National Review Online
Monday, August 24, 2026
Anti-data-center sentiment is sweeping the nation, and,
this being an election year, politicians of both parties are jumping to indulge
it. In blue New York, Governor Kathy Hochul has signed an executive order that
enacts the country’s first moratorium on “hyperscaler” installations. In purple
Pennsylvania, Governor Josh Shapiro has reversed his previously bullish
position on data centers, taken to describing their developers as “bullies” and
“speculators,” and established what he proudly describes as the “strictest guardrails
in the nation.” In red Texas, Governor Greg Abbott has halted all approvals for
new data centers, pending the results of a comprehensive state audit that will
take months to complete. By the end of the year, one would expect skepticism —
if not hostility — to be the default mode in all 50 states.
The politics surrounding data centers have certainly
changed. A year ago, most Americans were ambivalent on the question. Today,
polls consistently show that a supermajority of voters is opposed to the
construction of new facilities near their homes and, more broadly, that the
very term “data center” has become toxic. The reasons for this toxicity vary —
some respondents cite water usage, others electricity prices, environmental
concerns, and noise pollution — but the message does not. Per Gallup, only 7
percent of Americans “strongly favor” the construction of a data center in
their area.
Not all of these concerns are unfounded. There is, for
example, no reason that taxpayers should provide subsidies to the corporations
that are building data centers, or that eminent domain should be used. And
while most of the concerns about noise or pollution are unfounded, it is
entirely legitimate for the citizenry to demand sensible zoning regulations in
the same manner as it would elsewhere. Still, the sheer scale of the opposition
— and the speed with which it has coalesced — is redolent of a moral panic akin
to those that attended the introduction of nuclear power or fracking or 5G.
Bluntly put, the vast majority of the sensationalist claims that are made about
data centers are nonsense. They do not use a notable amount of water. They do
not tend to increase the cost of electricity. They are not unusually noisy.
Indeed, compared with almost any other industrial project, they are
astonishingly clean.
As has occasionally been his wont, President Trump seems
to be the only politician in the United States who is wholly unmoved by these
broader trends. Asked recently about the issue, Trump said, “If I were the
mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big
plant in, an AI plant or a data center, I would absolutely want it because the
jobs are enormous, and the money paid, the taxes paid, are just enormous.”
Trump added, “It’s going to create success. It’s going to create tremendous
innovation medically.”
On PBS, James Henson, the director of the Texas Politics
Project at the University of Texas at Austin, described these words as
“tone-deaf.” And perhaps they are. But politics is about more than merely
following the crowd, and when Trump insists that “if you don’t take it, you’re
going to be left behind because there are plenty of places that want it,” he is
undoubtedly correct. The internet — and, more specifically, artificial
intelligence — are here to stay. As such, the question is not whether more
data centers will be built, but where. The answer to that question can
be, “In America, by Americans.” It can be, “In China, by the Chinese.” It can
even be, “In space.” But make no mistake, there will be an answer. At the risk
of also being “tone-deaf,” we believe that the answer ought to be, “In America,
built by Americans, for Americans, with the jobs, economic benefits, and tax
revenues benefiting Americans.”
Since its founding, America has been a place where people
build. We approve of this, and we would like to see the United States own this
technological revolution in the same way as it has owned so many others — from
mass-produced automobiles in the 1910s, to commercial radio in the 1920s,
passenger aviation in the 1930s, integrated circuits in the 1950s, lunar
exploration in the 1960s, personal computing in the 1970s, GPS in the 1980s,
the internet in the 1990s, smartphones and cloud computing in the 2000s, and
fracking in the 2010s. There are no obvious historical examples of Americans
rejecting a new development and benefiting from that rejection. The AI
build-out is unlikely to serve as an exception to that rule.
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