The week the data center backlash exploded

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Do the words “data center” make you want to drop everything and call your congressional representative? You’re not alone, if we judge the nation’s mood by the actions of politicians who poll-test what they eat for breakfast (and there are worse ways). 

This looks like the week that the data center backlash broke containment and became the defining issue of this political moment. 

In the Texas governor’s race, Democrat Gina Hinojosa went up with an ad against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott over data centers with the punchline: “Greg Abbott is selling you out.” In a critical toss-up House race, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) launched an attack against her Republican challenger over his support for data centers. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a likely contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination who had previously touted data center investments, signed an executive order to limit their construction. He also bashed his opponent on data centers in a new campaign ad — a response to the Republican attacking him over those same facilities.

In my home state of Ohio, national Republicans are so worried about data centers damaging Sen. Jon Husted’s reelection chances that they sent a memo this week to top AI companies to warn that they could lose the seat because of the issue. And Mike Rogers, the Republican trying to win the Michigan Senate race for the GOP, went so far as to endorse a moratorium on data center building.

Go a little deeper

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In one image, this is why politicians are screaming at anyone who will listen that they loathe these data centers just as much as you do and want to stop Big Tech from building any more. It is a stunning turnaround: The percentage of Americans who “strongly oppose” a data center being constructed in their area has more than doubled in a single year.

As Molly Taft documented in a recent feature story for Wired, the relationship between the ubiquitous data-center backlash and the fears about AI is becoming hard to ignore: Most people still say they oppose data centers even when they don’t live anywhere near one, and most people opposed to data centers are also more likely to be skeptical of AI. And those sentiments are clearly bipartisan, which is why you have a Democrat and a Republican in the Michigan Senate race striking the same tone on data centers.

The merits of both sides in the data-center debate are probably more nuanced than the political slogans popping up around it. But this phenomenon is clearly about something bigger than the brick-and-mortar buildings that have become these political boogeymen. As Marina Bolotnikova put it in a story for Vox earlier this summer: Americans don’t know how to fight AI. So they’re fighting data centers instead.

And now the politicians are following their lead.

One link for later

➨ Print your photos like it’s the 1990s. When everybody carries a camera in their pocket and snaps candids as casually as taking a sip of water, it’s easy to become jaded about all those pictures. Don’t be. The best way to appreciate them, Adam Clark-Estes argues in his latest piece on living in our tech-dominated world, is to print those images out like you did a few decades ago. Cherish your memories by holding them in your hands.

Before you go…

• Did you know…Cuba has more than twice as many doctors per capita as the United States? But that hasn’t stopped the island nation’s healthcare system from deteriorating to the point of crisis, as Ananya Rupanagunta writes for Vox.
• Today’s trivia: What’s the insect stage after larva? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
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