The Political Backlash Against AI Data Centers—and Why It Might Be Solvable Public opposition to AI data centers has exploded. A Gallup poll from May found 71% of Americans opposed to data centers…
Jasmine Sun has appeared on 5 podcast episodes in our AI-summarized catalog, including The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis, Odd Lots, Search Engine. Every appearance below has a free 5-minute AI summary.
“My conversations made me wonder if the technical content of data center deals is mostly besides the point... Rather, the way that AI companies engage with communities, forcing NDAs, dangling billion-dollar promises... resembles a classic story about dark money and politics. It's not Skynet, it's the all of it.”
— Journalist Jasmine Sun
“It didn't feel like a trade-off... people were just like, 'but do we need it at all?'”
— Jasmine Sun, on why data center opposition is uniquely intense compared to other industrial projects.
“A gigantic company should not be able to sue us out of our democratically chosen decisions.”
— Jasmine Sun, on the power asymmetry in Selene, Michigan.
“I suspect there is a way to do the deals right. There is a way for places like Janesville... to find a way to get a good deal out of the AI companies.”
— Jasmine Sun, offering a nuanced, hopeful conclusion about the possibility of fair negotiations.
“So when you say, 'Hey, AI agent, go off and make me a million dollars,' whether that model goes and does so in a law-abiding and safe way, the safety of the model is very correlated with whether it is economically useful as well.”
— Jasmine Sun
“Reporting is taking tacit or private knowledge and turning it into public knowledge. That task is extremely robust in the era of AI.”
— Jasmine Sun
The Political Backlash Against AI Data Centers—and Why It Might Be Solvable Public opposition to AI data centers has exploded. A Gallup poll from May found 71% of Americans opposed to data centers…
In the summer of 2024, journalist Jasmine Sun piled into a car with friends and research assistants and drove to Michigan and Wisconsin to talk to people about data centers. She didn't go to…
A road trip through the data center debate Reporter Jasmine Sun spent ten days driving through Michigan and Wisconsin, talking to voters, activists, union leaders, and politicians about data…
In rural Wisconsin and Michigan, residents describe the landscape as "Eden"—lush, green, and beautiful. Then the data centers arrive: windowless warehouses so large that driving past one at…
How Substack Creators Are Covering This Strange Markets Era When James Van Geelen wrote a post about a theoretical scenario where AI eliminates everyone's jobs, he got two credible death threats.…
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