Could Data Centers Actually Be Good For Your Town?

**Bridget Bergen** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. I'm Bridget Bergen, sitting in for Brian today.
Across the country, a building boom is colliding with a political backlash. Annual spending on building data centers in the United States jumped from $15 billion to over $35 billion in just a few years. It's a surge driven by the AI arms race, and Americans are pushing back hard. People worry these things will drain local water, foul the air, and send their electricity bills through the roof. A Consumer Reports survey late last year found 78 percent of Americans somewhat or very concerned that new data centers will drive up their energy bills.
Communities are turning that anxiety into action. Maybe you've come across the protests on your social media. In just the first three months of this year, plans for at least 20 facilities were shelved amid public opposition. That's more than $41 billion in foregone investment, according to the environmental news site Heatmat Pro.
That fight has moved into state houses. At the beginning of June, the New York State Legislature passed the first in the nation data center moratorium that's awaiting Governor Kathy Hochul's signature. And at least 12 other states are weighing their own moratoria. Four municipalities have imposed permanent bans and in the Senate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has a bill to pause new AI supercomputing campuses nationwide. But our next guest argues that the conventional wisdom may have it wrong, and that these campuses can deliver real jobs and serious tax revenue. He says the truth is more complicated than the activist rhetoric suggests. Eric Levitz is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers the fights that divide the American left and right. Eric, welcome back to WNYC.

**Eric Levitz** (2:09)
Thanks so much for having me.

**Bridget Bergen** (2:11)
And listeners, if you live near a data center or one that's been proposed in your town, call in and tell us exactly what happened. Has your power bill changed, the traffic, the noise, the local debate? And if your community said no, why? Would stopping a nearby center make you feel any better about AI itself? If you're involved in the AI data center battle, make your case. The number is 212-433-WNYC.
That's 212-433-9692. We can also take your questions for our guest, Eric Levitz, a senior correspondent at Vox. The number one more time, 212-433-9692.
Now Eric, before we get into your argument, just set the scene for us. How big is this backlash really? You write that in just the first three months of this year, plans for at least 20 data centers were shelved and that more than a dozen states are now weighing some version of a moratoria. Is this a handful of loud sort of nimby fights or has opposition to data centers become a genuinely national movement?

**Eric Levitz** (3:21)
Yeah. I think that there's two things happening simultaneously. One, there are individuals and groups and communities that are really actively agitating against data centers in their areas. And then, you know, so that's, you know, going to be a minority of the population that's really actively fighting this on a, you know, devoting a significant portion of their free time to trying to prevent data centers from opening in near their homes or in their general regions.
But then there's a broader thing of just how the average American feels about data centers when asked by pollsters. And as you suggested, that is a really massive national bipartisan thing, you know, up to nearly 80% of Americans who feel that it would be a bad thing, you know, hypothetically, if a data center were to open in their area. And so there's really widespread opposition.

**Bridget Bergen** (4:21)
Yeah, I mean, as you lay out, there's kind of a menu of fears there. There's concerns about water, air, noise, electric bills, tax giveaways, even just anxieties about AI and the future of the technology itself. You know, do you have a sense of which of those concerns is really driving some of the anger that you're seeing?

**Eric Levitz** (4:44)
Yeah, well, I think that there is probably, it varies a little bit, you know, depending on I think that for the maybe less ideological people who are directly affected by a potential data center project, maybe their homes are especially close to it. Maybe it is slated for land that they value for other purposes. There, I think it's really, concerns are going to focus on the local potential negative effects of data centers as physical structures.
I think that the degree of antipathy nationally towards data centers reflects more the anxiety and alarm and distaste for artificial intelligence as a technology, which people are understandably concerned about where this tech is taking us. Even the people creating the technology are often disposed to muse about how this, what their building could potentially threaten, you know, human extinction or mass unemployment. And so it's pretty understandable that those who are maybe less, you know, tech enthusiastic would be concerned about this tech and be looking for ways to frustrate its progress. And one way to do that is to deny the industry, the ability to build these data centers that physically undergird their technology.