Despite growing opposition to Big Tech data centers from coast to coast, US President Donald Trump said this week that every community should want one, to which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday offered a response.
"Trump thinks that every community in America should welcome a data center," said Sanders. "Great idea. Lead by example. Have your friend Elon build one at Mar-a-Lago."
Poll after poll has showed people in the US are not comfortable with the rapid expansion of data centers, built by large tech companies to manage the computing power and energy needed for artificial intelligence and an increasingly digitized world.
With local protests popping up in states nationwide against plans to establish large-scale data centers without proper guardrails or regulations in place, the issue has become a lightning rod in the midterms with the deep pockets of Silicon Valley—including tech giants like Google, OpenAI, Meta, and other behemoths—emerging as villains willing to spend millions in campaign contributions and lobbying efforts to sway candidates and lawmakers toward their profit-seeking aims.
In Congress, Sanders has led the charge for deeper conversations about the impact AI and demanded that any buildout of the technology, including data center construction, be done with the health of workers, communities, and society overall front and center.
A poll released Thursday showed that 75% of Americans are opposed to large data centers being built in their community, with 61% of those saying they are "strongly" opposed.
In July, Trump said local elected officials have to convince their constituents that data centers are good for them and that opposition is futile. "You can't fight it," Trump said. "You have to go with it."
Asked earlier this week what he thinks about the growing opposition, Trump suggested people didn't know what was good for them, saying, “If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant, or a data center, I would absolutely want it." Trump said the industry needed better public relations, but said nothing about the need for stronger regulations or better ways for the corporations behind these centers to actually mitigate the legitimate concerns people have.
On Friday, Trump was asked again about his support for data centers and said more of the same.
It was these comments which apparently led to Sanders and other critics to denounce Trump's position as either insincere or out of touch.
While Palm Beach County is currently home to a number of relatively small data centers—which are ubiquitous across the US—there are currently no large-scale or hyperscale data centers, which are the ones drawing so much scrutiny and opposition nationwide.
As The Guardian reported, a proposal for a "huge" hyperscale data center in Palm Beach County, known as Project Tango, actually exemplifies why such projects are so controversial, largely due to how they may impact air and water quality, as well as the potential for them to eat up water resources and impact energy costs for local utility customers.
"Local environmentalists warn that the proposed 600MW data center in western Palm Beach county could damage the wetlands," reported the newspaper, "which the federal government and the state of Florida have spent a combined $6bn to restore after decades of drainage and development."
Opponents to Project Tango—including educators, homeowners, conservationists, and local lawmakers—cite threats to local drinking water, algae blooms in the nearby and fragile Everglades ecosystem, increased air pollution, and concerns about the impacts on health and family budgets as worrying factors.
“We don’t want our bills to go up, but it’s more than that,” Sue Ellen Loyzelle, who lives in the planned community of Arden next door to the Project Tango site and is a founding member of Western Palm Beach Community Alliance, explained to The Guardian.
“I would like to not see them at all," she said, but if "there was to be one, it would have to be far away from homes because of the sound and the health impacts of air pollution. But the water, I don’t think Florida could handle it anywhere with the water issues.”
On July 15, after 12 hours of public testimony from citizens, a majority of whom were outraged over the proposal, including many who identified as Republicans otherwise aligned with Trump politically, the county commissioners voted 5-1 against the proposed expansion.
