A few weeks ago, I was having a politics conversation with a tech insider. The issue of datacenters became a focus of the conversation. The first response from him was “this is the issue that might decide 2026 and will certainly decide 2028.”
The tech side of the issue is essentially: As 5G wifi was to mobile connectivity, so too are the datacenters the cornerstone of nationwide AI rollout. Eventually, all of the datacenters will interconnect and become part of a massive information system that houses all knowledge, a great digital brain. From that point, engagement with Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems will become like a public utility.
The datacenters themselves can be a hot button issue as their proximity to people creates friction. Battles against datacenters are taking place in rural and non-rural areas alike. With deep pockets and strong national security arguments involving the “AI race,” the technocrats are currently winning the argument. However, as with all special interest issues, the opportunity for political benefit now determines DC advocacy. WATCH:
What are your thoughts on this issue?
Is opposition to datacenters strong enough to tilt the outcome of the 2026 midterms? And do you believe 2028 will be determined with this issue at the forefront?
Skynet
Something like this (with other type of development) happened in my republican-leaning Indiana town. Democrats used it to fracture the republican base and get (a pretty awful) woman elected Mayor.
Don’t fall for it.
It’s a tight corner to be in. Like it or not, to compete globally, in everything, we’ll need them. Hence, China will be sowing discord under the table to slow our progress towards global dominance. So my knee-jerk reaction to that is that we should be going all in. However, the impact to electricity costs should be fully absorbed by the tech companies. Their profit models can and should be accounting for that.
And yes, privacy be dawned. I get it. Guess what… It already is. I don’t see a way back from that without heading into the mountains and entirely unplugging.
They drop your property values because people don’t want to live near them and they give off this awful buzzing noise that carries for quite a distance.
Embrace the inevitable.
Didn’t you mean bend over and BRACE for the inevitable, with plenty of vaseline on hand? 😎
As much as I think Alex Jones a nut, he nailed it with Prison Planet. People hardly notice with their own faces stuck on their portable spy gadgets accepting every single invasion of their privacy with one click. Unbelievable.
It is a huge issue and could definitely impact the midterms. It is alienating rural Americans fast. The same folks already losing their lifestyle and property to Green Energy now being dwarfed by the decimation caused by Data Centers… which would be far more appropriately placed in de-industrialized Urban Centers.
Yes, especially in rural (generally red) America.
Definitely. This could permanently turn rural areas blue. If Democrats ran against data centers they’d pick up significant rural votes.
If Democrats were smart enough to support the 2nd amendment, stop talking about trans stuff, and oppose data centers they’d have the majority of the rural vote and close out the GOP as a national party.
I use Claude more and more for work and absolutely love it. Younger generations are right to be concerned but for an almost 60 year old, I’m lite years ahead of coworkers who resist due to privacy or unwillingness to change or whatever. AI is everywhere. Learn to adapt or die. As for data centers, a healthy debate is effective, I hate hearing about what they do to water supplies, living in Michigan, fearful of the obvious…that it will be too late , and sucking all the water out of the Great Lakes feels …retarded. Engineer a better way, pronto.
“Engineer a better way, pronto.”
Agree…
It’s almost like a “war time” need.
Opposition comes from how resources are being allocated and paid for. From what I’ve read (I don’t actually know firsthand), people say that their local government is raising water and electricity rates, screwing everybody in the area because of a single data center’s resource consumption. If this complaint is true, then it’s unacceptable. Crooked government officials need to rot in a prison cell for that kind of behavior, and their oligarch cronies deserve to lose their shirts.
However, I suspect that most of the opposition is manufactured propaganda being bankrolled by foreign interests who don’t want the US to gain a technological edge. All the concerns about the technocrats are valid, but I don’t think that’s a main driver of the opposition messaging.
So do the people of this nation want industry to operate in this country, or just become a wasteland of service jobs. This argument is like saying steel mills or an auto manufacturer in your town is a bad thing. Bunch of crybabies if you ask me. I guess folks complaining would rather their kids work at the local Walmart or McDonald’s.
When the State and Local government gives the Data Center a 25 year tax abatement and the electric company gives them special rates…….the locals get taxed to make up for the short fall.
They cost billions to build, employ almost nobody (10 people to operate), promote AI to take jobs and rely on the citizen to subsidize their massive power demands. But here they come. They generate tax dollars for localities on their build cost and cost to equip. So politicians want them. President Trump is right. They should have mini-reactors to generate their own power like submarines. But overall I see them as a blight on America.
And another thing, the argument is that you’ll elect an immoral party, promoting immoral candidates, instituting immoral ideologies and policies -all because a data center is going into your town?
Having your utility bill go up because a data center comes in and forces up the cost of water and energy …
That’s definitely a hot-button issue.
Reminds me of the old days when we were told that off-shoring our industry was inevitble, so get used to it.
“Get used to it,” is not something voters like to hear.
Agree and its not just the COST of water. It will be the actual draining of available water sources, which will be quite damaging to everyone’s water access/use.
Put the data centers on the coasts away from populations and make them build desalination plants and plants for electricity.
On the outset, when the AI bubble pops, and it will as most of the companies are already in the red with their AI programs, who will be left holding the bag?
The surveillance state is what concerns me the most…research flock and what they are doing with these cameras. Gross and direct violations of our 4th Amendment.
I am totally against this expansion. It’s already gone way too far, thanks to the elected and unelected parts of federal govt.
Advances 1984 former science fiction into reality – brings even MORE massive violations of the 4th Amendment.
AI has limited usefulness but nowhere near the scale that globalists desire and are planning to build..
Jobs created by the construction and operation of datacenters will be minimal, and along with AI will bring a severe net loss of employment for meaningful work.
Energy and water required to run these using current technology is being re-directed AWAY from manufacturing (REAL PRODUCTION) and AWAY from human survival (POTABLE FRESH WATER FROM SURFACE RIVERS AND UNDERGROUND AQUIFERS) at a rate & volume that will exceed natures ability to replace it at the same rate.
Unless nuclear power generation is immediately authorized and mandated to power such behemoths, there is insufficient capacity in the 2026 electric grid into the foreseeable future.
Those previously Trump voters feel he doesn’t care about them, but they are absolutely sure the communist Democrats will. Pathetic. Bless their hearts!
What the commies will do is predictable. The question is whether the people on our side have the foresight to deal with it.
Incidentally, this is the kind of issue that helps people refine their understanding of who is on their side.
2026 — no
2028 – too many things can happen before then. Pocketbook issues and wars could take precedence
Climate change is dead so the Democrats need a fake problem to solve hence data centers!
I see opposition to AI and not just by the Democommunists who are never shy about exploiting a crisis or creating a narrative for political advantage.
This also involves the issue of taking farm land out of production.
Data centers aren’t the problem. Power for them is.
These are generational issues. Decades ago, no one wanted a nuclear power plant in their community.
Going forward, it won’t just be data centers. There will likely be a resurgence in the mining industry. Rare earth minerals and other critical minerals will be mined in mountainous and rural areas where they are abundant. No one will want mines or metal refineries in their communities either. Same with small modular nuclear reactors, as well.
It will always be a challenge for people to evolve / change with the times. Personally, I know these things are needed for national security, but I don’t want them in my backyard either.
“It will always be a challenge for people to evolve / change with the times.”
I keep thinking about displaced factory workers who were lectured about evolving and changing with the times. In my neck of the woods, it was timber workers who were expected to give up their jobs to benefit this or that animal no one had ever heard of.
The midterms will be decided by 1) the state of the economy as perceived by the bulk of the voters and 2) turnout.
Mom and grandma and great grandma had plants in their house and they were not real and they all called them artificial.
If people actually believe AI is anything but man programmed computers wake the hell up.
ALL of these “AI” systems and social media platforms have one thing in common.
They are all heavily connected and on the Strings of China and data centers need electricity and massive amounts of Water for cooling paid for by taxpayers no matter how they claim it not be true.
So, MSNOT is a credible resource now?
It never hurts to monitor what the other side thinks. Otherwise you live in an echo chamber.
Even the devil lets loose a bit of truth .
But it is never for your benefit.
The big points of contention against data centers is the tax breaks be given to the data center companies, electric use and water use.
The local politicians are only looking at the alleged financial benefits and have no clue of the potential problems.
Construction jobs as IL is building another one….with about 70 in the pipeline. They are competing with the swamp land in VA and DC.
Is this a globalist/corporatist/business/tech answer to all the green new scams, only this one has staying power, compared to Solyndra as that one comes to my mind?
last week, I think it was Meta, one of the tech giants, who announced lay offs as pre positioning towards AI?…sorry, cannot remember the details…
First off MSNOW is not trusted news. They will find the most negative individual on any matter/issue.
Find people that have jobs building these centers and then go ask what the small business have to say increased sales or maybe people in general that are getting some long need road work and street lighting sidewalks and such, how about tax revenues being up for school improvement. You could go on about the positive and negative forever.
Will it effect 2026/2028 vote, my, thought 2/3% maybe. If it is even that much, it will be because of morons listening to MSNOW!
The bigger issue is this Antichrist. Like I said right here, 15000 satellites in earth orbit at 600 to 1200 miles up, they are already calling it megacluster and then datacenters down here on earth, looking like the all-seeing eye of Sauron the Devil. Crazy thing it will not matter who is President or in control of Congress, it will go forward to its conclusion.
It is written, in God’s book. We are just seeing how that is playing out. I have always wondered how would it playout!
It seems to me that we should be doing what we are doing only as a last resort. Have they looked at other options, or just rushing to be first?
Seems like, instead of the numerous, large footprints being used, existing infrastructure…like existing cell towers, existing omnidirectional range radio staions (nationally average one every 100 miles, obsolete for current air traffic, other existing government buildings, interstate medians, etc., could be utilized to relay date and information with the natural coolness of space used to the heat sinks needed. so! Around that permeter, build the rest instead of lunging head-long out of the gate buying up property and using a lot of energy resourdes needlessly.
This is a $10 Trillion dollar business, so we should expect a lot of dirty propaganda. Against the data centers are China, Musk (space is the place), US commies, ecology nuts, and DEI/laptop workers. If there is peace with Iran I would expect Qatar and UAE to be a good place (cheap land and energy). But for low risk and cheap energy the USA is the way. The losers in the data center fight will be the blue collar guys that build and equip and maintain.
Almost every community in Virginia has grass roots groups fighting data centers. It seems to be a bipartisan issue with the majority of engaged citizens opposing them.
Add to that Virginia is planning to build a massive energy transmission chain that will run through many rural counties and require tens of thousands of people to lose property to eminent domain. People are tying that to data centers and are rightfully angry.
I will not vote for anyone that supports more data centers – VA is already full of them and they are an environmental nightmare that raise all our utility costs.
This issue is enough to flip votes all across rural and suburban Virginia.
ok, for all those currently against,
let’s say all of the objections are resolved
(noise, utility rate increases, water consumption,
electrical use, site location, anything else –
and all those issues CAN be resolved appropriately),
are you still in opposition?
if the privacy boat has sailed, of what further damage is a data center?
all questions – haven’t made up my mind either,
although i admit to leaning “for” if done properly.
I smell Astroturf. Where were all these people when West Texas was despoiled by wind farms and solar arrays? They are a 100 times worse than data centers.
i think that the first question to this line of thought has to be what data are the data centers collecting and how much privacy does the owner of that data have? if (sarc) our data is the source and we are the target then we have a constitutional crisis brewing. add this to the fact that without the data centers, the digital currency doesn’t exist on a practical basis and you have information and control connectivity.
I don’t know if it will affect the midterms overall, but on the county and local level, county commissioners that are for it will almost certainly lose their office if they are up for re-election.
Using copilot is not connected in people’s minds with data centers in one’s backyard.
Assuming that no spying or nefarious BS is going on for AI, I have yet to see the business case for AI. Like yeah, kill the workforce to maximize profits (slavery works on the same principle), but what are you actually using all that for?
AGI? Ad rev? Massive mathematical calculations?
I agree with Steve Bannon’s proposal to cut a deal with the principals that they transfer 50% of the equity interest to the American people as they are leveraging our pension and savings to fund the AI build out. No more of this socializing risk while privatizing profits.
opposition to datacenters is healing the Right/Left divide. Everyone hates noise/light pollution and poisoning the ground water.