Virginians’ attitudes towards data centers have shifted rapidly in just a few years. Once seen as a relatively benign form of development that contributed to local coffers without harming the broader community, today data centers face united opposition. 

Polling this spring showed just 35% of Virginia voters would be comfortable with construction of a new data center near them, a plunge from 69% just three years ago.  

This is the rare issue that unites voters of all political stripes – mostly against their own elected leaders, since the great majority of both Republicans and Democrats continue to support the data center buildout. The about-face has clearly taken elected leaders by surprise. I wonder if they actually understand it.  

For our leaders, the unconstrained growth of data centers in Virginia is just a problem to be managed. Identify the obvious issues: energy, water, utility bills, noise. Cut some deals, pass some laws, and with a few tweaks here and there, keep the industry moving forward. 

And move forward it must, they believe, because the data center industry attracts more new investment in Virginia than all other business sectors combined (though it falls to sixth place for employment). 

No other state – heck, no other country – relies so heavily on this one industry for growth. Leaders see the dangers of having all their eggs in one basket, but a lack of options makes them keen to avoid breaking eggs.

Virginia is not alone. The U.S. economy is way more diversified than Virginia’s, but even so, data center spending is estimated to add one full percentage point to GDP growth. Nationwide, data center construction is so robust, the construction industry would be contracting without it. 

And yet, most Americans feel the way Virginians do. They don’t want policy tweaks; they want data centers to go away. 

Seen purely as a reaction to the sins of the industry, the anti-data center backlash may look overblown.

Brown water, dust and loud noises: Louisa homeowner sues Amazon over data center construction

Yes, the companies negotiate largely in secret, bring noise and pollution, and use way more than their share of energy and water. But this is how most industries operate. Paper mills, factories, developers, chemical plants – they all hide their faults, look for holes in regulations, and get away with whatever the law allows. Is this really so different? 

It is. And until leaders recognize just how different, they will continue to respond as if all we need is more careful permitting.

The data center industry stands apart because the force behind it, America’s tech industry, is comprised of the richest and most powerful corporations in the world, led by obscenely wealthy men. Their willingness to run roughshod over the communities that host their facilities is, frankly, insulting. 

Ordinary Virginia residents are having to pay more in higher electric and water bills, breathe polluted air, and see our state climate law compromised, apparently because the tech bros can’t be bothered to act responsibly. 

The conviction that the titans of tech aren’t behaving well goes beyond the data centers themselves to the major reason there are so many of them: the development, use and misuse of artificial intelligence. 

Americans are angry about what AI is doing to our children and the educational system. We are fearful of what will happen to people’s jobs. We are worried about our phones getting hacked and our identities and bank accounts stolen, and about being unable to determine truth from fiction. 

We are afraid AI developers are moving too rapidly and understand their own products too little. In a culture of “move fast and break things,” we fear we may be the things that get broken. 

Those fears were percolating before the hack of Hugging Face revealed AI agents breaking out of supposedly isolated environments and collaborating with each other to breach the defenses of an unrelated company.

The worries were brewing before a cybersecurity firm developed a “worm” that could seize the information on hundreds of millions of phones through the WeChat app, and before insiders like Bill Gates began warning that the guardrails are not in place, and that human extinction is more than a theoretical outcome of a race we never signed up for. 

Unease about AI makes the fight over how, and even whether, to site more data centers in Virginia more than just a disagreement over land use and resource allocation. Beneath the concerns that residents point out to pollsters is a growing conviction that we are fighting for our future. 

AI threats aren’t entirely within the power of a state legislature to resolve, even the state at the epicenter of the data center boom. But there is no indication the federal government will do anything, certainly not with our ever-feckless president at the helm. States have to act, because they are all that’s left.

And Virginia has to lead because we host more data centers than any other state; the others look to us for leadership.

Spanberger presents slate of data center regulation proposals, puts first directives in motion

Having long subsidized the data center industry and allowed tech companies to think that their only obligation was to secure the proper permits for construction, Virginia has an obligation to course-correct. 

Seen in this context, the governor’s just-announced “framework” doesn’t meet the moment. It proposes welcome improvements in data center regulation (though some still don’t go far enough), but they don’t get to the heart of Virginians’ fears. 

The administration and General Assembly have to pull every lever of government to hit the brakes on new development and impose stringent conditions on existing data centers until Congress puts real protections in place and the AI companies prove worthy of our trust. 

The fact that this seems too much to hope for explains why Virginians’ opposition to data centers just continues to grow.

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