Polls show data centers are broadly unpopular with both Democratic and Republican voters. President Donald Trump is championing the tech facilities anyway, raising concerns among his GOP allies that he is hitching the party to a losing issue ahead of the midterm elections.

Communities will only reject data centers “if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. The president “knows the polling on data centers is bad,” said Politico, but sees them as one of the country’s “few investment engines humming in an otherwise sputtering economy.” His outspoken defense of the centers puts him at odds with GOP Senate candidates Mike Rogers in Michigan and Ken Paxton in Texas who have worked to “distance themselves” from the Big Tech companies building the facilities.
....

https://news.yahoo.com/why-trump-defendi...27760.html

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He likely is right. Doesn't mean they are a good idea, and they won't Schwarzenegger us in the end.

(09-11-2026 07:34 AM)goodknightfl Wrote:  He likely is right. Doesn't mean they are a good idea, and they won't Schwarzenegger us in the end.

Exactly.

Although I see it going the way of I, Robot.

People obsessed with The Terminator are engaging in fear morning.

We've already been down that road with COVID.

(09-11-2026 07:34 AM)goodknightfl Wrote:  He likely is right. Doesn't mean they are a good idea, and they won't Schwarzenegger us in the end.

This. The amount of wealth that will get generated by AI in the next 3-5 years is going to be mind-blowing. It will create a massive divide between those who jump on board and those who choose not to in the private sector.

AI is the new nuclear arms race, and China is the new Soviet Union. The US cannot afford to to lose, IMO the stakes are higher now than they were in the 60's. AI dominance likely won't lead to all out WWIII terminator style, but it can rewrite the balance of power overnight. There's no need for a shooting war when you can reset a country's industrial and military complex to pre-industrial revolution status and don't think for one second that China wouldn't do just that the moment they have the capability.

Russia ran a very successful propaganda campaign during the cold war fear-mongering about nuclear power and the result is as a county less than 20% of our power comes from nuclear despite it being the most reliable and environmentally friendly sources. Despite all of the downsides to AI and data centers, public opinion needs to be favorable while private sector investment improves efficiency decreases the perceived and real negative impacts.

They’ll have drinkable water though

Stargate AI Center in Abilene, Texas

Quote:With polls showing broad, bipartisan opposition to data centers and Republican strategists issuing unsubtle warnings about the scope of the election-season public backlash, Donald Trump has thrown caution to the wind and become an enthusiastic cheerleader for the industry.
....
He reiterated this point seven days ago, telling reporters at an unrelated Oval Office event, “If you want to get rich as a state or as a town, if you want to pay lower taxes, if you want to create tremendous wealth, if you want your house to be more valuable and everything else, you’re going to want a data center. If you want to go through poverty, crime and squalor, I would say don’t approve data centers.”

But as always, it’s important to recognize not just what Trump and his team are saying, but also what they’re doing.

The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with plans to limit the public-comment process surrounding data center construction. The New York Times reported that, under the EPA’s approach, residents in local communities might lose the ability to raise concerns about data centers before permits are approved and construction starts.

In some cases, people might not even learn the projects exist until it’s too late.

This week, Axios published a related report on what else Trump’s EPA is doing:

The Trump administration is reshaping regulations to make data centers—and the fossil-fuel power fueling them—easier to build. … The Environmental Protection Agency is considering a rule that could treat some temporary gas turbines as mobile equipment rather than stationary pollution sources, potentially making them easier to permit, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s John Walke.

“We have been told by senior people at EPA that there is a pants-on-fire, hasty rulemaking proposal underway,” said Walke, director of NRDC’s federal clean air program. “It’s being driven squarely by concern for data centers.”
....

The Washington Sun also reported this week that Trump’s Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department, “has asked its state directors to identify public land ripe for data center development.”...

Interior leadership gave state leaders just three days to produce the lists and told its directors the issue was a top priority, according to a former BLM official involved in the discussions. The request has encountered several challenges: Bureau lands are typically remote and not near basics like electricity and water, agency staff lack the technical expertise to conduct requisite reviews, and overwhelming vacancies after dramatic staffing losses under Trump have diminished capacity.

The directive follows an executive order Trump issued last year to accelerate permitting for data centers, including by identifying federal lands that could accommodate them.

The problem, in other words, isn’t limited to Trump’s indifference to public opposition. Making matters worse are the steps the president and his administration are taking to overpower public opposition.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/the...r-AA2c2J4f

A related development:

Jacob Coxon, who said he spent three years doing research at both Anthropic and OpenAI, said Tuesday on the social platform X that the two AI companies are more focused on beating each other and global competitors in developing the most advanced model possible than they are on safety.

OpenAI and Anthropic caused a stir this summer when they announced, about a week apart, that their models had broken out of testing environments and obtained unauthorized access to real computer systems. The announcements prompted concerns about models going rogue and carrying out other, more harmful tasks. Both companies said at the time they were pausing some evaluations while they put more monitoring measures and guardrails in place.

The technology’s rapid development has led some in the U.S. as well as global leaders to call for a more cautious approach. U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk urged countries this week to put “cast-iron guarantees in place around the safety and security of AI before it is too late.”

https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-ai-...070487d83d

(09-11-2026 12:05 AM)Gitanole Wrote:  

Polls show data centers are broadly unpopular with both Democratic and Republican voters. President Donald Trump is championing the tech facilities anyway, raising concerns among his GOP allies that he is hitching the party to a losing issue ahead of the midterm elections.

Communities will only reject data centers “if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. The president “knows the polling on data centers is bad,” said Politico, but sees them as one of the country’s “few investment engines humming in an otherwise sputtering economy.” His outspoken defense of the centers puts him at odds with GOP Senate candidates Mike Rogers in Michigan and Ken Paxton in Texas who have worked to “distance themselves” from the Big Tech companies building the facilities.
....

https://news.yahoo.com/why-trump-defendi...27760.html