AI Summary
5 min readIn 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 highway speed takes nearly two minutes. They hum, buzz, and whir with mechanical, inhuman sounds. The fight over these structures has become one of the most surprising political flashpoints in America, uniting Republicans and Democrats in opposition. By May of this year, seven in ten Americans opposed data center construction. Governor Ron DeSantis proposed a citizen's bill of rights for AI. Senator Bernie Sanders called for a national moratorium. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul imposed a one-year pause on new data centers, citing grid capacity and rising utility costs for residents. Reporter Jasmine Sun, who recently completed a reporting trip through the Midwest, argues that the backlash is not just about noise and concrete. It is about AI itself—and a growing populist revolt against the way the technology is being imposed on communities without their consent.
Three Layers of Backlash: Process, Impact, and AI Itself
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What you'll learn
- 1 The A.I. Revolt Is Here — Timestamped Outline
- 2 (00:57) **The Bipartisan Backlash Against AI Data Centers** - Ezra Klein introduces the surprising political coalition forming against data center construction across the United States
- 3 (03:07) **What Data Centers Actually Look and Sound Like** - Jasmine Sun describes the visceral experience of visiting data centers in rural Wisconsin and Michigan
- 4 (05:07) **Who Is Organizing Against Data Centers** - Sun profiles the unlikely coalition of activists she met on her reporting trip
- 5 (06:57) **The Three Layers of the Data Center Backlash** - Ezra and Jasmine outline the converging concerns: process, direct impacts, and AI itself
- 6 (07:21) **How NDAs Inflamed Local Opposition** - The use of non-disclosure agreements by data center developers backfired spectacularly
- 7 (09:34) **The Real Story on Water and Electricity** - Sun explains which resource concerns are legitimate and which are overstated
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
What’s big and ugly and has united Republicans and Democrats? A.I. data centers.
An overwhelming majority of Americans say they’d oppose a data center being built near where they live. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul just imposed a one-year moratorium on data center construction, and there are over 100 other local or statewide moratorium proposals across the country. A.I.’s explosive momentum over the last few years seems to have finally run into a force that could slow it down: the messy politics of getting things done in the real world.
So, is that a good thing, or a bad thing? And how much is the data center backlash about the actual construction of these buildings, and how much is it about A.I. itself?
Jasmine Sun has an excellent newsletter covering both the culture inside the A.I. companies and the anger that’s been building against them. And she just finished a reporting trip in the Midwest, where she interviewed people on all sides of the data center fight. So I wanted to talk to her about what she saw and what she thinks A.I. companies can learn from the growing movement against them.
Mentioned:
Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass by Jasmine Sun
Sam Bankman-Fried on Arbitrage and Altruism (Ep. 145)
Is Your Social Life Missing Something? This Conversation Is for You. With Priya Parker, The Ezra Klein Show
Book Recommendations:
The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut
The Technology Trap by Carl Benedikt Frey
The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
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