# Jasmine Sun on What the AI Industry Got Wrong About the Public Backlash

An episode of [Odd Lots](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1056200096), 21 Aug 2026, 52 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8a94442e-5a74-4fa2-8b8d-ae27003a8d6b/8387538d-5ecf-4b07-a3f0-b4ab00e1cbc5/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=982f5071-765c-403d-969d-ae27003a8d83

Within the AI industry, even the builders of it have been very anxious about the technology. They've talked for years about its potential to create destabilizing job losses. They even spend a lot of time thinking about rogue AI that could lead to human extinction. But for all their anxiety, they missed the thing that's become the most publicly salient: how upset people would be about building data centers. Part of this was understandable. Data center construction has been happening for a long time in America, and it used to be relatively uncontroversial. In fact, cities and states would often design their tax code to incentivize data center construction. Now there's this complete 180. On this episode, we speak with independent writer and Substacker Jasmine Sun, who recently traveled to Wisconsin and Michigan for some on-the-ground reporting about the communities and activists trying to stop data center development. She explains what the pushback is really all about, what it represents, and what future developers will have to do in order to be welcomed in. Come see Odd Lots live in Los Angeles, get your tickets now. Read more: Anthropic-Tied Data Center Inks $1.3 Billion Private Credit Loan Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to Limit New Data Centers Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: Hello, Odd Loads listeners.
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[1:05] Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the ad Thoughts Podcast.
[1:08] Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway.
[1:09] Speaker 1: And I'm Joe Wisenthal.
[1:10] Speaker 2: Joe, there are a lot of interesting angles when it
[1:13] Speaker 2: comes to AI.
[1:14] Speaker 1: Yeah you think so.
[1:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, Just to put it mildly, but one of the
[1:18] Speaker 2: most interesting things I think is that we think about
[1:20] Speaker 2: it as this like ephemeral digital technology. Yeah, you know,
[1:24] Speaker 2: in some sense, it's like the sass of yours.
[1:27] Speaker 1: That's right.
[1:28] Speaker 2: There's a window that you open on your browser and
[1:31] Speaker 2: you type stuff into the Internet, and the Internet spit
[1:34] Speaker 2: stuff out at you, hopefully not literally. But there is
[1:37] Speaker 2: also this very physical component to AI because it involves
[1:42] Speaker 2: huge amounts of power, huge amounts of things like memory chips,
[1:45] Speaker 2: and of course put those two things together, huge numbers
[1:49] Speaker 2: of data centers.
[1:50] Speaker 3: No, this has been like what is sort of fundamentally
[1:53] Speaker 3: different about this, at least from a markets perspective, Yeah, right,
[1:57] Speaker 3: which is that when we had the boom of the
[2:01] Speaker 3: prior decade et cetera, Like, by and large, the successful
[2:05] Speaker 3: companies they didn't need to go into debt to build
[2:10] Speaker 3: or whatever. They're like building data centers, but like they
[2:13] Speaker 3: were not so computationally, they were not so massive that
[2:17] Speaker 3: it was like they had to borrow money. They funded
[2:20] Speaker 3: them from free cash flow quite easily. The company is
[2:23] Speaker 3: building on top of that. I just plug into there.
[2:25] Speaker 3: There was always availability on an Amazon cloud. There's not
[2:28] Speaker 3: like some compute scarcity. You're not like using Slack one
[2:33] Speaker 3: day and then it's like, oh, your four hour window
[2:36] Speaker 3: is up. It will reset in a few hours. Like, yes,
[2:39] Speaker 3: we're their physical constraints to the air buildout, which basically
[2:43] Speaker 3: in the history of the Internet is totally novel.
[2:45] Speaker 2: Right, And I think that's really emerging as in many
[2:48] Speaker 2: ways the prime constraint because it feels like investors still
[2:52] Speaker 2: are very happy to more or less fling money at
[2:55] Speaker 2: the hyperscalers, at data center projects, at all of those things.
[2:59] Speaker 1: There's no capital short right, There's.
[3:00] Speaker 2: No capital shortage. What there is is a shortage of
[3:03] Speaker 2: again power, land, regulatory and political approvals for actually building
[3:09] Speaker 2: these things totally.
[3:11] Speaker 3: And you know, this is like such a big country
[3:14] Speaker 3: that it's like I always think, like, yeah, data centers
[3:17] Speaker 3: are great, just like put them out in the middle
[3:19] Speaker 3: of nowhere. And then I'm like, oh, that's literally nimbiism, right,
[3:22] Speaker 3: It's like that's literally what everybody has that thought, Oh,
[3:26] Speaker 3: there must just be somewhere out in the middle of
[3:28] Speaker 3: nowhere to put it.
[3:29] Speaker 1: But a it's going to be in theory near somewhere.
[3:32] Speaker 3: And if we could just solve all of our issues
[3:35] Speaker 3: by putting everything in the middle of nowhere, there wouldn't
[3:37] Speaker 3: be an issue. There are reasons why they're located where
[3:39] Speaker 3: they are, they.
[3:39] Speaker 1: Have to be.
[3:40] Speaker 3: Ideally there's some sort of power infrastructure, some water infrastructure.
[3:45] Speaker 3: These are things that also attract people.
[3:47] Speaker 2: It's not hard to imagine that the middle of nowhere
[3:49] Speaker 2: might not have a lot of energy and.
[3:51] Speaker 3: Water infrastructure exactly, Otherwise there'd be a bunch of people
[3:54] Speaker 3: there right.
[3:55] Speaker 2: The other interesting thing about data centers and AI is
[3:59] Speaker 2: that it's become one of the very few bipartisan issues,
[4:03] Speaker 2: I think in America. And you have people both on
[4:05] Speaker 2: the left and the right now who are saying that
[4:07] Speaker 2: they don't like data centers, they don't want the data
[4:09] Speaker 2: centers in their backyard. We interviewed Kathy Hockel, the New
[4:12] Speaker 2: York governor, about her moratorium on building new data centers.
[4:16] Speaker 2: So there seems to be a lot of, let's say,
[4:19] Speaker 2: feelings when it comes to data centers.
[4:22] Speaker 3: And you know, it did not get as much attention
[4:24] Speaker 3: as Kathy Hokeel, I imagine because she's a Democrat. But
[4:28] Speaker 3: Texas Governor Greg Abbott just in the last few days
[4:31] Speaker 3: also announcing curbs on the state. People were a little
[4:35] Speaker 3: quieter about that one. That has some reasons why maybe
[4:38] Speaker 3: it didn't map to Peopil's view of Texas as a
[4:41] Speaker 3: state that's just open for business in a way that
[4:44] Speaker 3: big blue states aren't. But as you say, it's bipartisan.
[4:47] Speaker 3: And then I'd say, like, one other thing that I
[4:49] Speaker 3: think is interesting about it is like, so we know
[4:51] Speaker 3: the data center controversy, but AI in general is sort
[4:54] Speaker 3: of like riven with anxiety on multiple levels. Obviously, for
[4:59] Speaker 3: years people have been talking about, you know, mass job laws.
[5:02] Speaker 1: Lately we've been.
[5:03] Speaker 3: Talking on the podcast about you know what people called
[5:05] Speaker 3: like X risk and stuff like that, like truly rogue AI,
[5:09] Speaker 3: And in my mind, I feel like the people inside
[5:12] Speaker 3: the labs are very anxious about those other two these
[5:16] Speaker 3: sort of like effects on society and again literal like
[5:20] Speaker 3: safety issues, what are they going to be responsible if
[5:23] Speaker 3: everyone loses a job, et cetera. But on the ground,
[5:26] Speaker 3: it does not feel like those things are the fears,
[5:29] Speaker 3: even though I'm you know, anxious, like that are really
[5:32] Speaker 3: like driving the policy, the backlash politics.
[5:34] Speaker 2: If I could sum it all up, it feels very
[5:36] Speaker 2: much like data centers are the physical manifestation of a
[5:41] Speaker 2: new technology that is in some ways very hard to
[5:43] Speaker 2: sell to America. Right, Like, here's this thing that is
[5:46] Speaker 2: not only going to take your job, but like, maybe
[5:48] Speaker 2: it don't kill you too.
[5:49] Speaker 3: Well, I was gonna say, you don't like data centers
[5:52] Speaker 3: because you're worried about the noise complaints. I don't like
[5:55] Speaker 3: data centers because I'm worried they're gonna kill me.
[5:57] Speaker 1: We are not the same. We are not the same, all.
[5:59] Speaker 2: Right, Well, that is the perfect way to put it.
[6:01] Speaker 2: And we have the perfect guest to try to talk
[6:04] Speaker 2: through all of these various things. We're going to be
[6:07] Speaker 2: speaking once again with Jasmine's son. She is an independent
[6:10] Speaker 2: writer covering AI and Silicon Valley culture, and she just
[6:14] Speaker 2: published an amazing piece of reporting called No Data Centers
[6:18] Speaker 2: in My Backyard on her sub stack. So, Jasmine, thank
[6:21] Speaker 2: you so much for coming back on odd Lots.
[6:23] Speaker 4: I'm so excited to be here again.
[6:25] Speaker 2: So congrats on the piece. We were saying earlier. It
[6:28] Speaker 2: kind of sounds fun just to hop in a car
[6:30] Speaker 2: with a few friends and research assistants and go on
[6:33] Speaker 2: a road trip through Middle America looking at data center sites.
[6:37] Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was fun. I was trying to
[6:39] Speaker 4: decide where in the country I wanted to go to
[6:42] Speaker 4: do this data center road trip. I remember this was
[6:44] Speaker 4: the last question I asked Claude Fable before it was
[6:47] Speaker 4: taken away from me for several days. And so it
[6:50] Speaker 4: was either going to be Michigan, Wisconsin, which is where
[6:53] Speaker 4: I ended up going, or it was going to be
[6:55] Speaker 4: Texas or maybe the Southeast like Memphis, etc. And to
[6:58] Speaker 4: be entirely honest, part of the reason I ended up
[7:01] Speaker 4: doing Michigan, Wisconsin the Upper Midwest is because it sounded
[7:04] Speaker 4: a lot more pleasant to spend July by the Great
[7:06] Speaker 4: Lakes than it did driving across the Texas Desert. I'm sorry,
[7:09] Speaker 4: Greg Abbott.
[7:10] Speaker 3: No, I think that's a totally good reason. The Upper
[7:13] Speaker 3: Midwest is absolutely lovely this time of year. It's beautiful,
[7:17] Speaker 3: and there's lakes and all of that stuff. When we
[7:20] Speaker 3: think about data center activity, I do tend to think more,
[7:25] Speaker 3: I guess still in my head northern Virginia, so there
[7:28] Speaker 3: can't be that much space left out there. I do
[7:31] Speaker 3: think a fair amount about Texas, in part because of
[7:34] Speaker 3: sort of like the Elon verse, et cetera, and how
[7:37] Speaker 3: much tech activity is happening there. I probably do think
[7:41] Speaker 3: a little bit about the Southeast. How active though is
[7:44] Speaker 3: that area? Like how much interest is there in Wisconsin
[7:48] Speaker 3: Michigan in general about data centers and what is it
[7:51] Speaker 3: about those locations that Okay, it's like these could be
[7:54] Speaker 3: attractive geographies for them given what they need.
[7:57] Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so Michigan and Wisconsin sort of rank
[8:00] Speaker 4: near the middle to the upper middle of the pack
[8:02] Speaker 4: when you look at how many data centers are being
[8:04] Speaker 4: built across the fifty states. I think each of them
[8:07] Speaker 4: have maybe around like fifty maybe two one hundred projects
[8:11] Speaker 4: or proposed projects in the states, So it's not an
[8:13] Speaker 4: incredible amount compared to again, Virginia and Texas, where you
[8:16] Speaker 4: have six hundred eight hundred active data centers or data
[8:19] Speaker 4: centers being built. The thing that drew me to Michigan
[8:22] Speaker 4: and Wisconsin one is that I had heard that proposals
[8:26] Speaker 4: for new data centers were ramping up. And that's because
[8:29] Speaker 4: one Wisconsin, for example, has the sales tax exemption on
[8:33] Speaker 4: the chips and on some construction costs, so that made
[8:35] Speaker 4: it a somewhat attractive state. Reretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan,
[8:39] Speaker 4: who has always taken a pretty pro growth standpoint for Michigan,
[8:42] Speaker 4: how do we bring business back, was also sort of
[8:45] Speaker 4: actively courting data centers, and so she did a very
[8:47] Speaker 4: controversial photo op with Sam Altman at the Stargate site
[8:51] Speaker 4: in Saline, which has become one of the big data
[8:53] Speaker 4: center fights in Michigan. And so they're both things that
[8:56] Speaker 4: these two states did in order to explicitly attract data
[9:00] Speaker 4: center investment. I think there also was enough, like you said,
[9:03] Speaker 4: grid access and water access to make these reasonable places
[9:06] Speaker 4: to build data centers, like an hour out of the cities,
[9:09] Speaker 4: an hour out of Detroit, an hour out of Milwaukee,
[9:12] Speaker 4: for example. And then the other thing that was really
[9:14] Speaker 4: interesting to me personally as a reporter was I wanted
[9:17] Speaker 4: to know how the data center story intersected with a
[9:21] Speaker 4: the history of de industrialization. I think this is part
[9:24] Speaker 4: of why a lot of the politics in those states
[9:26] Speaker 4: is about bringing business and bringing industry back, bringing the
[9:29] Speaker 4: skilled trades back. Even in some of these very specific
[9:32] Speaker 4: sites where their data center is being proposed, they were like,
[9:35] Speaker 4: you know, the site of a former GM plant in
[9:37] Speaker 4: Janesville that sort of devastated the community when thousands of
[9:40] Speaker 4: jobs disappeared during the financial crisis. Do we now want
[9:43] Speaker 4: to build a data center there and will that be
[9:45] Speaker 4: the way to revive the community is a question that
[9:48] Speaker 4: people are asking or you know in Mount Pleasant with
[9:51] Speaker 4: the Fox consite, there was a huge fiasco where Trump
[9:54] Speaker 4: said they were bringing all these manufacturing jobs back they
[9:57] Speaker 4: weren't built. So the d industrialization history was really interesting saying.
[10:00] Speaker 4: And then the second thing was the primaries, which I
[10:04] Speaker 4: think have now both come to pass, but I thought
[10:06] Speaker 4: it was going to be a really interesting place to
[10:07] Speaker 4: look at as you mentioned that bipartisan politics of data centers,
[10:10] Speaker 4: the fact that in both states you were seeing roughly
[10:13] Speaker 4: seventy thirty opposition to data centers from both Democrats and
[10:16] Speaker 4: Republicans in a very very polarized battleground states where Dems
[10:20] Speaker 4: and Republicans rarely agree on anything. And then AI was
[10:23] Speaker 4: also showing up in the Wisconsin governor's race where Francesca
[10:26] Speaker 4: Hong was running on a data center moratorium, or in
[10:29] Speaker 4: the Michigan Senate race where Abdula Sied was talking a
[10:32] Speaker 4: lot about data centers as sort of one of the
[10:34] Speaker 4: examples of money infecting politics.
[10:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're recording this on August twelfth, and Francesca
[10:40] Speaker 2: Hong just lost the Democratic primary in Wisconsin to David Crowley,
[10:45] Speaker 2: which is kind of interesting because one of the people
[10:46] Speaker 2: I remember you spoke to on the ground was someone
[10:50] Speaker 2: who was saying she explicitly was going to vote for
[10:52] Speaker 2: Hong because of her policies around data centers. And I
[10:56] Speaker 2: know one primary does not a trend make, but do
[11:00] Speaker 2: you get the sense that data centers can be like
[11:03] Speaker 2: a winning political platform.
[11:05] Speaker 4: Yeah, this is one of the things I was trying
[11:07] Speaker 4: to get a handle on because I was wondering, like,
[11:09] Speaker 4: will the local or state politics be a bit of
[11:11] Speaker 4: a microcosm or about weather for the national politics of AI.
[11:15] Speaker 4: And my sort of summary here is that I think
[11:18] Speaker 4: that if you live in a community where a data
[11:22] Speaker 4: center is being built or proposed, you don't like it,
[11:25] Speaker 4: and it's very high sealience. It's very important to you,
[11:27] Speaker 4: like the fact that there is a gigantic construction project
[11:30] Speaker 4: that will bring in traffic and noise and whatever for
[11:32] Speaker 4: two to six years nearby that really really bothers people
[11:36] Speaker 4: in the community. When I went to Port Washington, for example,
[11:39] Speaker 4: which is another city in Wisconsin, and just talk to
[11:41] Speaker 4: random people at fish Giving, which was this like funny
[11:43] Speaker 4: fish festival that we went to in order to talk
[11:46] Speaker 4: to them, like you've.
[11:46] Speaker 2: Never heard about it before, I kind of want to
[11:49] Speaker 2: go even though I like.
[11:51] Speaker 4: No, it was a real event. It was amazing. There's
[11:53] Speaker 4: an Elvis impersonator.
[11:55] Speaker 2: Obviously, it's fish giving.
[11:56] Speaker 4: America is so good that there was life liberty in
[11:59] Speaker 4: the suit of fish. It was amazing. It was on
[12:02] Speaker 4: Lake Michigan. But every single person we talked to you
[12:04] Speaker 4: there had an opinion on the data center. Because when
[12:07] Speaker 4: there is a gigantic I think, seven hundred acre facility
[12:10] Speaker 4: being built near you, you will care about it, and
[12:13] Speaker 4: so salience is super high if you live nearby. But
[12:15] Speaker 4: then if you don't live near a data center, like
[12:17] Speaker 4: if you're in a zip code where there's nothing being proposed,
[12:20] Speaker 4: the polls still show that seventy thirty you're roughly against
[12:23] Speaker 4: data centers. I talked to Charles Franklin and Marquette who
[12:26] Speaker 4: had done this explicit pulling, but the salience is much lower.
[12:29] Speaker 4: Data centers does not rank in like the top five
[12:31] Speaker 4: issues electorally unless you were literally living in one of
[12:35] Speaker 4: those communities.
[12:51] Speaker 3: These are always very sensitive questions to ask a journalist,
[12:55] Speaker 3: and we're supposed to just be like open minded, etc.
[12:59] Speaker 3: Of thep you talk to who were concerned about data centers,
[13:05] Speaker 3: in your view, like, there are some really wacky reasons
[13:10] Speaker 3: to oppose.
[13:11] Speaker 1: There's some like I would.
[13:12] Speaker 3: I'm very sensitive to noise, so when I hear a
[13:15] Speaker 3: voter talk about noise complaints, I'm like, yeah, I do
[13:18] Speaker 3: not like I.
[13:18] Speaker 1: Totally get that.
[13:20] Speaker 3: On the other hand, if I hear you know, some
[13:24] Speaker 3: conspiracy theory, you know, some maybe less informed water takes,
[13:29] Speaker 3: or you know, my pet has started vomiting because a
[13:33] Speaker 3: new data center was nearby, I'm like, maybe you're reading
[13:36] Speaker 3: too much like Instagram reels, et cetera. Generally, speaking of
[13:40] Speaker 3: the people you talk to who are passionate about the issue,
[13:44] Speaker 3: how well informed did you find them about both the
[13:48] Speaker 3: sort of like economics and sort of like lifestyle consequences
[13:53] Speaker 3: of a data center in their proximity.
[13:56] Speaker 4: I think this is actually one of the biggest shifts
[13:58] Speaker 4: for me. I think I came in with expects maybe
[14:00] Speaker 4: a bit more similar to you. I am generally based
[14:03] Speaker 4: in San Francisco, and I feel like the caricature of
[14:05] Speaker 4: data center opponents that people believe is they are all
[14:08] Speaker 4: just watching too many tiktoks about water. And while that
[14:11] Speaker 4: certainly was true for some people, like I remember talking
[14:14] Speaker 4: to this guy outside of a Francescahung event, who was
[14:17] Speaker 4: wearing a Hotties for Hong t shirt and he was like, yeah,
[14:20] Speaker 4: like they're building them out here because they want to
[14:22] Speaker 4: drain the Great Lakes. And I'm like, that's not how
[14:24] Speaker 4: these things work, Like, that's not why they're here, and
[14:26] Speaker 4: they are not like sucking up water out of the
[14:28] Speaker 4: Great Lakes. But I would say that the folks who
[14:31] Speaker 4: were actively involved in organizing against the data centers, like
[14:34] Speaker 4: the activists themselves, were much better informed than I expected
[14:38] Speaker 4: them to be. People knew the difference between say, closed
[14:41] Speaker 4: loop and open loop cooling systems, one of which uses
[14:43] Speaker 4: more water than the other. People could tell the difference
[14:46] Speaker 4: between an AI hyperscale data center and the old kind
[14:48] Speaker 4: of Internet data centers. Some people said I use AI
[14:52] Speaker 4: helped me, orite emails whatever. I would say the biggest
[14:55] Speaker 4: difference was not like were people informed, but how much
[14:59] Speaker 4: trust is they have in their government and in these
[15:02] Speaker 4: AI and data center companies, right, And so it was
[15:05] Speaker 4: much less of a like we're just mistaken about how
[15:08] Speaker 4: data centers work. It was much more When DT and
[15:11] Speaker 4: open AI say they're going to cover the cost of
[15:13] Speaker 4: electricity rate hikes, we don't believe them because DT has
[15:17] Speaker 4: razor rates for out of the past five years, right
[15:20] Speaker 4: or yeah, sure, you know they say they're going to
[15:22] Speaker 4: bring five hundred jobs. But like we saw how Fox
[15:24] Speaker 4: Con went, we know that corporations break their promises all
[15:27] Speaker 4: the time, and so I would say the gap among
[15:29] Speaker 4: anti data center activists was much more about trust than
[15:33] Speaker 4: it was about information.
[15:34] Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit more about what the
[15:36] Speaker 2: exact pitch is that an AI, a hyperscaler, or you know,
[15:41] Speaker 2: a data center builder might make to a community when
[15:44] Speaker 2: they say, we want to take that ugly slab of
[15:47] Speaker 2: concrete that's just been sitting there for years, and we
[15:50] Speaker 2: want to put something on top of it.
[15:51] Speaker 4: For sure, I would say the pitch for why let
[15:55] Speaker 4: us build a big data center in your community is
[15:58] Speaker 4: almost entirely about property taxes. So data centers pay a
[16:03] Speaker 4: lot in property taxes. In Laden County, Virginia, the data
[16:07] Speaker 4: center capital of the United States, data centers, I think
[16:10] Speaker 4: pay and make up over fifty percent of the property
[16:13] Speaker 4: tax base. And part of the reason that Northern Virginia
[16:15] Speaker 4: and public schools are very well funded is because of
[16:17] Speaker 4: the data centers, and so people have sort of accepted
[16:19] Speaker 4: that trade. Or when Microsoft brought their Fairwater data centers
[16:24] Speaker 4: into Mount Pleasant on the site of the former Fox
[16:27] Speaker 4: con factory that was supposed to be Microsoft is now
[16:30] Speaker 4: paying on track to pay about twenty million in property
[16:32] Speaker 4: taxes for twenty twenty six, which is a huge boon
[16:35] Speaker 4: to the tax space. And so for a lot of
[16:37] Speaker 4: local officials who are thinking, how do we bring back
[16:40] Speaker 4: our commercial tax spase in a time after these factories
[16:43] Speaker 4: have left our community, a data center is a very
[16:46] Speaker 4: appealing way to do so. They say, we're going to
[16:48] Speaker 4: be able to remove the wheel tax in this community.
[16:51] Speaker 4: We're going to be able to avoid raising property taxes
[16:53] Speaker 4: on residents. We're going to pay for all these city
[16:55] Speaker 4: fire services and police services that are expensive. I think
[16:59] Speaker 4: part of the struggle with data centers is that that's
[17:02] Speaker 4: really kind of the only pitch that they're making. Sure
[17:04] Speaker 4: there are some jobs, for sure, like five hundred one
[17:07] Speaker 4: thousand jobs, but those last two to four years. Sometimes
[17:09] Speaker 4: they're outsiders, they're not people from the community.
[17:11] Speaker 2: These are the actual jobs associated with the construction of
[17:15] Speaker 2: the data Yes, right.
[17:16] Speaker 4: Okay, yes, you might only have like fifty permanent jobs,
[17:19] Speaker 4: you know, like a solar farm or something like. People
[17:21] Speaker 4: aren't really needed to keep it going very much. It's
[17:24] Speaker 4: mainly a construction effort, which also means it's more out
[17:27] Speaker 4: of town residents who are coming in, so there's not
[17:30] Speaker 4: a great jobs pitch. And then also people just I
[17:32] Speaker 4: think aren't that excited about AI. It's not that they're
[17:35] Speaker 4: necessarily like worry that AI is gonna go rogue and
[17:38] Speaker 4: kill them all. Like people didn't bring up those kinds
[17:41] Speaker 4: of years as much. It was just like, why are
[17:43] Speaker 4: we as a community taking the hit of having this giant,
[17:46] Speaker 4: ugly thing in order to produce some coding agents that
[17:50] Speaker 4: help people in San Francisco. Like people just didn't see
[17:53] Speaker 4: it as essential to their lives in the way that
[17:55] Speaker 4: I think a car factory it's like, okay, well we
[17:57] Speaker 4: all drive cars. Solar farm, well I don't need energy.
[18:01] Speaker 4: I think the trade with the data center just didn't
[18:03] Speaker 4: feel as compelling to people because taxes are kind of
[18:06] Speaker 4: diffuse and hard to grock, and it's kind of unclear,
[18:10] Speaker 4: like how is that going to benefit me directly? Jobs
[18:12] Speaker 4: not really a big benefit. And then AI itself, people
[18:16] Speaker 4: are kind of whatever about.
[18:18] Speaker 3: In some of the places where data center projects are
[18:21] Speaker 3: like well off the ground. Some of these like tax
[18:24] Speaker 3: benefits or whatever are real, right, Like isn't Facebook in
[18:29] Speaker 3: luis or Meta in Louisiana, Like they are cutting really
[18:33] Speaker 3: big checks? Yea, Like in your view, if they're like Jasmine,
[18:38] Speaker 3: come here and like bring both sides together and solve this, Like,
[18:41] Speaker 3: would you argue that like no, like.
[18:43] Speaker 1: There it is likely that these can meaningfully move the.
[18:46] Speaker 3: Dial on terms of pure dollars coming in and like
[18:51] Speaker 3: would there be inferior solution of like, well, we're gonna,
[18:54] Speaker 3: you know, let us like pay.
[18:55] Speaker 1: Your taxes for two years. That will show us, you.
[18:58] Speaker 3: Know, even before we break ground, like setting aside all
[19:01] Speaker 3: the complicated things. Could you imagine as we go forward
[19:04] Speaker 3: eventually like some structures where it's like, okay, the company
[19:08] Speaker 3: does give some tangible upfront commitment. People get to feel it,
[19:12] Speaker 3: they get to see their taxs and reduced, they get
[19:14] Speaker 3: to see their teachers get higher salaries, and then it's like,
[19:17] Speaker 3: all right, the green light is in for data centers.
[19:19] Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, one thing that I think is important
[19:21] Speaker 4: to recognize is that the landscape of how people feel
[19:25] Speaker 4: about data centers and how the deals are made has
[19:27] Speaker 4: changed so dramatically in the last one to two years.
[19:30] Speaker 4: So at the time that a lot of the proposals
[19:34] Speaker 4: show up to say your city council in twenty twenty three,
[19:36] Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five, there is no data
[19:39] Speaker 4: center backlash, right, and so at the time it almost
[19:42] Speaker 4: feels like the opposite. Like the mayor of Port Washington,
[19:44] Speaker 4: where this seven hundred acre big data center facility is
[19:47] Speaker 4: being built in Wisconsin, he was telling me like Port
[19:50] Speaker 4: Washington had just lost a bid to bring a chip
[19:53] Speaker 4: factory into the city. There again one of these cities
[19:55] Speaker 4: where factories have closed down and they want a commercial
[19:58] Speaker 4: tax space again, and reeling from that, this guy Ted Niskei,
[20:02] Speaker 4: He's like, well, of course, we thought a data center
[20:05] Speaker 4: could be a great way to do that. At the time,
[20:07] Speaker 4: they even set up a tax subsidy district for the
[20:09] Speaker 4: data center because they're also worried if we don't do this,
[20:13] Speaker 4: maybe the data center is going to go uptown to Sheboygan, like,
[20:16] Speaker 4: what if we lose the bid to another city. In
[20:18] Speaker 4: the same way, if you guys remember with HQ two,
[20:20] Speaker 4: Amazon's sort of like dangling, like who's going to give
[20:23] Speaker 4: us the most subsidies to bring our data center here?
[20:25] Speaker 4: Because at the time there was no backlash communities want
[20:28] Speaker 4: the tax benefits of the data center. Now, of course,
[20:31] Speaker 4: it's really changed, and so the data center deals that
[20:33] Speaker 4: are being made today are very, very different from the
[20:36] Speaker 4: ones that were being made two years ago. Three years ago.
[20:39] Speaker 4: People are now realizing that you don't need to give
[20:43] Speaker 4: Meta a tax subsidy. In fact, Meta should probably pay
[20:46] Speaker 4: more upfront. They should give these fifty k bonuses to
[20:49] Speaker 4: public school teachers. Before there are a lot of NDAs
[20:52] Speaker 4: being signed, and that was extremely controversial. Almost everyone I
[20:55] Speaker 4: talked to, including all the pro data center people, said
[20:58] Speaker 4: we really regret doing the NDAs. They actually really increase
[21:02] Speaker 4: community distrust in backlash. Now Microsoft is saying we don't
[21:05] Speaker 4: want to do NDAs anymore, and I don't think local
[21:07] Speaker 4: officials are willing to sign them anymore because they've seen
[21:10] Speaker 4: how it amplifies distrust in the community. So I would
[21:13] Speaker 4: say that the data center deals that are getting made
[21:15] Speaker 4: in twenty twenty six and beyond, in light of the backlash,
[21:18] Speaker 4: are much more how much can we offer your community
[21:21] Speaker 4: to let us build here? Whereas two years ago it
[21:24] Speaker 4: was what can your community offer us for us to
[21:26] Speaker 4: come in.
[21:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like the balance of power has shifted
[21:29] Speaker 2: a little bit. But that said, reading or reporting, there
[21:33] Speaker 2: does seem to be the sense that small local governments
[21:37] Speaker 2: are perhaps not evenly matched against big tech companies with
[21:42] Speaker 2: a lot of money. Yeah, and a lot of lawyers.
[21:44] Speaker 2: And so even if you construct the world's most beneficial
[21:47] Speaker 2: tax arrangement, you had a lot of people in your
[21:50] Speaker 2: piece who were talking about, well, the company is just
[21:52] Speaker 2: going to figure out some way to kind of wriggle
[21:54] Speaker 2: out of it.
[21:55] Speaker 4: Yeah. And again, I think this is so informed by
[21:57] Speaker 4: things like the Fox confiasco, where people felt that they're
[22:01] Speaker 4: part time city councilmen or whatever like just made a
[22:04] Speaker 4: bad deal because they were not equipped, they were not
[22:06] Speaker 4: informed to Again, like almost every local official I talked to,
[22:09] Speaker 4: they were good people, they were trying to do the
[22:11] Speaker 4: right thing. They were also getting paid like five thousand
[22:13] Speaker 4: dollars a year to do this on top of a
[22:15] Speaker 4: normal day job, and so it is a big power
[22:18] Speaker 4: asymmetry between them. And like open AI's lawyers and people
[22:22] Speaker 4: in the community recognize that you're not going to have
[22:25] Speaker 4: the best deals when it comes from that, and so
[22:27] Speaker 4: they'd say, you know, we don't know what carve outs
[22:30] Speaker 4: that the data center developer is going to write in.
[22:32] Speaker 4: So let's say that the AI bubble pops or you know,
[22:34] Speaker 4: open ai goes out of business, and so they don't
[22:36] Speaker 4: want the data center capacity anymore. Like what's going to
[22:39] Speaker 4: happen to the building? Is it going to be a
[22:41] Speaker 4: stranded asset? What kinds of guarantees are there going to be?
[22:44] Speaker 4: And again, there might be ways to set these up
[22:46] Speaker 4: in more beneficial ways, like I think tex guarantees are
[22:48] Speaker 4: some of these, or making deals to say we're going
[22:51] Speaker 4: to pay for eighty percent of our forecasted electricity demand
[22:55] Speaker 4: upfront because sometimes those forecasts are wrong and we don't
[22:58] Speaker 4: want to leave you guys on the hook. I think
[22:59] Speaker 4: those are really important to make, but fundamentally is just
[23:02] Speaker 4: such a power symmetry. I mean, one of the most
[23:04] Speaker 4: egregious examples that I came across was that Selene Stargate
[23:08] Speaker 4: Center in Michigan, where Selena is a city town of
[23:11] Speaker 4: literally less than three thousand people. It's super earal, it's
[23:14] Speaker 4: a little bit out of an arbor, and their city
[23:17] Speaker 4: council actually voted for one against the data center development
[23:20] Speaker 4: that Oracle and open Ai brought in. And after they
[23:23] Speaker 4: voted against it, the data center developer just sued them
[23:27] Speaker 4: over exclusionary zoning. And there is no way your town
[23:30] Speaker 4: of like less than three thousand people is going to
[23:33] Speaker 4: even bother with a lawsuit against like open Ai, Oracle
[23:36] Speaker 4: and related digital. It's just not going to happen. And
[23:38] Speaker 4: so they immediately settle, of course, for some improvements to
[23:41] Speaker 4: like a fire truck and some investments in farms and whatever.
[23:44] Speaker 4: But like again, the power symmetry really just made residents
[23:47] Speaker 4: feel like, okay, like this is not how democracy is
[23:50] Speaker 4: supposed to work, Like a gigantic company should not be
[23:53] Speaker 4: able to sue us out of our democratically chosen decisions.
[23:56] Speaker 1: So it did agree.
[23:57] Speaker 3: One thing that you did write about in the piece,
[23:59] Speaker 3: which I was very interested in, and it's something I've
[24:03] Speaker 3: been thinking about, is the data center boom is sort
[24:07] Speaker 3: of a rare moment in recent decades in American history
[24:11] Speaker 3: where you have the capitalists, the tech companies, and the
[24:17] Speaker 3: hard hats are actually really into it. And it is
[24:22] Speaker 3: They're not a huge number by volume, but also like
[24:26] Speaker 3: when people think about like quote working class unquote jobs,
[24:31] Speaker 3: the kind of jobs that we lost, et cetera, the
[24:34] Speaker 3: jobs that are being created are those jobs that people
[24:38] Speaker 3: might have in their head as like a good middle
[24:41] Speaker 3: class job or the jobs that we had in our
[24:43] Speaker 3: glory days. How influential within these communities are the sort
[24:48] Speaker 3: of construction companies or workers, some of them unionized in
[24:51] Speaker 3: some of these cases, who are like, no, we want
[24:53] Speaker 3: that activity.
[24:54] Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most memorable
[24:56] Speaker 4: conversations I had was with this guy, Terry McGowan, who's
[24:59] Speaker 4: a senior VP at the International Union of Operating Engineers.
[25:02] Speaker 4: So people who operate like cranes and I don't know
[25:05] Speaker 4: what these gigantic machines are called, but earthmovers people like that.
[25:09] Speaker 4: He was awesome because he was thinking about this from
[25:12] Speaker 4: a historical perspective. He was talking about growing up in
[25:15] Speaker 4: Milwaukee as a teenager, and he's like, when I was
[25:18] Speaker 4: growing up, noise was money. So like, I get that
[25:20] Speaker 4: is noisy and there's pollution and whatever, but he's like,
[25:23] Speaker 4: when I was growing up in Milwaukee, like we knew
[25:25] Speaker 4: that when we saw like the smokestocks and we heard
[25:27] Speaker 4: the noise, that was what was going to feed our kids,
[25:30] Speaker 4: that was going to send our kids school, that was
[25:33] Speaker 4: what was the lifeblood of our community. And so to him,
[25:36] Speaker 4: it was kind of surprising to see the shift over
[25:39] Speaker 4: the past few decades of people losing trust in industry,
[25:42] Speaker 4: seeing it not as this is what keeps our economy going,
[25:45] Speaker 4: this is what helps working class families, and much more,
[25:48] Speaker 4: this is something to be distrusted. And he was saying
[25:51] Speaker 4: that he tried to get, for example, some of his
[25:53] Speaker 4: union members to speak up at city council meetings and
[25:55] Speaker 4: say like, hey, this is helping me, like this is
[25:58] Speaker 4: these are the jobs that are getting created, but even
[26:01] Speaker 4: his guys were like scared to do it because there
[26:03] Speaker 4: was so much opposition that being pro data center was
[26:07] Speaker 4: just going to get your neighbors really pissed at you.
[26:09] Speaker 4: And I think part of the problem is that there's
[26:11] Speaker 4: again not that many of these folks, and that even
[26:14] Speaker 4: of the people there, some of them come from out
[26:16] Speaker 4: of town because there are so many labor shortages, Like
[26:19] Speaker 4: these workers are getting great jobs like one hundred dollars
[26:21] Speaker 4: cash per dms because people want to compete between sites,
[26:24] Speaker 4: apprenticeship programs and skilled trades. I've heard from multiple people
[26:28] Speaker 4: have been like doubling in size over the past couple years.
[26:31] Speaker 4: But again, it's just not that many people. So if
[26:33] Speaker 4: you're working on a project you're going to be excited
[26:35] Speaker 4: about it, but it's kind of hard to convince someone
[26:37] Speaker 4: else in the community who is not. And then I
[26:39] Speaker 4: also just think that trust again in corporations has cratered
[26:43] Speaker 4: over the past few decades. Like GM in Janesville was
[26:46] Speaker 4: sort of revered as this is what the community is
[26:49] Speaker 4: built on, this is the thing that keeps us going.
[26:51] Speaker 4: But when the company goes bankrupt, when they lay off
[26:54] Speaker 4: thousands of workers, when they fail to clean up the
[26:57] Speaker 4: contaminated brown field that the factory was built on and
[27:00] Speaker 4: leave thirty million dollars of hazardous waste in the ground
[27:04] Speaker 4: for the community to deal with, Like, that's a lot
[27:06] Speaker 4: of broken trust. So people are not thinking, oh, let's
[27:08] Speaker 4: bring GM back there, thinking, man, like, we trusted that
[27:11] Speaker 4: company and they screwed us over right. Yeah.
[27:13] Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you actually about the social dynamic
[27:16] Speaker 2: between the construction workers being brought in for these projects
[27:19] Speaker 2: and the you know, lifelong citizens of small towns, because
[27:24] Speaker 2: I know you like to take a sort of anthropological
[27:26] Speaker 2: approach to some of your reporting. How did they actually
[27:29] Speaker 2: feel about each other? And I kind of I got
[27:32] Speaker 2: to say, this is a free idea to anyone in
[27:35] Speaker 2: Hollywood but I really think someone needs to come up
[27:37] Speaker 2: with a TV series where it's like a giant data
[27:39] Speaker 2: center being built in a really small town and the
[27:41] Speaker 2: dynamic between like the influx of all the contractors and
[27:45] Speaker 2: the locals, we could have some interesting storylines. Sorry, that's
[27:48] Speaker 2: just an aside. But what was that relationship?
[27:51] Speaker 4: Like? Oh, yeah, I mean just the not exactly what
[27:53] Speaker 4: you're talking about. But my friends and I who went
[27:55] Speaker 4: on the trip, we all watched Eddington before we went over,
[27:59] Speaker 4: and I didn't know what kind of movie it was.
[28:00] Speaker 4: I just knew it was like kind of about a
[28:01] Speaker 4: data center, and I was just like, you know, shooting
[28:03] Speaker 4: each other up, and I'm like, oh God, is this
[28:05] Speaker 4: what we're see?
[28:06] Speaker 5: Yeah?
[28:06] Speaker 2: I was sinking something a little bit more lighthearted, but
[28:08] Speaker 2: you know, you never know what direction I could go in.
[28:10] Speaker 4: No, totally. I mean, so one thing I'll say is
[28:13] Speaker 4: I talked to three folks from the trades, but it
[28:15] Speaker 4: wasn't an incredible amount. We actually found construction workers and
[28:18] Speaker 4: trades people pretty hard to get in touch with. I
[28:20] Speaker 4: think partly because they'd all signed NBAS and also I
[28:23] Speaker 4: just heard it incdotally from so many people that pro
[28:26] Speaker 4: data center folks are very scared of talking because they
[28:29] Speaker 4: have seen how vicious to get their death threats. You
[28:32] Speaker 4: have city councilors resigning bad blood between neighbors. The opposition
[28:36] Speaker 4: is pretty intense, and so my guess is that these
[28:39] Speaker 4: trades people are a little bit worried. I mean, everyone
[28:41] Speaker 4: I talked to in the trades was aware of the backlash.
[28:44] Speaker 4: They were like, yeah, we know some people were worried
[28:46] Speaker 4: about the environment. We think it's worth it, but like
[28:49] Speaker 4: we understand. But fundamentally, I think the folks I talked
[28:52] Speaker 4: to were more focused on themselves and their work and
[28:56] Speaker 4: sort of their benefits. One actually surprising tidbit that I
[28:59] Speaker 4: heard was that from Terry to this guy who's a
[29:03] Speaker 4: CEO of an electrical contracting company I talked to, to
[29:05] Speaker 4: an HVAC engineer I talked to, they all thought that
[29:08] Speaker 4: AI was maybe a bubble or like probably a bubble.
[29:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was interesting.
[29:12] Speaker 4: That was really odd because even the people who are
[29:14] Speaker 4: excited about this, who are making their money from it,
[29:16] Speaker 4: they were like, yeah, like it does worry me that
[29:19] Speaker 4: like the mag seven hold like fifty percent of the
[29:22] Speaker 4: stock market, or like, yeah, it's a bubble, but we'll
[29:24] Speaker 4: just move on to the next bubble, we'll diversify, right,
[29:27] Speaker 4: And so I think one thing that was really clear
[29:29] Speaker 4: to me was that folks in these communities far away
[29:33] Speaker 4: from Silicon Valley, they are deeply unsure about how sustainable
[29:38] Speaker 4: the AI boom is. And I think that really informs
[29:41] Speaker 4: whether you're willing to take the bet on like a again,
[29:44] Speaker 4: a gigantic construction project that may not even start paying
[29:46] Speaker 4: taxes until ten years in the future. Is why I
[29:49] Speaker 4: keep reading on the news it's a bubble. I don't
[29:51] Speaker 4: know if this technology is that helpful to my life,
[29:54] Speaker 4: and if it's a bubble that makes the economic trade
[29:57] Speaker 4: offs very, very different.
[29:59] Speaker 2: Just to quickly go back to the influx of contractors things,
[30:01] Speaker 2: are there any local businesses like I don't know, restaurants,
[30:04] Speaker 2: sandwich shopped, gas stations that are happy that like you
[30:08] Speaker 2: now have five hundred workers who maybe weren't there before
[30:11] Speaker 2: and they're all getting their their lunch at your shop
[30:13] Speaker 2: or something like that.
[30:14] Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, so I heard this more anecdotally, not
[30:16] Speaker 4: from the shops themselves, but yeah, like the mayor mentioned
[30:19] Speaker 4: that sales taxes in Port Washington have like doubled over
[30:22] Speaker 4: the last year, that the sort of home I don't
[30:25] Speaker 4: know what it's called, like the low's equivalent in their
[30:28] Speaker 4: community that's sold Like where's they got a ton of
[30:31] Speaker 4: revenue that tips were up on weekdays? I know. Sharon
[30:34] Speaker 4: Goldman has also done some reporting about some of the
[30:37] Speaker 4: projects in Louisiana, and she talked to some restaurant owners
[30:39] Speaker 4: who were saying, like, yeah, we're just getting like crazy
[30:41] Speaker 4: amounts of borders now. So I do think that small
[30:43] Speaker 4: businesses in the area are probably happy about the influx
[30:46] Speaker 4: of new workers.
[31:02] Speaker 3: Right prior to the data center explosion that we've really
[31:08] Speaker 3: seen basically for two years now. Just prior to that,
[31:14] Speaker 3: everyone or lots of people were really excited about the
[31:17] Speaker 3: Inflation Production Act and all of these reindustrialization efforts. But
[31:22] Speaker 3: like some of these issues are going to be exactly
[31:24] Speaker 3: the same. Like if you're gonna like build like an
[31:26] Speaker 3: evy battery plant, that's going to be noisy, that's going
[31:30] Speaker 3: to bring in a lot of temporary workers. You know,
[31:33] Speaker 3: if you're actually going to have a state of the
[31:36] Speaker 3: art it's going to be an electricity user, that's going
[31:39] Speaker 3: to be a water user. And if it's a state
[31:42] Speaker 3: of the art factory, or if it's going to be
[31:43] Speaker 3: a cutting edge factory, it is not going to employ
[31:47] Speaker 3: people ever at this scale of like the old like
[31:50] Speaker 3: River Rouge GM factory, Like modern factories just aren't like that.
[31:55] Speaker 3: Do you think some of these concerns, these fights, these
[31:59] Speaker 3: issues where it seems like it's not democratic in the
[32:03] Speaker 3: ideal sense if for certain proponents simply do not feel
[32:07] Speaker 3: comfortable making their voices known because they are like just
[32:11] Speaker 3: do not you know, sort of not good for sort
[32:14] Speaker 3: of liberal norms about speech, Like do you think these
[32:18] Speaker 3: concerns are generalizable to any attempt at what we all
[32:23] Speaker 3: love the idea of, like industrial revitalization.
[32:26] Speaker 4: So I think any big heavy manufacturing, any big industrial
[32:30] Speaker 4: development does face some opposition for sure, And that's kind
[32:34] Speaker 4: of the classic NIMBI stuff, right, Yeah, But one thing
[32:37] Speaker 4: that was really surprising to me is how much more
[32:41] Speaker 4: intense data center opposition is even when compared head to
[32:44] Speaker 4: head against these other kinds of things. So hemav News
[32:46] Speaker 4: has done some really good pulling on this, where data
[32:48] Speaker 4: centers are more unpopular than solar farms and nuclear plants,
[32:53] Speaker 4: than power plants, than battery storage facilities. Like people are
[32:58] Speaker 4: relatively okay with the chip factories and with the Amazon
[33:01] Speaker 4: fulfillment centers, and with all of these other things that
[33:04] Speaker 4: are again environmentally often dirtier like from a pollution perspective,
[33:08] Speaker 4: that also do bring in lots of construction workers and stuff.
[33:11] Speaker 4: But there is something about AI data centers. Whether it's
[33:14] Speaker 4: people don't really vibe with AI, they're not excited about that,
[33:17] Speaker 4: whether it's the expedited, like sort of secret processes that
[33:20] Speaker 4: are used for data centers that aren't as commonly used
[33:23] Speaker 4: for the others, or whether it's seeing national narratives about
[33:26] Speaker 4: data centers and that amplifying local concern But I do
[33:29] Speaker 4: think that the data center opposition is of a unique
[33:32] Speaker 4: and different scale to the opposition to these other things.
[33:35] Speaker 1: Well, then I.
[33:35] Speaker 3: Wonder, I mean, if even people are more comfortable with
[33:39] Speaker 3: solar firms or nuclear facilities, which you know, a couple
[33:43] Speaker 3: of decades ago people did not want them around at all.
[33:46] Speaker 3: Is it also get back to there's something about AI,
[33:50] Speaker 3: like maybe they don't articulate the X risk the way
[33:53] Speaker 3: people in Silicon Valley talk about it, et cetera. But
[33:57] Speaker 3: there is something about AI specifically that just like has
[34:01] Speaker 3: these sort of drives, these very anxious vibes in a
[34:05] Speaker 3: way that something with a similar ecological footprint, doesn't.
[34:09] Speaker 4: That did end up being my hypothesis because again, on
[34:12] Speaker 4: one hand, people didn't bring up like deep fakes or
[34:15] Speaker 4: job loss or X risk or whatever. People were much
[34:18] Speaker 4: more likely to bring up water and the NDAs or
[34:20] Speaker 4: something like that. But I think that's what made it
[34:23] Speaker 4: feel like there was no pro faction for data centers right,
[34:27] Speaker 4: Like it didn't feel like a trade off that's like, yeah,
[34:29] Speaker 4: we're going to deal with this big construction project, but
[34:32] Speaker 4: we're going to get more energy or something, or yeah,
[34:34] Speaker 4: we all need cars, like the car has got to
[34:36] Speaker 4: be made somewhere. I think with AI people were just like,
[34:39] Speaker 4: but do we need it at all? And so then
[34:41] Speaker 4: if you're not even sure whether you need it at all,
[34:44] Speaker 4: then the trade of like let me accept this big
[34:47] Speaker 4: cost is pretty significant. Again, one of the things that
[34:49] Speaker 4: distinguishes I think the classic NIMBI story from the data
[34:53] Speaker 4: center story is that people who do not live near
[34:55] Speaker 4: data centers are as opposed to data centers as people
[34:57] Speaker 4: who live near them. And normally with NIMBI, it's like
[35:00] Speaker 4: I do want housing somewhere else, I do want a
[35:03] Speaker 4: nuclear plant somewhere else. With data centers, people are saying
[35:06] Speaker 4: I don't want them anywhere because I don't really think
[35:07] Speaker 4: we need this AI thing, and so I think it's
[35:09] Speaker 4: a failure of Silicon Valley frankly in the AI industry
[35:12] Speaker 4: and also governments as well to make the positive case
[35:16] Speaker 4: for why is it important to our society that we
[35:19] Speaker 4: actually enable the AI build out.
[35:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like there's a lot of generalized downside,
[35:23] Speaker 2: given that people are worried about things like jobs and
[35:26] Speaker 2: maybe even a robot apocalypse, or at the very least
[35:30] Speaker 2: they don't feel the technology is that relevant to them.
[35:32] Speaker 2: And then even if there's hyper localized upside in the
[35:35] Speaker 2: form of like well, maybe some more jobs, although not
[35:39] Speaker 2: that many, and maybe some additional income, although you don't
[35:41] Speaker 2: even trust how much income that will end up being,
[35:45] Speaker 2: it feels like this is a very hard dynamic to escape, Like,
[35:49] Speaker 2: if you're a big hyperscaler or a data center company,
[35:53] Speaker 2: how are you supposed to fix this? Because you can
[35:55] Speaker 2: promise the moon basically, and it feels like people still
[35:59] Speaker 2: aren't going to accept the offer.
[36:02] Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting coming back to USUF
[36:04] Speaker 4: and talking to folks I know in the AI industry,
[36:06] Speaker 4: some even involved in building data centers, And one of
[36:09] Speaker 4: the questions that I'll hear is like, do we just
[36:11] Speaker 4: need to make the bribes bigger? Like what if we
[36:13] Speaker 4: just like mail checks everyone's house, And like one is
[36:16] Speaker 4: that might work. But I think one other thing I
[36:18] Speaker 4: realized when I was out in the Midwest is actually
[36:20] Speaker 4: sometimes the bigger the numbers, the more suspicious people get,
[36:23] Speaker 4: because the more it feels like this sort of dark money,
[36:25] Speaker 4: shady like is this a bubble type situation? I think that,
[36:29] Speaker 4: like getting the community benefits right is certainly part of it.
[36:32] Speaker 4: I think another and I actually became much more sympathetic
[36:35] Speaker 4: to the statewide moratoriums after my trip than before. I
[36:38] Speaker 4: think before I was sort of like, this seems like
[36:40] Speaker 4: a kind of blunt tool. I don't think stopping data
[36:42] Speaker 4: centers will actually regulate AI. But now I see the moratoriums,
[36:45] Speaker 4: whether it's Kathy Hochels or Greg Abbotts or whatever, as like, again,
[36:49] Speaker 4: we know that there's this powery symmetry between these tiny
[36:52] Speaker 4: towns and these big companies. We shouldn't expect a town
[36:56] Speaker 4: of three thousand or twenty thousand people to get a
[36:58] Speaker 4: good deal to extract the right guarante. I think that
[37:01] Speaker 4: actually bringing that up to the state level and maybe
[37:03] Speaker 4: taking a pause for the state officials to figure out,
[37:07] Speaker 4: like we want, you know, x millions of community benefits
[37:11] Speaker 4: per megawatch, or we're going to mandate these environmental standards
[37:14] Speaker 4: closely cooling, x percent renewable energy, etc. These are going
[37:18] Speaker 4: to be the rate prayer protections we implement at the
[37:21] Speaker 4: state level, and we will pause until everyone agrees to that.
[37:24] Speaker 4: You could also see a world where that's better for
[37:26] Speaker 4: data center developers because they no longer have to manage
[37:29] Speaker 4: like all of these like individual negotiation processes quite as
[37:32] Speaker 4: much if those standards have been set at the state level.
[37:35] Speaker 4: So I think I'm pretty optimistic about that kind of streamlining.
[37:38] Speaker 4: I know it was a relevant factor actually with the
[37:40] Speaker 4: solar build out too. And the reason I keep referencing
[37:43] Speaker 4: solar is because that also went through a period of
[37:45] Speaker 4: controversy in Wisconsin and Michigan, and so people often talked
[37:48] Speaker 4: about it and bringing state level regulation was kind of
[37:51] Speaker 4: like part of the solve there. And then I guess
[37:53] Speaker 4: like part of it is also just like I think
[37:55] Speaker 4: that both the AI industry and governments have to do
[37:58] Speaker 4: a better job making that pro Like I was disappointed frankly,
[38:02] Speaker 4: and a lot of the local officials they met with
[38:04] Speaker 4: how poorly they were able to articulate, like why it
[38:08] Speaker 4: would be beneficial to their community to make this deal. Like,
[38:12] Speaker 4: I think, if you are responsible for leading economic development,
[38:16] Speaker 4: like it is kind of on you to talk to
[38:19] Speaker 4: your constituents to understand their concerns and to do whatever
[38:23] Speaker 4: community engagement process that is required in order to achieve that.
[38:28] Speaker 4: But it's also just like very very hard, you know, great, I.
[38:30] Speaker 2: Mean, if the constituents don't believe anything you or the
[38:34] Speaker 2: company says, because there's just a lack of trust both
[38:38] Speaker 2: in government and in corporate America at the moment, it
[38:41] Speaker 2: feels very difficult to convince them otherwise.
[38:43] Speaker 4: Yeah, I think these are all things that I think
[38:45] Speaker 4: could make things better. But like, fundamentally, like I think
[38:48] Speaker 4: that the domestic politics will be a constraint on the
[38:50] Speaker 4: build out. There is a reason that the AI companies
[38:53] Speaker 4: are now building out compute capacity in Australia, in Canada,
[38:58] Speaker 4: in Europe even And so I think that people very
[39:01] Speaker 4: much see that there is a risk to the AI
[39:03] Speaker 4: build out if we expect to have to win over
[39:06] Speaker 4: all these American communities and the global build out. Even
[39:10] Speaker 4: the idea of data centers in space, for example, which
[39:13] Speaker 4: is extremely speculative at this point, but it is something
[39:15] Speaker 4: that folks are investing in.
[39:17] Speaker 2: The ultimate nimbiism send them to know, because.
[39:19] Speaker 4: People are literally thinking, you know, there's nobody in space
[39:22] Speaker 4: to stop me, and I think that's very motivating to
[39:25] Speaker 4: why Elon wants to do it.
[39:26] Speaker 2: So when you get the aliens knocking on your.
[39:28] Speaker 4: Door, oh gosh.
[39:30] Speaker 2: I actually I wanted to ask you about China because
[39:32] Speaker 2: I know you've traveled around there relatively recently. Do you
[39:36] Speaker 2: get the same sense of data center pushback in a
[39:39] Speaker 2: place like China.
[39:40] Speaker 4: I didn't explore the data center's issue as much as
[39:43] Speaker 4: I would have liked to when I was there because
[39:45] Speaker 4: I was mostly sticking to the cities. And similarly, the
[39:47] Speaker 4: data center build out was in sake Guajo Province or
[39:50] Speaker 4: in some less populated areas of the north, so it
[39:54] Speaker 4: was not happening around the cities. If I were to,
[39:56] Speaker 4: you know, wager our hypothesis. My sense is that as
[39:59] Speaker 4: with other big developments in China, there is just not
[40:02] Speaker 4: a culture of resistance, like Nimbiism doesn't really exist in
[40:05] Speaker 4: China because people do not own private property anyway, and
[40:09] Speaker 4: so like when your land gets eminent, domained or taken
[40:12] Speaker 4: for a government project, there's not as much of a
[40:16] Speaker 4: channel in order to push back. Both culturally, there's not
[40:19] Speaker 4: an expectation and politically, it's not a democracy, it's an
[40:23] Speaker 4: authority and state, so you are going to lose. So
[40:25] Speaker 4: whether there is or is not, like data center opposition,
[40:28] Speaker 4: I'm sure some Chinese people are annoyed about the data
[40:30] Speaker 4: centers being built if it's in their backyard, if it's
[40:33] Speaker 4: on their farm, But my guess is like fundamentally, like
[40:36] Speaker 4: you're just not going to see the political pushback. That
[40:39] Speaker 4: is I think a specific quality of American democracy that
[40:42] Speaker 4: a local town can actually stop a hyperscale developer from
[40:46] Speaker 4: coming in.
[40:46] Speaker 3: That makes sense, by the way, you know, like when
[40:48] Speaker 3: a governor hokl came on odd Lag, I think a
[40:51] Speaker 3: lot of people did find it quite compelling when she
[40:53] Speaker 3: was like, look, actually we do want data centers, but
[40:56] Speaker 3: we want to come up with a template that actually
[40:59] Speaker 3: just we know is like positive sum And I think
[41:02] Speaker 3: a lot of people actually found that to be fairly
[41:03] Speaker 3: convincing in the sense, like what's happening so fast these
[41:07] Speaker 3: towns do not really have this sort of I guess
[41:10] Speaker 3: you'd call it state capacity or government capacity to really
[41:14] Speaker 3: figure these things out on their own.
[41:15] Speaker 1: They don't have the house expertise.
[41:17] Speaker 3: Let's come up with a repeatable template that we have
[41:20] Speaker 3: reason to believe works in town after town. I don't know,
[41:23] Speaker 3: it seems plausible to work. Something I'm curious about, like
[41:27] Speaker 3: putting back your.
[41:28] Speaker 1: SF hat on. You know, clearly the AI.
[41:33] Speaker 3: Industry they're very anxious about AI themselves, right, we know that,
[41:38] Speaker 3: and they've anticipated in advance backlash, but they've mostly focused
[41:44] Speaker 3: on this risk of job displacement. And so you see
[41:48] Speaker 3: they'll write essays about we're going to need a new
[41:51] Speaker 3: social contract, we're gonna need maybe to rethink the welfare state,
[41:56] Speaker 3: We're going to need to think that you know, some
[41:59] Speaker 3: VC rights, that thing about the meaning of work or whatever.
[42:02] Speaker 1: How much of would you say.
[42:04] Speaker 3: The last two years or three years within AI is
[42:08] Speaker 3: a big thing of Like AI executives just not correctly
[42:14] Speaker 3: anticipating the first source of actual attention.
[42:19] Speaker 1: They thought it was going to be about jobs.
[42:21] Speaker 3: Many of them have probably been like unrealistic in their
[42:24] Speaker 3: timelines for job displacement. You know, we've been hearing six
[42:27] Speaker 3: months until the big white collar wipeout for like almost
[42:30] Speaker 3: probably two and a half years now. How much of
[42:33] Speaker 3: it is like they thought the flashpoint was going to
[42:36] Speaker 3: be one thing and it turned out to be another thing.
[42:38] Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's a big issue. Jobs. Of
[42:39] Speaker 4: course people are really concerned about, Like when you look
[42:41] Speaker 4: at the national pulling there and like, people are certainly
[42:43] Speaker 4: anxious about their jobs. But yeah, data centers. I don't
[42:46] Speaker 4: think people expected the kid's safety stuff. I don't think
[42:49] Speaker 4: people expected. The thing I always tell my friends here
[42:51] Speaker 4: is I'm like, yeah, like there are no kids and
[42:53] Speaker 4: no data centers in San Francisco, So no wonder you
[42:55] Speaker 4: guys didn't worry about it. But the thing is, like
[42:58] Speaker 4: these are the ways that AI materially shows up in
[43:00] Speaker 4: like everyday people's lives, right, Like they are not their
[43:03] Speaker 4: job has not been lost yet in most cases, they
[43:05] Speaker 4: are not thinking about the speculative future superintelligence and whether
[43:09] Speaker 4: that's going to like have a coup or something like that.
[43:12] Speaker 4: But like their kid is already cheating on their homework,
[43:14] Speaker 4: a data center is already showing up in their city.
[43:17] Speaker 4: And so I think that because you know, SF is
[43:21] Speaker 4: a bubble, the AI industry is the bubble. Most people
[43:23] Speaker 4: in that world kind of only talk to other people
[43:25] Speaker 4: in that world and never leave. And so I think
[43:27] Speaker 4: that they are just frankly blind to the ways that
[43:30] Speaker 4: AI is already showing up elsewhere, and they're sort of
[43:33] Speaker 4: focused on their somewhat longer timelines and beliefs about dramatic
[43:37] Speaker 4: AI capabilities in the future instead of Nope, this is
[43:40] Speaker 4: like having effects on people's lives right now, and those
[43:42] Speaker 4: effects are not all good. And so I do think
[43:44] Speaker 4: the last six months has been a real reckoning that
[43:46] Speaker 4: I'm hearing from the AI industry about like, oh, shoot,
[43:49] Speaker 4: we really got to do something about the data center's thing,
[43:51] Speaker 4: and even with the job saying like, I think that
[43:53] Speaker 4: the AI executives have only started changing their tune on
[43:56] Speaker 4: this in the last few months after realizing like, talking
[43:59] Speaker 4: about white college loss all the time does not make
[44:01] Speaker 4: people very happy, And so I don't know. I did
[44:04] Speaker 4: this event in San Francisco on Monday, and it was
[44:06] Speaker 4: quite a few like people from the industry there, and
[44:09] Speaker 4: someone from Open Ai came up and mentioned he was like, yeah,
[44:11] Speaker 4: we're like discussing your article in our slack because we're
[44:14] Speaker 4: trying to think about the fact that we haven't been
[44:15] Speaker 4: telling very positive or effective stories about AI and this
[44:19] Speaker 4: is really coming to bite us. And I was like,
[44:20] Speaker 4: I'm glad you guys are having those conversations.
[44:22] Speaker 3: Well, so you know, this is just another sort of
[44:25] Speaker 3: SF question. But like in the labs, like especially you
[44:30] Speaker 3: know obviously the open AI hugging face attack, like all
[44:33] Speaker 3: these things, you know, they talk about job loss, et cetera,
[44:36] Speaker 3: Like how pervasive and how widespread is the sort of
[44:41] Speaker 3: like the X risk fears, like the real fears, And
[44:45] Speaker 3: would you say, like within the labs or within SF
[44:50] Speaker 3: more than data centers, even more than job loss, which
[44:54] Speaker 3: they might be comfortable talk about because it could just
[44:56] Speaker 3: sort of be solved maybe by tax and redistribute, et cetera.
[45:00] Speaker 1: That like this like sort of like.
[45:02] Speaker 3: Real, like the big one is like growing in SF,
[45:07] Speaker 3: like the big fear.
[45:08] Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean it's interesting because at the same time
[45:10] Speaker 4: folks are realizing, oh, yeah, the rest of the country
[45:13] Speaker 4: is worried about these more near term risks or near
[45:16] Speaker 4: term harms. The thing that people here are honestly worried
[45:19] Speaker 4: about is cyber attacks. Like I think Mythos was a
[45:22] Speaker 4: huge wake up call book through people in SF and
[45:24] Speaker 4: frankly people in DC, It's like, what does it mean
[45:27] Speaker 4: that this thing is now an extremely effective cyber weapon?
[45:29] Speaker 4: What does that mean for opensforce? For who gets access
[45:32] Speaker 4: to the cyber weapon, which countries, which companies? Is this
[45:35] Speaker 4: defense or offense dominant? I think people are starting to
[45:37] Speaker 4: think about bio more seriously of okay, maybe it's a
[45:40] Speaker 4: cyber weapon today. Is it going to be a bioweapon
[45:43] Speaker 4: in six months or twelve months? What does that mean
[45:46] Speaker 4: for the national securitization of this technology? And then the
[45:50] Speaker 4: hugging face incident? Was it to a lot of people?
[45:52] Speaker 4: Look like these sci fi stories that rationalist forms were
[45:56] Speaker 4: talking about five years ago, they are like, shoot, is
[45:59] Speaker 4: it coming true? Like our internal model that we were
[46:02] Speaker 4: testing decided to like cheat on its EVL, cheat on
[46:05] Speaker 4: its homework basically by hacking into another system and leaving
[46:08] Speaker 4: notes for its future self. I think this worry about
[46:11] Speaker 4: AIS trying to take a bunch of steps autonomously to
[46:14] Speaker 4: pursue a goal you've set, and then reward hacking basically
[46:17] Speaker 4: taking some unexpected, harmful route to get to the end result.
[46:21] Speaker 4: That story is actually starting to play out in a
[46:23] Speaker 4: pretty serious way. And so while the AI industry sees
[46:27] Speaker 4: say the data center backlash as something to manage on
[46:29] Speaker 4: the public perception front. The thing that they are truly
[46:32] Speaker 4: truly worried about right now is I think alignment, cyber
[46:34] Speaker 4: and bio risk, all right.
[46:36] Speaker 2: I think that's a good place to end it. Maybe
[46:38] Speaker 2: not a good place, but place to end up. A
[46:41] Speaker 2: great place to end it. Jasmine, thank you so much
[46:43] Speaker 2: coming back on all blot. It's always good to chat.
[46:46] Speaker 4: Yeah, this is so fun. Thanks for having me.
[47:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, Joe, that was a fascinating conversation. I mean, it
[47:02] Speaker 2: does feel like some of the struggle right now. I
[47:05] Speaker 2: mean I wouldn't even necessarily say it's a marketing problem.
[47:08] Speaker 2: It's just an identifying the upside problem for large hyperscalers
[47:14] Speaker 2: who are building models that you know, like not only
[47:16] Speaker 2: can take your job, but maybe they'll I don't know,
[47:19] Speaker 2: take control of your bank account or kill us all
[47:22] Speaker 2: with some new bio weapon that seems like a tough sales.
[47:24] Speaker 1: Pitch, right, but we'll give you a fifty thousand dollars bon.
[47:28] Speaker 2: No, and people still don't trust a fifty thousand dollars bonus.
[47:32] Speaker 3: It is weird that I believe maybe I'm wrong but
[47:36] Speaker 3: I believe there's still probably like cities, town, states, et cetera,
[47:41] Speaker 3: that have tax incentives for data centers.
[47:44] Speaker 1: And it always blows to my mind when I.
[47:46] Speaker 3: Read that, because like, this is the this is the
[47:49] Speaker 3: bottlenecks and all bottlenecks, this is the scarcity to end
[47:53] Speaker 3: all scarcity for all of that. Yeah, and it's like
[47:56] Speaker 3: you're still competing or you still nominally have something on
[48:00] Speaker 3: your books to attract data center companies, Like it seems
[48:03] Speaker 3: like the obvious first move is like get rid of
[48:06] Speaker 3: that and just reverse all the signs, right, It's like, no,
[48:09] Speaker 3: you're picking double sales tax or whatever.
[48:11] Speaker 2: This was the other thing I was thinking, because Jasmine
[48:13] Speaker 2: described the balance of power shifting to exactly that, right, Like,
[48:17] Speaker 2: there aren't a lot of places that still have There
[48:18] Speaker 2: are some, but not a lot that still have tax
[48:20] Speaker 2: incentives to attract data science. Most of them are asking
[48:24] Speaker 2: for payments from the companies themselves, And so I was thinking,
[48:27] Speaker 2: as that becomes the standard maybe template for a lot
[48:31] Speaker 2: of these projects, you know, hyper scalers and data center
[48:34] Speaker 2: companies are really going to have to pay up for
[48:36] Speaker 2: that space. It's another liability on their balance sheet. Right,
[48:40] Speaker 2: Everything is just getting more expensive.
[48:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, So everything is getting more every component,
[48:45] Speaker 3: and like maybe look at the mergions metas like cuts
[48:50] Speaker 3: to teachers in that one parish in Louisiana is not
[48:54] Speaker 3: really going to.
[48:54] Speaker 1: Move the dial, but like all on their own and every
[48:58] Speaker 1: one of these yes, it's like the whole thing is
[49:00] Speaker 1: going to get Well, think about.
[49:01] Speaker 2: Every data center you have now has a tax guarantee
[49:05] Speaker 2: like that could be a substantial liability even for a
[49:08] Speaker 2: big tech company.
[49:09] Speaker 1: No, of course, every single thing is going to add up.
[49:12] Speaker 3: So obviously, prior to the last three years, there were
[49:16] Speaker 3: a lot of data centers being built in America. It's
[49:20] Speaker 3: interesting to me that, like the people Jasmine talked to
[49:24] Speaker 3: felt they had different opinions on like a GPU AI
[49:27] Speaker 3: data center versus the old data center. That may be
[49:30] Speaker 3: like how's the cash of Netflix films for that area
[49:35] Speaker 3: or whatever, and that people perceive to be their difference.
[49:38] Speaker 3: I am not surprised that a given how easy it
[49:42] Speaker 3: was to build data centers up until recently, and b
[49:46] Speaker 3: how most people in the AI industry their own anxiety
[49:50] Speaker 3: is about something much more existential that they just didn't
[49:54] Speaker 3: really anticipate in a very good way. That like no,
[49:57] Speaker 3: this would be where the rubber hits the road, because
[50:00] Speaker 3: it's like, if you're worried about like AI causing human extinction,
[50:04] Speaker 3: like you're probably not thinking, like are the people in Jamesville,
[50:08] Speaker 3: Like how have we convinced them enough that like they're
[50:11] Speaker 3: tax bill is going to go down? Hey?
[50:13] Speaker 2: But if you want AI to cause human extinction, you
[50:16] Speaker 2: got to get that data center up and running. That's
[50:18] Speaker 2: the first step.
[50:19] Speaker 1: All right, that's right.
[50:20] Speaker 2: Shall we leave it there?
[50:21] Speaker 1: Let's leave it there.
[50:22] Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Authoughs podcast. I'm
[50:24] Speaker 2: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and
[50:27] Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal.
[50:28] Speaker 1: You can follow me at the Stalwart.
[50:30] Speaker 3: Follow our guest Jasmine Son, She's at Jasmine new Son.
[50:33] Speaker 3: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash Ol
[50:36] Speaker 3: Bennett at Dashbot, Calebrooks at Kelbrooks, and Kevin Lozano at
[50:40] Speaker 3: Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And for more Odd Lads content, go
[50:43] Speaker 3: to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots. We have a
[50:45] Speaker 3: daily newsletter and all of our episodes and you can
[50:48] Speaker 3: shed about all of these topics twenty four to seven
[50:50] Speaker 3: in our Discord, Discord, do gig, slash od.
[50:53] Speaker 2: Loogs and if you enjoy aud thoughts. If you like
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[50:57] Speaker 2: please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
[51:01] Speaker 2: And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can
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