OpenAI's Stargate infrastructure project is landing in rural West Texas, and the people who have lived there for decades are already feeling it. Tom and Lisa Perini have run their ranch and restaurant in Buffalo Gap, outside Abilene, for over 40 years. They are not tech insiders. They are the community that large-scale AI investment actually lands on.
What makes this worth reading is not the conclusion. It is the tension the Perinis describe between real economic opportunity for struggling small towns and the harder question of what gets lost when a place changes fast. That friction, told by people with 40 years of roots in the region, is more honest than any press release about community benefit.
OpenAI published this conversation themselves, which means the framing is controlled. Read it anyway, because the Perinis say things that complicate the official narrative, and the questions they raise about rural identity and preservation are ones that will apply to every other small town Stargate touches next.
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