Voters passed dozens of local measures aimed at restricting datacenter projects
Senator Bernie Sanders and several newly elected Democrats have renewed calls for datacenter moratoriums in the days after this week’s US midterm elections. The calls seek to slow a multi-trillion-dollar buildout of facilities that tech companies need to power the AI products that have become central to their businesses. The Guardian reported that the sweeping Democratic victory was buoyed in part by backlash to the tech industry, adding momentum to efforts to slow the buildout.
On the social media platform X, Sanders posted a call this week for an immediate national datacenter moratorium. “Americans don’t want Big Tech oligarchs wrecking the environment, gutting jobs and threatening humanity’s future,” Sanders said on Wednesday.
Representative Yassamin Ansari of Arizona joined those calls. Arizona is a state where Elon Musk’s SpaceX has proposed a datacenter project that would span more than 700 acres. “Top of the Democratic agenda on day 1 needs to be a pause on advanced AI development, regulation of this out of control industry, and a ban on artificial superintelligence,” Ansari posted Wednesday on X. Musk mocked her post in a retweet, and the two sparred. Ansari forecast congressional hearings and told Musk: “See you soon.”
Newly elected governors in several states key to the datacenter buildout, including Texas and Georgia, have also called for moratoriums. Incoming Texas Governor Gina Hinojosa, whose state has become a hotspot for datacenter construction, pledged to halt new datacenter projects until new protections are in place. “There are no rules and laws to protect Texans, and Texans are being taken advantage of,” Hinojosa said this week on CNN. “We need to stop what we are doing with data centers until we have those protections.”
Opposition to datacenters was one of the most visible issues of the midterms. It figured heavily in campaigns across the US, and voters passed dozens of local ballot measures aimed at restricting datacenter projects in their states. Anti-datacenter demonstrators protested at the Pennsylvania state Capitol on 6 October.
Datacenter and AI opposition featured in numerous Democratic victory speeches after the midterms as newly elected representatives vowed to curb the power of Big Tech. In New Hampshire, Senator-elect Chris Pappas praised his constituents for “opposing big data centers that harm our communities.” New Mexico Congressman Gabe Vasquez proclaimed “the time is now to stop the AI billionaire class from forcing datacenters in our community.” Several victorious Democratic candidates also promised to hand local communities decision-making power over AI and datacenters. “I do not work for data centers,” Ohio Senator-elect Sherrod Brown said to applause. “I work for you. I work for Ohio.”
The Guardian reported that the election outcome had so far alarmed tech investors and executives. Meta platforms president Dina Powell McCormick told the Wall Street Journal that it was “going to be harder” to build datacenters following the vote. Musk, who spent nearly half a billion dollars backing Republican candidates and attacking Democrats on his social media platform, joked on election night that “datacenters in space looking pretty appealing right now.”
Post-midterm anxiety helped fuel a selloff of AI stocks this week, the Guardian reported, as tech investors worried about new regulation such as datacenter pauses.
White House National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett said he was confident that the construction of datacenters would continue. Arguing to CNBC, he said the ballot initiatives largely would not affect existing projects.