You read a couple of weeks ago Your Survival Guy’s view that the hysteria surrounding artificial intelligence reminds me of the hysteria that surrounded fracking. Today, Arthur Herman echoes my thoughts in a piece at Fox News, writing:
Data centers have become an electoral issue for the midterms, even in a red state like Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has announced a construction moratorium. It’s probably the only thing he has in common with ultra-liberal Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York: a willingness to hit the pause button on data centers.
This backlash comes despite the fact that every policymaker knows that data centers are needed to power our future economy, from AI to the internet of things and the cloud, and the only real beneficiary of a moratorium will be China. Still, the public remains unconvinced, especially when it faces a zoning proposal to build a data center half a mile from its backyard.
This all sounds discouraging, but we’ve been here before. Just a decade ago, the advent of large-scale fracking, or horizontal drilling, for oil and gas faced a similar frenzy of opposition. If today’s anti-data center forces have strong support from communist China (which has been linked to more than 200 accounts on X, promoting data center misinformation) then it was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russian media that amplified the anti-fracking movement here and in Europe.
There’s even some indication that anti-data center sentiment in the United States could be funded and exploited by China. A report by CAS (Consumer Action for a Strong Economy) suggests China might be behind efforts to oppose data centers, writing:
As Beijing races to expand its own compute capacity, networks with documented ties to China are helping turn American political grievances against the systems the United States needs to match it. China does not have to defeat American innovation outright if it can help make the infrastructure behind that innovation too difficult for America to build.
Action Line: People are easily caught in a hype-cycle of rabid news coverage. Keep your eye on what’s real and what’s exaggerated in all things. Click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
