Politicians can't ignore data centers anymore

It's not often that Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders, and Elizbaeth Warren find common ground. But as more voters grow critical of AI data centers — the sprawling, humming, energy-guzzling campuses that power everything from pharmaceutical research to your AI girlfriend — they and many other politicians are squaring off with Big Tech and calling to regulate the burgeoning behemoths.

In New York, lawmakers have proposed a three-year moratorium on developing new centers. "Massive data centers are gunning for New York, and right now we are completely unprepared," state Senator Liz Krueger said when announcing the bill earlier this month. Georgia, Maryland, and Oklahoma are among a handful of states that have introduced bills this year to pause data center construction. National and local politicians are calling for data centers to pay their fare share of rising utility costs. Sanders has gone so far to call for a national moratorium, arguing it would help America to "catch up" and "make sure that the benefits of these technologies work for all of us, not just the wealthiest people on Earth."

Until recently, most states have courted data centers, enticed by promises that they will create jobs and sprout long-term revenue from vacant land. Some three dozen offer tech companies tax incentives for building them, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But now that they're inching closer to everyone's backyard, data centers have become the hottest NIMBY issue. Money spent toward data center development jumped by tens of billions in 2024, and some Big Tech companies plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on property and equipment this year. At the end of 2025, there were more than 4,000 data centers in the US and nearly 3,000 more planned or under construction, according to a report from the American Edge Project, a pro-tech coalition. As the centers have multiplied, so have protests around environmental concerns and rising energy costs.

The data center battle is vying for attention in a heated midterm election cycle where most of the focus will turn on President Donald Trump, the economy, and immigration. Flavio Hickel, a professor of American politics at Washington College in Maryland, says data centers could be a piece of the big economic stressors for voters. "The issue is becoming both more tangible and more salient to the average voter," he says.

If Big Tech is eying your town to build a data center, your local politicians may start sounding the alarm before November.

Between March and June of last year, advocates and residents delayed or blocked $98 billion worth of proposed data center projects in their towns, according to Data Center Watch, a project from the AI safety company 10a Labs. The opposition has gotten so loud that more Americans are starting to think they don't want a data center anywhere near their home. A November survey by Morning Consult found that 41% of voters are in favor of a ban on AI data centers near where they live, an increase from 37% in October. Opposition to a ban has waned from 39% in October to 36% in November. There's still about a fifth of people in the middle who don't have feelings on data centers yet, but their numbers are shrinking. A poll conducted in January by Politico and Public First found that Republicans were 8% more supportive of data centers in their area than Democrats, but that overall 17% of Americans expected data center regulations to be a voting factor in the midterm elections, and 57% said they believed the data centers will at some point become a campaign issue where they live.

Trump wants data centers to be part of the MAGA agenda. Tech leaders that once espoused progressive values dropped their "woke" act and lined up behind Trump for his second inauguration, and now Trump has issued executive orders to support the AI industry. The Politico poll found that people who voted for Trump were more likely to support the idea of building more data centers across the U.S. than those who voted for Kamala Harris by 12%. Trump, like the tech companies courting him, positions the centers are quintessential to fueling American competition in the AI race. Last summer, the president issued an executive order to boost data center construction, saying his administration would make the "rapid and efficient buildout of this infrastructure" a priority by cutting away regulatory red tape and using federal land.

Big Tech companies need the centers far more than local communities need them — without more computing power, AI companies can't expand their footprint. Sam Altman poses this as a threat to humanity: "If we don't build enough infrastructure, AI will be a very limited resource that wars get fought over, and that becomes mostly a tool for rich people," he wrote in 2024. Trump has called for Big Tech to start picking up the additional energy costs. Data centers are "key" to make American first in AI, Trump wrote on Truth Social last month, "but, the big Technology Companies who build them must 'pay their own way.'"

If data centers don't start footing the bill for higher energy use, voters are likely to keep turning on them. A Bloomberg analysis found that electric bills have increased by as much as 267% in areas near "significant data center activity" compared to five years ago. "People are upset about costs," says Eli Yokley, a political analyst with Morning Consult. "They don't think Trump is addressing it to the extent they want him to, and one of the big drivers of that — other than healthcare and everyday goods — is energy costs."

Beyond affordability, politicians are also tapping into Americans' generalized anxiety over AI. White collar workers worry about losing their jobs to bots, and deepfake AI slop is ripping apart the remains of our shared reality. While data center construction is fueling demand for blue collar workers like electricians and plumbers, that's often a temporary blip in job creation, as maintaining the centers doesn't require many long-term jobs — according to a legislative audit in Virginia, data centers might employ 1,500 people during construction in good paying jobs, but need only 50 to keep the lights on later. DeSantis took a shot at the AI hype in December, saying: "Let's not try to act like some type of fake videos or fake songs are going to deliver us to some kind of utopia." That month, the Florida governor announced a proposal to push higher costs from data center development from consumers onto tech companies, block tax subsidies for the centers, protect local water resources, and give towns and cities the power to block data centers from their communities.

Senators Hawley, a Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, introduced Congress's first bipartisan legislation on curbing utility bill hikes this month. In Vermont, Virginia, and New York, Democratic lawmakers are leading the push for a moratorium. In Maryland and Oklahoma, the bills come from Republicans. In Georgia, a moratorium bill introduced in January has both Republican and Democratic sponsors. Lawmakers in other states from either party might continue to draw inspiration from these bills if their own constituents start making noise about data centers.

Much of the data center resistance is building locally, which brings the chance for liberals and conservatives to unite over shared concerns of costs and protecting their quality of life. The negative feelings people have about data centers are largely tied to their own energy costs — a local issue that's not yet an indictment of the centers at large. But as more communities fight to defeat them, it's more bad PR for Big Tech.

Particularly for local politicians, having a position on data centers could be important this year.

In Virginia, home to the world's largest concentration of data centers, aka Data Center Alley, backlash has been mounting for several years. In 2023, a largely unknown primary challenger beat out the sitting chair on a Virginia county Board of Supervisors, harnessing frustration over the rapid development of data centers in the region. Candidates for governor in Michigan are already talking about data centers, and Abigail Spanberger, who was elected governor of Virginia last year, made energy affordability a campaign talking point. Local leaders may have approved data centers when they weren't as controversial of an issue, and emerging challengers can now attack that record. This election cycle, says Miquel Vila, lead analyst with Data Center Watch, "data centers are going to be a very sweet issue for challengers and a pretty tough one for incumbents."

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.