After the Data Centers - Dissent Magazine
Data center opponents have assembled a potent political force. But without a more expansive vision, there is a risk that this techlash could be co-opted and fizzle out. “What will it take to get Americans on board with data centers?” a Democratic Party staffer on Capitol Hill recently asked me. It was a sincere question, not a rhetorical one. Data centers have become a flash point in U.S. politics: Americans are sick of them, and organizers are attempting to block their construction, while a cadre of developers, financiers, tech companies, and energy producers push the deals forward, eager to reap the rewards. The failure to scale up these data centers, they claim, is the bottleneck standing in the way of society-changing artificial-intelligence-enabled prosperity. This conflict has reoriented the political conversation on AI, which is now focused squarely on how the country should build the physical infrastructure on which the fate of the AI revolution hangs. Some grassroots challenge