Josh Marshall linked to a piece on The Bulwark about data centers. It’s a pretty straight-news overview of why Democrats are amplifying the issue, but the subhead of the piece (“Here’s why it’s a risky issue”) gives up the game. Here’s the graph where things go sideways:
THE FEARS ABOUT DATA CENTERS can at times border on paranoia. Studies suggest that some of the public’s concerns are overstated. For example, there’s evidence that data centers use less water annually than golf courses or residential swimming pools. And it’s true that they create jobs. Not to mention that they can be an important source of tax revenue for local and state governments. In my conversations with Democratic officials, multiple people acknowledged that data centers were one of those issues where what candidates campaigned on could well end up being different from the policy approaches they actually took once in office.
The link to “overstated” goes to an Atlantic piece behind a paywall so I didn’t get it all. The “less water” link is a CBS News piece saying that most water use is farming, watering lawns and flushing toilets, not data centers. I’m very skeptical of the jobs piece, which tries to show that a significant number of IT jobs are created by data centers. The tax revenue question is whether the city or town or county where the data center is located is so thirsty for the supposed boon of having a data center that they dole out tax breaks.
What’s missing is, of course, the “E” word: electricity. These data centers use a staggering amount of it — the one being built near Cheyenne, WY will use three times more electricity than the entire state. That kind of electricity use costs consumers, and they’re right to be mad. Never mind everything that the Bulwark’s links don’t mention, such as the damage done by blasting, and the wrecking of water supplies, both of which were documented in AOC’s recent trip to north Georgia.
Yes, on occasion, outlets run by former Republicans like The Bulwark print good stuff. But a site staffed by former Weekly Standard employees and led by Sarah Longwell and Bill Kristol is going to side with Mitt-Romney-Republican “good for business” positions over positions adopted by anyone even slightly to the left of center in the Democratic Party. The piece quoted above is a case in point. The danger here is that sites like The Bulwark suck up money and attention that could go to media that would actually amplify Democrats who say things that aren’t acceptable to recently converted Democrats who were essentially kicked out of the Republican Party.
Part of the reason sites like the Bulwark are so successful is because their publishers and staff are plugged into the DC power structure and its corporate donor class. So it’s no coincidence that the Bulwark prints a “let’s not go too far on data centers” piece the around the same time that Politico publishes this:
Justin Pearson is a member of the Tennessee House, representing a Memphis district, where Elon Musk’s X has recently been forced to remove 69 gas turbines that were illegally powering their four data centers there. I guess you’re a “Luddite” if you want data center developers to follow the law and not poison your constituents.
There are a lot of issues around AI that go far beyond data centers, but most of it boils down to people being sick and tired of tech billionaires getting rich on their backs, while making their lives measurably worse. This is a rich vein of anger that Democrats need mine, deeply. To do otherwise would be political malpractice. So, once again, the never Trumpers’ desire to take over the party is at odds with the best interests of both the party and the public at large.
