Data Centers ‘Über Alles’
Soon, Americans might begin to wonder whether Silicon Valley is actually calling the shots in this country.
Over the summer, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas led a push to tuck a provision into the Senate budget reconciliation package that effectively would have banned states from regulating artificial intelligence. Cruz argued that developing this technology as rapidly as possible is more important than states’ rights. Thankfully, although the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed, the AI provision died with a 99-1 vote.
But now it’s back from the dead, with support from the White House and top Republicans in Congress.
On Nov. 17, Punchbowl News reported that House Republican leaders were working on a scheme to roll an AI state legislation moratorium into the National Defense Authorization Act. The following day, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that AI investment has turned the U.S. economy into the world’s “hottest,” and claimed that state regulation could threaten that alleged “hotness,” supposedly by stifling growth.
It’s hard to think of any other issue Trump and his team seem to care more about than AI. That’s odd, given that Trump’s approval rating is at record lows. At present, his best poll is from Marquette University Law School, which has him at 14 points underwater. His approval rating with independent voters currently stands at -43.
And yet, the administration has shown no sense of urgency in addressing issues like the rising cost of living, housing, and so on, even though these are what led Americans to give Trump a second term. Where we do see action, however, is on AI.
The day after Trump took to Truth Social to back his Republican allies, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told an AI industry group that the president is prepared to use executive orders to bypass Congress on the issue. In fact, Trump appears so adamant about forcing AI policy that Republicans in Congress have asked him to slow down.
“House GOP leadership has asked the White House to hold off on signing an executive order targeting state AI laws to buy more time for congressional negotiations,” Punchbowl News reported.
Stranger still, Energy Secretary Chris Wright appears to have lied, or at least told a very misleading account, about why the Trump administration is providing a $1 billion loan to restart the nuclear power plant on Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island. In an interview with CNBC, Wright claimed that the move was intended as a corrective to Biden-era policies that “didn’t allow affordable, reliable new sources [of energy] to come on.”
It is true that the 835-megawatt reactor could power as many as 800,000 homes. But the restart of Three Mile Island isn’t about providing power to residential homes. The real reason the Trump administration is jump-starting the plant is to supply power to Microsoft’s data centers. The fact that Wright framed it the way he did indicates that the administration is aware of the public’s growing concern about rising energy bills and its opposition to the proliferation of energy-hungry data centers.
Yes, Americans have heard all about how AI is the future. No, they still aren’t ready to see their country become one giant electrical grid solely to power data centers.
There is a widening gap between this administration’s priorities and the mandate voters thought they were giving it last November. Voters wanted lower prices, higher living standards, and a government that would listen to the average American for once. The Biden administration failed to deliver any of that, and the current administration isn’t breaking the mold.
In Michigan, the Howell Township Board of Trustees recently sent a reminder to the White House and Republicans in Congress after voting unanimously in favor of a moratorium on data centers. That decision came amid talk of a billion-dollar data center project being built on thousands of acres of local farmland. Residents there saw past the dollar signs and raised concerns ranging from environmental issues to skyrocketing utility bills and plummeting property values.
“It’s bad,” Chuck Smith told the local press. “It’s all bad. And it’s big money trying to buy out little towns. It’s that simple. There’s nothing else to say about it.” Smith, who said that he lives just feet from where the proposed data center would stand, highlighted that the town was in lockstep against the project. They do not want their little town taken over and repurposed as a big battery, and that is their right.
But that raises the question of what happens to the Howell Townships of America if the GOP and the White House move to strangle state and local attempts at impeding AI’s march. There is a delicate balance to be struck here between technological development and, well, everything else. The advocates of data centers über alles want to paint the detractors as somehow dependent on big government to save them. Ironically, these AI fanboys are arguing that line while attempting to bring the federal government down on top of those who would stand in their way.
If Americans had known that the top priority of this administration would be the whims of tech overlords last November, the election likely would have gone very differently.