Should America Build AI Data Centers at Any Cost?

AI Policy Weekly · Week of May 12, 2026

Summary

Three hundred protesters outside a county fairgrounds in rural Utah. Commissioners fleeing the stage as chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" filled the room. And then — a unanimous yes vote anyway.

In Q1 2026, more than 20 AI data center projects were canceled totaling $41.7 billion — already surpassing all of 2025. This week's debate pits the Cold War-level national security case for rapid buildout against a genuinely bipartisan community rebellion over electricity costs, water use, and democratic governance. Host Marcus Reid and analyst Jordan Voss argue both sides with the week's freshest evidence, anchored by the Utah Stratos project and five other live battles across Michigan, Oregon, Maine, Georgia, and Wisconsin.

Bottom line: America should build AI data centers — but the "unconditional welcome" model is failing in real time.

Chapters

#	Chapter	Start
1	Cold Open	0:10
2	Side A — The National Security Case	1:45
3	Side B — The Community Pushback	5:00
4	The Political Earthquake	8:42
5	The Industry's PR Crisis and the Search for a Middle Ground	11:30
6	Verdict and Takeaways	14:14
7	Outro	16:48

Full Transcript

[Cold Open — 0:10]

Marcus Reid: Three hundred protesters outside a county fairgrounds in rural Utah. Commissioners fleeing the stage as chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" filled the room. And then — a unanimous yes vote anyway.

Jordan Voss: That was Box Elder County, Utah — May 4th, 2026. And the project they just approved? A forty-thousand-acre AI data center campus. Roughly the size of Washington, D.C. Backed by Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank. Consuming nine gigawatts of power — more than double the entire state of Utah's electricity consumption.

Marcus Reid: Welcome to AI Policy Weekly. I'm Marcus Reid.

Jordan Voss: And I'm Jordan Voss. This week's debate: Should America build AI data centers at any cost?

Marcus Reid: That Utah vote is not an isolated incident. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, at least twenty proposed data center projects were canceled due to local opposition — totaling over forty-one-point-seven billion dollars in planned investment and at least three-and-a-half gigawatts of electricity. That already surpasses every cancellation in all of 2025.

Jordan Voss: One hundred and forty-two advocacy groups across twenty-four states. Sixty-four billion dollars in projects blocked or delayed over the past two years. Fourteen states considering legislation that would ban or pause new data centers. And a Quinnipiac poll from March showing sixty-five percent of Americans oppose AI data centers in their communities.

[Side A — The National Security Case — 1:45]

Marcus Reid: This is the context. Now let's actually debate it. Jordan — start us off. Make the strongest possible case for the pro-buildout side.

Jordan Voss: Alright. Here is the steel-man version of the pro-buildout argument. We are in a race with China for AI dominance. It is not a metaphor. It is not an abstraction. Utah Governor Spencer Cox said it plainly on May eleventh: "If China had gotten that piece of technology first — that could exploit the vulnerabilities of almost every major company and government entity in our country — it's over, we're done folks."

Jordan Voss: Training cutting-edge AI models requires massive compute. Massive compute requires data centers. Data centers require land, power, and water. If you block every project because some community doesn't want the noise — you don't slow down the AI race. You just make sure America loses it.

Marcus Reid: And there is real money behind that argument. Q1 2026 earnings: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta revealed a combined projected capital expenditure of seven hundred and twenty-five billion dollars for 2026 — up seventy-seven percent from the year before. McKinsey projects global data center capex will hit five-to-seven trillion dollars by 2030.

Jordan Voss: Right. And the federal government is aligned. Trump signed Executive Order 14318 in July 2025 — streamlining permitting for data center projects over a hundred megawatts or five hundred million dollars. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called opposition to data centers a — and I'm quoting directly here — a "surrender" to China.

Marcus Reid: What about the economic case? Because the national security framing is powerful, but communities also want to know: what's in it for us?

Jordan Voss: The numbers are compelling. The Goldwater Institute published a fact sheet in April: hyperscale data center construction employs fifteen hundred to five thousand skilled workers over eighteen to twenty-four months, with average salaries around a hundred and sixty thousand dollars — nearly double the national median household income. In Loudoun County, Virginia — data center alley — these facilities generate roughly thirty-eight percent of the county's general fund revenue. For every dollar in public services they consume, they pay approximately twenty-six dollars in taxes.

Marcus Reid: Kevin O'Leary made that argument directly. He said the Utah project would create ten thousand construction jobs and two thousand permanent positions. He called it, quote: "so important for defense, for the economy. It should be, for everybody, a mission. We can't let the Chinese beat us."

Jordan Voss: And on the water and energy concerns — the industry's counter-argument is that data centers consume less than point-zero-five percent of total U.S. freshwater withdrawals. The developers of the Michigan Oracle-Stargate campus said their facility uses closed-loop cooling with water consumption comparable to a standard office building. These are not the coal plants of the industrial era.

[Side B — The Community Pushback — 5:00]

Marcus Reid: Okay. Solid case. Now let me push back. Jordan, I'm flipping sides. You just made the argument that communities should step aside for the national interest. But in Box Elder County — those commissioners approved a project that would have consumed more than double Utah's entire power grid. On a five-month review timeline. Using a military development loophole that bypassed normal environmental review. Does "national security" justify that?

Jordan Voss: No. And I think the honest answer is: the pro-buildout side has a real argument, but some of the specific projects are genuinely indefensible on process grounds. The Utah case is the most dramatic example. That nine-gigawatt campus — before Governor Cox scaled it back — would have increased Utah's carbon emissions by fifty percent and required sixteen-point-six billion gallons of water per year. The Great Salt Lake is already at record-low levels.

Marcus Reid: And the community response was not fringe. Local activist Natalie Clark told commissioners, quote: "We're not here to subsidize our own death." Nearly four thousand Utahns filed formal water rights protests. Residents organized a citizen referendum.

Jordan Voss: And Governor Cox himself — the same person making the Cold War argument — admitted: "The process wasn't great." He then scaled back the project to Phase One only: one-and-a-half gigawatts, under two thousand acres, no Great Salt Lake water impact. That's a significant concession. It suggests even the pro-buildout side knows the original approval was a governance failure.

Marcus Reid: Let's talk about the electricity cost issue. Because this is where the opposition is gaining the most political traction — and it's genuinely bipartisan.

Jordan Voss: The Michigan situation is a perfect case study. DTE Energy — the utility serving the area where a sixteen-billion-dollar Oracle data center is being built — filed for a four-hundred-seventy-four-million-dollar electric rate hike. A nine-point-seven percent increase for residential customers. This came just months after a four-point-one percent increase was already approved.

Marcus Reid: And DTE's offer to freeze future rate hikes — but only if the data center opens on time — was what set off Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. She called it, quote: "a ransom note."

Jordan Voss: Now, the developers push back on this. They say data centers pay for their own grid infrastructure — substations, transmission upgrades. And in March 2026, seven tech companies signed what the White House called a "Ratepayer Protection Pledge" — committing that data center power costs would not be passed to American households.

Marcus Reid: But Oregon didn't wait for voluntary pledges. Their Public Utility Commission issued a binding order on May eighth: large data center users over twenty megawatts must pay one hundred percent of distribution grid expansion costs. Users over a hundred megawatts face a surcharge to fund energy cost relief for low-income households. Oregon's Consumer Utility Board called it — and I love this framing — "a win for Oregonians."

Jordan Voss: And this is actually where the debate gets interesting. Because you have Governor Ron DeSantis — a Republican — saying, quote: "You should not have to pay one dime more in utility costs, water, power, any of this stuff, because these are some of the most wealthy companies in the history of humanity." That is not a progressive argument. That's a conservative populist argument. The opposition is genuinely bipartisan.

[The Political Earthquake — 8:42]

Marcus Reid: Data Center Watch confirmed it: fifty-five percent of politicians publicly opposing data center projects are Republican. Forty-five percent Democrat. Energy expert Robert Bryce put it bluntly: "People all across the US are pissed off. They don't like the super-rich tech oligarchs, they don't trust Big Tech, and they are ready and willing to fight."

Jordan Voss: And they are fighting at the ballot box. This is the part that should worry tech companies most. In Festus, Missouri — four city council members lost their seats over support for a six-billion-dollar data center. In Warrenton, Virginia — all town council members who supported an Amazon data center were voted out. The replacement council had an explicit mandate to block it.

Marcus Reid: In Edgecombe County, North Carolina, a Vietnam War veteran named David Batts told commissioners — and this quote is a warning shot — "We will primary you." He then unseated a four-term incumbent in the Democratic primary.

Jordan Voss: Christabel Randolph from the Center for AI and Digital Policy put it exactly right: "It has become a kitchen table issue, and it has become a very relevant political issue." These communities understand that tech companies coming to build in their backyard will increase their bills. That is the concrete material grievance driving this — not abstract environmentalism.

Marcus Reid: What about Maine? Because that came the closest to a structural legislative response.

Jordan Voss: Maine's LD 307 was the first statewide ban ever passed — it would have paused large data center construction until November 2027 while a study council examined grid impacts and ratepayer protections. Four thousand nine hundred Mainers sent letters supporting it. That kind of constituent mobilization is, by any measure, unprecedented for a utility infrastructure bill.

Marcus Reid: Governor Mills vetoed it. The override fell short by just six votes. Representative Daniel Ankeles captured the mood in the chamber: "Go outside this building and read the room. The public is not happy that we are in this position, and it is not because anyone in here riled them up. It is because they are smart and they know better."

Jordan Voss: There is also a direct accountability failure that radicalized a lot of this opposition. In Fayetteville, Georgia — a QTS data center on six hundred and fifteen acres used twenty-nine million gallons of water without a meter or a bill, over nine to fifteen months. It was discovered only when residents in a nearby subdivision complained about low water pressure.

Marcus Reid: And the county's response? They issued a retroactive bill for a hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars — and chose not to fine the company. The Water Director explained: "They're our largest customer, and we have to be partners. It's called customer service."

[The Industry's PR Crisis and the Search for a Middle Ground — 11:30]

Jordan Voss: Fayetteville City Council subsequently voted to ban new data centers across all zoning districts. You can see why. During a moderate-to-severe drought, while the governor is declaring a state of emergency for wildfires — the county's largest industrial water user had no meter on its connection.

Marcus Reid: So let's bring this back to the core tension. The industry knows it has a perception problem. Business Insider reported that the AI Infrastructure Coalition — co-founded by former Senator Kyrsten Sinema — warned that companies are making "the worst business decision" by investing billions in infrastructure "while ceding the public debate to the loudest voices who will regulate them out of existence."

Jordan Voss: Ryan Mallory, CEO of Flexential, admitted it directly: "The data center industry hasn't done a good job of explaining itself." But here is the problem with the industry's current strategy. The national-security framing — China, Cold War, existential threat — it works politically at the top. It got you an executive order, a White House photo op with seven CEOs. What it does not do is address the woman in Fayetteville who had no water pressure.

Marcus Reid: There is a substantive middle-ground proposal worth examining. Bruno Manno from the Progressive Policy Institute argues: "The right civic stance is neither blanket opposition nor unconditional welcome. It's a conditional yes." His framework: honest job disclosures, workforce pathways, data centers paying their own infrastructure costs, transparent environmental impact data, and enforceable community commitments.

Jordan Voss: The Brookings Institution data backs up the jobs skepticism: data centers are, quote, "among the least labor-intensive structures in the economy." The construction jobs are real — but they are temporary. The permanent employment footprint is small. Communities that were promised a factory are getting a server room with thirty full-time employees.

Marcus Reid: And there is the "paid protesters" claim from the pro-buildout side — Power the Future sent a letter to Congress asking for a formal investigation into, quote, "a coordinated, billionaire-funded, and potentially foreign-backed political campaign" designed to block data centers.

Jordan Voss: Robert Bryce called those claims — directly — "bogus." And the Data Center Watch data supports him: fifty-five percent Republican, forty-five percent Democrat among elected opponents. You cannot manufacture that coalition with outside money. Seth Berry from Maine's Our Power organization said it plainly: "I really don't think it's fundamentally an issue that belongs to Democrats. There's growing concern among a broad swath of the American public."

[Verdict and Takeaways — 14:14]

Marcus Reid: Alright. Let's go to our verdict. What does this week's evidence actually tell us?

Jordan Voss: Here is what I take away. The national security argument is real — America does need the compute infrastructure to remain competitive in AI. But "real" does not mean "unlimited." The Utah Stratos project at nine gigawatts and forty thousand acres was not a calibrated national security response. It was a maximalist ask from a private investor who used a military development loophole to bypass the democratic process.

Marcus Reid: Governor Cox's decision to scale back to Phase One — one-and-a-half gigawatts, under two thousand acres — is actually the proof of concept for what a workable buildout looks like. The community wasn't wrong to push back. The pushback produced a better project.

Jordan Voss: The electricity cost issue is where the political risk is sharpest. If tech companies are still navigating rate hike fights and "ransom note" headlines in the 2026 midterms — in Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia, Oregon simultaneously — that is a strategic problem that no amount of national-security framing resolves. Oregon's model is instructive: you want to be here, you pay your full infrastructure costs.

Marcus Reid: For engineering managers and tech leads listening to this: the debate you need to track is not ideological. It is structural. The question is not whether AI data centers will be built. Twenty-five tech companies combined are spending over seven hundred billion dollars this year — they will be built. The question is: under what terms, with what community accountability, and paid for by whom.

Jordan Voss: Watch three things in the next ninety days. First: the Box Elder citizen referendum — do they get the signatures to force a vote? Second: the Michigan DTE rate case — does the Public Service Commission accept a deal that links rate freezes to data center timelines? And third: the Wisconsin elections — are data center opponents actually turning their poll numbers into legislative seats?

Marcus Reid: If voters are removing incumbents from office over data centers in November — that is the signal that this moves from local governance story to genuine national policy crisis.

Jordan Voss: Bottom line: America should build AI data centers. It should not build them at any cost, on any terms, in any location, using any governance loophole available. The "unconditional welcome" model is failing in real time — and the fallout is being measured in canceled projects, ballot losses, and ransom-note headlines.

[Outro — 16:48]

Marcus Reid: Thanks for listening to AI Policy Weekly. I'm Marcus Reid.

Jordan Voss: And I'm Jordan Voss. We're out every Friday. If this debate landed for you, share it with your team — these are decisions that are going to shape where your infrastructure runs and who pays for it.

Key Figures Referenced

Name	Role	Side
Spencer Cox	Utah Governor	Pro-buildout (then scaled back)
Kevin O'Leary	Stratos Project investor	Pro-buildout
Doug Burgum	Interior Secretary	Pro-buildout
Satya Nadella	Microsoft CEO	Pro-buildout (capex)
Sundar Pichai	Google CEO	Pro-buildout (capex)
Natalie Clark	Utah local activist	Opposition
Dana Nessel	Michigan Attorney General	Opposition
Robert Bryce	Energy expert / Substack	Opposition
Robinson Meyer	Heatmap Pro journalist	Opposition analysis
Rep. Daniel Ankeles	Maine Legislature (D-Brunswick)	Opposition
Seth Berry	Our Power (Maine)	Opposition
Ron DeSantis	Florida Governor	Opposition (bipartisan)
David Batts	Edgecombe County, NC resident	Opposition
Bruno Manno	Progressive Policy Institute	Middle ground
Christabel Randolph	Center for AI and Digital Policy	Opposition analysis

Sources

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CNN: "Why Utah residents are protesting a massive AI data center project backed by Kevin O'Leary" — [https://www.[cnn.com/2026/05/09/tech/ai-data-center-utah-kevin-oleary-opposition](https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/09/tech/ai-data-center-utah-kevin-oleary-opposition)](https://cnn.com/2026/05/09/tech/ai-data-center-utah-kevin-oleary-opposition](https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/09/tech/ai-data-center-utah-kevin-oleary-opposition)) (May 9, 2026)
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NPR: "Data centers are expensive, unpopular — and could be a tipping point in the midterms" — [https://www.[npr.org/2026/04/20/g-s1-117729/data-center-disputes-local-midterms](https://www.npr.org/2026/04/20/g-s1-117729/data-center-disputes-local-midterms)](https://npr.org/2026/04/20/g-s1-117729/data-center-disputes-local-midterms](https://www.npr.org/2026/04/20/g-s1-117729/data-center-disputes-local-midterms)) (April 20, 2026)
Planet Detroit: "DTE offers 2-year rate hike freeze if Saline data center opens on time: Nessel calls it 'ransom note'" — https://planetdetroit.org/2026/04/dte-rate-hike-data-centers/ (April 24, 2026)
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TechSpot: "A data center used 29 million gallons of water without a bill" — [https://www.[techspot.com/news/112356-data-center-used-29-million-gallons-water-without.html](https://www.techspot.com/news/112356-data-center-used-29-million-gallons-water-without.html)](https://techspot.com/news/112356-data-center-used-29-million-gallons-water-without.html](https://www.techspot.com/news/112356-data-center-used-29-million-gallons-water-without.html)) (May 11, 2026)
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USA Today: "They didn't want data centers. It didn't matter, but it should." — [https://www.[usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/11/data-center-box-elder-county-pollution-ai/89977253007/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/11/data-center-box-elder-county-pollution-ai/89977253007/)](https://usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/11/data-center-box-elder-county-pollution-ai/89977253007/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/11/data-center-box-elder-county-pollution-ai/89977253007/)) (May 11, 2026)
Data Center Watch: "$64 billion of data center projects have been blocked or delayed" — [https://www.[datacenterwatch.org/report](https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report)](https://datacenterwatch.org/report](https://www.datacenterwatch.org/report))
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Audio & Music Credits

Episode audio: Synthesized with MiniMax TTS (fal.ai speech-2.8-turbo). Voice cast:

Marcus Reid (host) — English_expressive_narrator
Jordan Voss (analyst) — English_WiseScholar

Theme music: AI-generated instrumental, produced with fal-ai/minimax-music v2.6 for this episode. Minimal tech-debate piano and light electronic percussion, 90–100 BPM, no lyrics, no human voice, no artist likeness. Used as intro stinger (10s), background music loop (-26 dB), and outro fade (15s). This is an original generated piece; no third-party licensing applies.

AI Policy Weekly publishes every Friday. One contested topic. Two sides. Twenty minutes.