Abbott’s data-center halt draws Trump criticism
Flock announced changes Thursday to how customers access license-plate data collected by its nationwide camera network, a move the company said was aimed at addressing public fears over how the data is used. The cameras collect vehicle data for law-enforcement agencies and other customers. Flock’s announcement comes as the broader backlash against AI infrastructure — from data centers to automated surveillance — has reached statehouses and become a major political issue in the November elections.
In Texas, the resistance has moved into the governor’s office. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, recently ordered state regulators to halt connecting new data centers to the state’s power grid while projects undergo audits for water and electric usage. The move drew public criticism from President Donald Trump, also a Republican, who told Punchbowl News that “for Texas to say no to data centers is a mistake,” adding that “data centers could be bigger than oil.”
The Texas data-center fight has become a central issue in the state’s gubernatorial race, where Abbott faces Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa, a state representative who has criticized the governor’s past support of big tech. According to Cleanview, which tracks data-center development, Texas has plans to more than quadruple its number of data centers.
Outside the political sphere, musician Willie Nelson issued a public statement opposing data centers near his home in central Texas. “The last thing we need is a loud, water thieving, light polluting, data center anywhere near our town,” Nelson wrote late last month. The opposition cuts across the political and cultural spectrum, with activists calling for pauses in AI development on safety grounds alongside local residents who frame their concerns around water usage, electricity prices, and suspicion that local officials are doing the bidding of large corporations.
Terah Lynn, a 37-year-old manufacturing supervisor in Nashville, helped spark a viral social-media meme this summer that paired videos of old trucks, classic rock, and a simpler way of life under the banner “This and never hearing about AI again.” Lynn, who posts on Instagram and TikTok under the handle @TerahBuilds, said she worries about losing human participation in daily life to AI. “I think that AI can very easily take the human participation out of your own life and then you become reliant,” Lynn said. “The people creating it have the responsibility to create ethically but the consumer also has to be able to discipline themselves, and I have never met a human who really, truly has harnessed that power to perfection.”
Lynn acknowledged the irony of building a social-media following through platforms that rely on AI-driven algorithms while voicing AI skepticism. “It’s this crazy balance of irony that we have to exist in,” Lynn said. “My thing is: Can I build…the kind of life to which I can decide how much I want to participate in this system that I, honestly, don’t fully agree with?”
The unrest has produced visible acts of resistance against surveillance technology as well. Carl “The Flock Blocker” Gunn has drawn attention for using a sign on a long pole to block Flock cameras in St. Petersburg, Florida. Privacy concerns over the company’s license-plate readers — which use AI for vehicle tracking — have grown alongside reports of misuse, even as Flock and law-enforcement authorities have defended the technology as a tool for fighting crime.
Brendan Steinhauser, who helped create the Tea Party movement two decades ago and now leads the bipartisan AI lobbying group Alliance for Secure AI, compared the current moment to his earlier organizing experience. “When elected officials or companies stiff-arm people or ignore them or denigrate them, that’s when people get pissed off, that’s when you get the Tea Party stuff or you get something similar on the left,” Steinhauser said. “And I think the power of this is both—it’s the blue-haired ladies and it’s the bubbas all together with different signs but showing up for the same protest.”
The opposition ranges from activists who fear AI could wipe out jobs or threaten humanity itself to communities focused on the more immediate concerns of resource use and local accountability. Leading AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic have themselves helped amplify safety concerns through years of public discussion about the technology’s risks, and both companies have reported facing attacks, including violent ones, even as they race to release more advanced systems. Tech companies are collectively spending trillions of dollars to build out the AI infrastructure now meeting organized resistance.
Such sentiment is becoming a force in races up and down the ballot, complicating the tech industry’s plans as the November elections approach and forcing elected officials in multiple states to recalibrate their positions on data-center development, surveillance technology, and the pace of AI expansion.