Trump backs data centers, called ‘perhaps the industry’s biggest booster’
Five major technology companies — Oracle, Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft — expect to invest more than $700 billion in U.S. data centers this year alone. The buildout followed the late 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which sparked worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that require enormous computing power to train and operate. That scale of investment has fueled a backlash that has reshaped midterm contests and drawn President Donald Trump to the industry’s defense.
Community opposition has “thrown a wrench” into the plans of the world’s richest companies. Trump has been drawn to the industry’s defense, and the Associated Press described him as “perhaps the industry’s biggest booster.”
The snowballing opposition marks a dramatic shift from two years ago, when “few people had even heard of a data center.”