Americans' worries about AI, data centers are their own

Are the Chinese manipulating the good people of Avon, Brownhelm Township, Grafton, New Russia Township, North Ridgeville, Wellington and other hotbeds of community concern about data centers? U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, the Bowling Green Republican who represents Lorain County, sure seems to think so. Latta, along with two other Republicans on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, wrote a letter last week expressing concern about "evidence that strongly suggests foreign influence campaigns targeting artificial intelligence (AI) development in the U.S." The letter, which was addressed to various administration officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, continued: "Unleashing American innovation and accelerating new advancements in AI have become key priorities for this Committee and the Trump Administration, and the U.S. cannot afford to ignore the risks posed by our geopolitical adversaries' efforts to undermine U.S. global leadership. "As such, the Committee requests a briefing to understand what actions the Trump Administration is taking to investigate foreign influence campaigns and 'billionaire-backed activism' to slow U.S. AI development and the infrastructure necessary to support these advancements." The U.S. and China are indeed locked in an AI race, and we don't doubt that China and other foreign adversaries would love to slow down American AI advancement. We also don't dispute that foreign influencers, many of them campaigning via AI-slop on social media, are probably at work trying to boost opposition to data centers. That doesn't mean, however, that Americans, including those in the Lorain County communities we listed above, lack legitimate reasons to worry about data centers. Nor are those concerns solely the result of foreign influence campaigns, whether backed by governments or shadowy billionaires. Besides, it's not as if the pro-data center, pro-AI forces of America are helpless. There are plenty of government officials and billionaires pushing for the rapid growth of both data centers and AI in general. It's therefore not that the American public hasn't heard from the other side, but rather that AI and data-center proponents haven't allayed those concerns. As data centers have proliferated — there are already more than 200 in Ohio alone — folks have seen their impact on communities, utility bills and the environment. It's also an open question of just how beneficial data centers are to local economies. As we've previously observed, data centers create a lot of short-term jobs while under construction, but they don't need many employees once they're operational. That doesn't even get into the societal impact of AI, including on jobs, and valid worries about outsourcing our thinking to machines. Given all of that, it's no surprise that plenty of folks are wary of AI and don't want a data center built anywhere near them. Nor, we suspect, would Latta or any of the other champions of AI likely want a data center for a next-door neighbor. The letter compared opposition to data centers to previous "environmental activism campaigns" that opposed things like fracking. Although fracking does allow more oil and gas to be extracted from the land, it's not something most people want in their neighborhoods. Consider why Grafton Village Council last month passed a five-year moratorium on data-center construction. Following the vote, the village said in a statement the moratorium was "a direct, good-faith response to recent community polling." It also said the goal was to protect Grafton's small-town identity while allowing responsible growth. Even the mere possibility of a data center is enough to drive vocal opposition, as we've seen in New Russia Township where the county wants to build a so-called "mega site" at and around the Lorain County Regional Airport. Although the developers have said there are no plans to build a data center there, residents remain worried. They also are opposed to the idea of the mega site, which they fear will ruin their rural way of life. But concerns about data centers go beyond just local communities. Last year, the state's biennial budget eliminated a tax break for data centers. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican like the majority of state lawmakers, vetoed it. In May, after it was reported that the state had lost about $1.5 billion in tax revenue from those tax breaks last year, DeWine declared a moratorium on the breaks. (The amount of lost tax revenue greatly exceeded the roughly $136 million that the Ohio Department of Taxation had predicted.) In explaining his decision, DeWine said he wanted to give a committee of state lawmakers examining data centers time to do its work. We've been skeptical of that committee in part because its stated goal is to give Ohioans information about data centers rather than to examine how to regulate them better. There's even a citizen-led movement afoot to put before voters a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would limit the size of data-center projects in the Buckeye State. The Chinese and other foreign powers might be flooding the zone with messages opposing data centers and AI, but Americans' concerns about them are largely homegrown. Those concerns deserve to be addressed, not dismissed as solely the result of foreign propaganda.