance to add one question: what is our compute access allocation?

Water can be desalinated. Emissions can be incentivized toward clean energy. But if we let the most valuable infrastructure of the century operate in our backyard without demanding a share of its output, we will have traded our resources for a check while the real wealth goes somewhere else.

New Mexico deserves better than that.

Jerry Prochazka is the founder of Strategy & The Machine, an AI consulting practice in Las Cruces and El Paso. He is a Stanford GSB executive program graduate, holds an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and is a U.S. Navy veteran. He lives in Las Cruces.