The moral panic over data centres is foolish
THE SUPPLY of capital is not the only constraint on the investment of America’s AI companies. They must also worry about politics. In growing numbers and with growing fury, American voters oppose the building of data centres, which provide the computing power to train and run AI models. The opposition spans the nationalist right and the environmentalist left. Such is the backlash that the infrastructure has become one of the defining issues of this year’s midterm elections. Politicians are racing to outdo one another with restrictions, moratoriums and bans on building. Voters and politicians alike are making a big mistake.
