Inside the fight over America’s data centers |
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Inside the fight over America’s data centers
“The ugliest thing I’ve ever seen”: How New Jersey residents feel about a data center in their backyard.
Make no mistake: Americans hate data centers.
A recent poll from Gallup shows 70 percent of Americans oppose a data center in their local area, including 48 percent who are strongly opposed. That 70 percent number is tied to several concerns, environmental questions and quality of life chief among them, and it’s up 18 percent (!) in just two months, when Gallup asked the same question in March.
Nonetheless, data centers keep going up at a rate that is nothing short of astonishing.
According to one estimate, more than 4,000 data centers have already been built across the country. More than 2,000 that are currently under construction.
That alone shows just how quickly artificial intelligence, workforce automation, and the data centers that power these new technologies are becoming one of the can’t-miss issues in our current political landscape. And still, President Donald Trump and the White House have seemingly chosen to stand aside on AI regulation.
On the Democratic side, it’s an open question what comes next. Politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have called for a nationwide moratorium on data centers in order to institute more consumer protections. Others, like Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), are less definitive: He told me recently that........