'Cost Me the Election': Data Centers Trigger Voter Backlash

rrandycupertino about 2 hours ago 44 commentsRead Article on newsweek.com

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Discussion (44 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

yardie•about 2 hours ago

A few months ago the founders of the top AI companies walked into Capitol Hill. Tried to explain to a room full of elected representatives exactly how their technology was going to put almost half the working population into under/unemployment and they should consider UBI [0]. Then they went back to the airport, got on their corporate jets, and went home secure in the knowledge that they really showed them. That they were the smartest people in the room.

BTW, no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage. They absolutely want to know if these datacenters will bring jobs to their area. So far Altman, Ellison, O'Leary, Amodei, Pichai, and Zuckerberg have refused to answer that question.

[0] All except Jensen who has been really trying to explain the benefits of AI and has said these massive layoffs are a huge mistake.

cogman10•28 minutes ago

> no one I know gives a shit about the energy consumption or water usage.

They do when the knowledge of the resource consumption is paired with "Which will directly lead to your electric/gas bill going up."

People are also paying attention to the fact that the politicians aren't paying attention to the people. Nobody is even trying to sell the benefits of a datacenter in people's backyard. Instead, politicians are bending over backwards to eliminate any possible benefit by giving these datacenters permanent tax breaks.

When you have politicians clearly bought by businessmen who don't care about the communities that elected them. It's a bit of a no brainer that they'd be voted out.

cjfd•16 minutes ago

You can talk about UBI if you want to appear nice but people on UBI are also rather useless. Of course the real solution to the problem will be the change of carbon based life into silicon based life and the extermination of the former kind of life. Which is not the elected representatives problem if it happens to happen more than 4 years into the future.

missingcolours•40 minutes ago

The people doing the voting are mostly talking about how much water datacenters supposedly use.

hunter-gatherer•about 1 hour ago

I'm local-ish to Box Elder county in Utah, here people absolutely give a shit about the environmental burden to the region. It isn't just about water consumption, but other things. I think the "We need to win China is AI" narrative is (appropriately???) falling of deaf ears. Obviously I don't have the numbers, but even lay-people in my circles have asked how these alleged AI_driven benefits (fighting cancer, stopping climate change, and whatever) are really going to come to fruition, when what they really observe in their backyards are data centers being generated so we can fill our lives with AI slop.

cogman10•26 minutes ago

Box elder is particularly egregious. 9GW of new natural gas burning power concentrated in 1 location in a state that already suffers from poor air quality.

jboggan•38 minutes ago

(I'm also in Utah)

I'll second this observation, as well as add that apart from AI slop most people around here associate the data center push with the sudden proliferation of Flock cameras at every major intersection and along every highway. Provo defeated a major data center project that was going into an empty industrial park, arguably the kind of place that would fit that sort of development. The actual cost-benefit calculation for most people is heavily weighted towards the negative and this should not continue to surprise people. The perceived downside with no upside is just going to get worse if the government gatekeeps the most useful models.

user3939382•about 1 hour ago

Plenty of people care about their power bill. Water in some regions is a hot political issue. Data centers don’t create jobs of course, we don’t need anyone to answer that.

Jtsummers•31 minutes ago

"Some regions" being a a bit of an understatement, the US west and southwest are experiencing (or about to experience) severe water shortages and disruption due to the current water shortages.

dreamcompiler•about 1 hour ago

Out here in the US southwest, we absolutely do care about water usage as well as the potential for higher electricity prices. We also care about jobs, which in the case of data centers are only going to be boosted temporarily until construction is finished.

cdrnsf•about 1 hour ago

Nothing this technology offers is, to me, worth the noise pollution or increase in water and electricity rates.

xvedejas•13 minutes ago

In a working economy, an increase in demand for electricity would be met with an increase in investment and capacity, and (at least in the long-term) would benefit all electricity buyers. I'm sure there are market failures going on here in many places but it's not necessarily the case that you and the companies be on opposing sides. There are positive-sum solutions to a lot of these problems, if people are willing to consider them.

toomuchtodo•about 1 hour ago

Not to mention the tax breaks they're given for no material benefit to the community.

Future Illinois data center tax breaks on hold - https://www.illinoistimes.com/news/future-data-center-tax-br... - June 25th, 2026

State Data Center Policy Shifts as Governors Impose New Restrictions - https://www.multistate.us/insider/2026/6/22/state-data-cente... - June 22nd, 2026

Gov. JB Pritzker suspends tax breaks for data centers, urges more discussion - https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/gov-jb-pritzker-to-susp... - June 5th, 2026

Which States Are Banning Data Centers? - https://www.ncsl.org/fiscal/which-states-are-banning-data-ce... - June 2nd, 2026

US tax incentives for data centers by state - https://knowledge.sdialliance.org/8d367baa340046029912b1e04c...

Tax Incentives for Data Centers 50 State Survey - https://hbfiles.blob.core.windows.net/webfiles/TaxIncentives... [pdf]

randycupertino•about 2 hours ago

> In Utah on Wednesday, State Senate President J. Stuart Adams—one of the most powerful Republicans in the state—lost his primary election after supporting a major data center development near the Great Salt Lake, in one of the clearest signs yet of the growing political risks tied to the industry.

> At the local level, the fallout was just as direct. “Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do,” former Box Elder County Commissioner Lee Perry said after conceding his primary race, after voting to advance the same project.

arjie•11 minutes ago

Honestly, voter backlash occurs for every reason. Build more homes? Backlash. Build more wind? Backlash. Build more solar? Backlash. Build more geothermal? Backlash. Build more urban subway? Backlash. Build high-speed rail? Backlash. What I can conclude from this is that what is right to do and what voter backlash occurs in is orthogonal. I think it is right that we build all these things and more nuclear power, and more residential super towers, and more datacenters, and the other things for the same reason we climb the mountains, fly the Atlantic, and Rice plays Texas.

cosmic_cheese•about 1 hour ago

This is a pretty predictable reaction to the underhanded tactics being used to try to force these projects through either before citizens know they're happening and often, when citizens are aware, against their will.

As a side note, I wish we could muster this kind of vigor for just about any other type of public infrastructure project… nuclear/wind/solar power, fiberoptic internet, public high speed rail, new cities built around human-centric principles… you know, the things that the better part of the population stands to benefit from so at least the initial unrest is somewhat justified.

TheGRS•40 minutes ago

You get the same vigor against all of those project all the time. Windmills, solar, nuclear, rail, etc. There's a stronger will to oppose than to build.

SpicyLemonZest•about 1 hour ago

We do muster this kind of vigor. The problem is that coverage decisions shaped by negativity bias ensure you're much more likely to hear about the projects people don't like. Did you hear about the huge New Mexico wind farm, largest in the US to date, that came online two weeks ago?

cosmic_cheese•about 1 hour ago

That's true, but I also see a lot of infrastructure projects that get gummed up or even canceled by NIMBYs, industry incumbents, and general obstructionism that would've happened had they been undertaken with the same bull-in-china-shop approach these datacenter projects tend to take.

munificent•29 minutes ago

It's not really about AI, data centers, water consumption, or energy. Those are real issues. But I don't think that's what gets people so riled up.

Imagine if every AI company was a small local business run by middle class folks and there were thousands of these little companies. The total amount of data centers, water, and energy consumption is the same.

I don't think people would be anywhere near as mad then. There are still other societal externalities around AI to get mad about, sure.

But I think one of the biggest drivers of rage around AI is inequality. It's not about what is being consumed to produce AI, it's about the tiny fraction of soulless billionaire elites that benefit from it. It's about a small number of fantastically rich assholes who keep taking more and more and more while there is less and less left for everyone else.

The rage that Luigi Mangione felt is the same rage these voters feel and I believe has the same root cause. That rage won't go away if AI gets more energy efficient or stops using water.

jrm4•31 minutes ago

Generally, I'm glad that "the people" appear to be pointed in the IMHO correct direction, even if for imprecise, or maybe even wrong, reasons.

Regardless of what they are used for, we do not need more "data centers." This is true even outside of AI.

Putting so much of us into "the cloud" is generally harmful; encouraging people to learn about, and to do more "computing" at home -- on local machines they, or someone who cares about them, control, is better.

verdverm•about 2 hours ago

The US needs to build out energy infra like China, already >2x more total generation capacity (~1/3 of world total). Putting data centers aside, if America wants to bring manufacturing back, it will need energy to build things. RE: data centers, we do need to be more mindful of where they go and the resources they consume. We should force them to use water efficient cooling (more expensive for them) and support the buildout of the required energy gen. Utah does not seem an appropriate place for such a large data center.

The question is do we want to be a Petrostate or an Electrostate

https://youtu.be/gLnxzkiB-GI?is=CHj3J-ARp0iBq_NB (Adam Tooze prezi)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

phlipski•about 1 hour ago

Most US citizens want to be an electrostate. This current administration wants to go back in time and try to be a petrostate....

verdverm•about 1 hour ago

That may not be true for much longer given the (disappointing) trend

2020 - 79 : 20 (renewables : fossil fuel)

2026 - 57 : 42

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2026/04/03/americans-shi...

luxuryballs•about 2 hours ago

When I look at the total number of acres in a state and the number that may get taken up by a data center… not that we should even have to look at this spec but still not sure why people are so focused on data center construction as an issue unless it’s literally going to be next to your house, is there anything more than FUD going on here? And perhaps people taking advantage of it specifically as a talking point given election season.

GarnetFloride•about 1 hour ago

You can't look at the total acreage of the state as a metric when 64.4% of the state is owned by the federal government.

The proposed site is twice the size of Manhattan, NY and sized for 9GW of energy which is more than the entire state uses yearly. We literally do not have the water to support a data center that huge.

They just enacted a fireworks ban because the weather people just had to create a whole new category for how dry and dangerous it is. Air quality is a constant problem because all the pollution from regions West of Utah collect right against the mountains. A few years ago we woke up to what looked like heavy fog, but it was smoke --from Siberia.

apothegm•39 minutes ago

Water usage concerns in a desert, perhaps?

Diogenesian•about 1 hour ago

I think part of it is the perception that real environmental and public health damage is being done for totally trivial and indefensible causes. A data center is not like an airplane parts manufacturer, which has lots of ugly pollution but provides a necessary national service. Most people use generative AI recreationally, and the productivity gains among white-collar workers are awfully ephemeral. And if you're less pessimistic about the economics of generative AI... that makes it worse!

"We get a ton of money, you get increased natural gas emissions, increased unemployment, your electric bill is going up... oh and guess who's bailing us out when the bubble bursts?" Pretty rotten deal!

Rapzid•about 2 hours ago

Misdirected outrage. DCs are an easy outlet for people's AI frustration.

DeRock•about 1 hour ago

> the Stratos development would have spanned tens of thousands of acres in Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley. The project would ultimately require up to 9 gigawatts of power—more electricity than the entire state of Utah currently uses

Did you even read the article? This is proposed to be larger than Manhattan. The amount of power will almost certainly burden Utahs grid in ways that locals will be on the hook for. So much of this build out will be the typical "privatize gains, socialize losses" playbook that yes it is an important political issue, and yes you have to "look at this spec" to understand just how insane some of these project proposals are.

vablings•about 1 hour ago

"Privatize gains, socialize losses"

This pretty much spells out exactly my big problem with datacenters. I don't care if you build a huge datacenter several miles away from my home. What I do care about is utilities cranking up the price 3x because of "capacity issues" afterwards because said datacenter now uses more power than the entire district I live in

idiotsecant•about 2 hours ago

When people hear datacenter they think ai-almost universally subsidies by the many for the few. They drive up electrical costs, increase carbon emissions, and are designed to make money by stealing and repackaging the fruit of human labor and thought, with the goal of ultimately replacing it not for the benefit of all, but for the benefit of the owners of that datacenter.

What's not to like?

LorenPechtel•about 1 hour ago

The problem is not the center per se. The problem is the power. And, all too often they make up for the lack of utility capacity by putting in their own noisy generators.