The left and right agree on one thing: no data centers

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**Nilay Patel** (1:43)
Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, editor and chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking with Gaby Del Valle, a polyester reporter here at The Verge, about the growing backlash against AI data centers. Gaby recently published a fantastic piece for us about Hernando County, Florida. Gaby attended a protest there, organized by a group called Humans First, a conservative grassroots movement focused on combating AI data center build-outs. You'll hear Gaby explain that the protest was part of a bigger, broader, and bipartisan opposition to data centers. Not only the physical buildings, but also the infrastructure that powers an AI boom, taking local jobs and filling our feeds with slop. So data center construction has become a proxy for the public's feelings about AI.
Something physical they can aim their fear and frustration at, and even create enough pressure to stop through community organizing and protests. I wanted Gaby to talk me through what these protests look like on the ground, from voters whose party affiliations have typically aligned them with big business. You'll hear Gaby say data centers are scrambling party lines, turning diehard Trump voters into protesters who care about traditionally left-coded issues like groundwater contamination and forever chemicals. It's a time of great political realignment, and my prediction is that data centers and the politics of AI will play a major role in the midterm elections coming later this year. I suspect this won't be the last time we hear from Gaby on movements like Humans First. Okay, Verge reporter Gaby Del Valle on the bipartisan data center backlash. Here we go.
Gaby Del Valle, you're a policy reporter here at The Verge. Welcome back to Decoder.

**Gaby Del Valle** (3:24)
Thank you. Happy to be here.

**Nilay Patel** (3:26)
I'm excited to talk to you. You were on previously with our friend Alex Heath, but this is the first time I've gotten to talk to you in Decoder. And I think the story you just wrote about data centers and conservative backlash in Florida is just a real preview of what tech policy going into the midterm elections is going to be like. You were just there, you talked to a bunch of people who are protesting data centers. It is a real alignment scramble in terms of our politics. Tell us what you found.

**Gaby Del Valle** (3:53)
What I found was people are really, really, really, really mad. And the reasons why they're mad kind of are different depending on the community, but they're also all kind of the same. They have localized concerns. They were telling me Florida is really humid. It doesn't make sense to build a data center that needs to be kept very cool and dry in such a humid place.
A lot of them were concerned about their groundwater. They were concerned about PFAS getting dumped into the water.
But I've also talked to people in Arizona who have the opposite concern. Arizona is not very humid. Arizona is very dry. And they're also like it doesn't make sense to build a data center in the desert. So whatever your community is, you're like it doesn't make sense to build a data center here because of X reason.