The A.I. Revolt Is Here

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Ezra Klein** (1:00)
What is big, ugly, and has united Republicans and Democrats at a time when it has felt like nothing else could? AI data centers.
Last August, a Heatmap News poll found that about four in 10 voters would oppose a data center being built where they live. By May of this year, opposition grew to seven in 10 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican of course, has proposed a new Citizens Bill of Rights for AI.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:25)
The incentives of big tech are not the same as what's in the interest of the people and the public.

**Ezra Klein** (1:33)
Senator Bernie Sanders called for a national data center moratorium.

**Bernie Sanders** (1:36)
This moratorium will give democracy a chance to catch up with the transformative changes that we are witnessing and make sure that the benefits of these technologies work for all of us, not just the wealthiest people on earth.

**Ezra Klein** (1:54)
There are over a hundred local or statewide moratorium proposals across the country. And here in New York, Governor Kathy Hochul, not usually thought of as a hardcore populist, just imposed a one-year moratorium on data center construction.

**Kathy Hochul** (2:07)
These hyperscale AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, truly threatening to outpace our grid's capacity, and they drive up costs for local ratepayers. And I refuse to let those costs be passed on to New Yorkers, who already pay too much for their utility bills.

**Ezra Klein** (2:28)
So I wanted to get into the fight over data centers. How much of this is really about water, or electricity, or aesthetics? And how much is about AI itself and the companies that are behind it?
My guest today is Jasmine Sun. Jasmine has been doing excellent coverage of both the culture inside the AI companies — unusual culture — and the anger that is building against them in the rest of the country. I highly recommend following her sub-stack, but right now she just finished a reporting trip in the Midwest, talking to the people organizing against these data centers. And I wanted to hear what she'd learned.
Jasmine Sun, welcome to the show.

**Jasmine Sun** (3:12)
I'm so excited to be here.

**Ezra Klein** (3:13)
So you just got back from a reporting trip in Wisconsin and Michigan, covering the fight over data centers.
Let's just start with what you see when you're near a data center. What does it look like?

**Jasmine Sun** (3:25)
I think one of the most important things about rural Wisconsin and rural Michigan is how beautiful it is.
I felt like I was in Eden. I felt like I was in paradise. It's incredibly lush, incredibly green. And as you get closer to a data center, you start to see more power lines, you start to see more towers, and eventually you just see what looks like an extremely large, flat warehouse. But you just see this sort of like verdant landscape give way to what is a windowless industrial park. Data centers are very ugly. I think I didn't appreciate this until I started standing in front of them, getting near them, listening to them. People will time how long it takes to drive past a data center on the highway going 70 miles per hour in Port Washington. I think it's like a minute and 42 seconds. The size of these things is-

**Ezra Klein** (4:17)
That's a long on a highway.

**Jasmine Sun** (4:19)
It is a long, long ride. These hyper-skilled data centers are huge. They are massive.
I think that the aesthetic questions around, is this what I want my state, my community to look like? These are really salient to people.

**Ezra Klein** (4:34)
You mentioned hearing them. What do they sound like?

**Jasmine Sun** (4:38)
Oh my gosh. I mean, they sound like humming, buzzing, warring. Every once in a while, you'll hear a rattling.

**SPEAKER_7** (4:45)
Residents who live next door to some of them say, they're producing noise that's not only annoying, but debilitating like this right here.

**Jasmine Sun** (4:57)
But again, they're windowless. There are not that many workers inside. So they're very mechanical sounds. They are inhuman, as a lot of folks would say.