BS BULLETIN:
- President Trump says communities rejecting massive data centers risk becoming “backwards and poor” while other areas reap the jobs, tax revenue and economic benefits.
- Trump argues the anti-data-center backlash threatens America’s race against China for dominance in artificial intelligence.
- JD Vance acknowledged Monday that soaring utility bills are fueling much of the opposition, but says data centers should be required to add power to the grid rather than drain it.
President Donald Trump isn’t buying the anti-data-center hype, urging communities to accept the massive server warehouses or risk becoming “backwards and poor.”
Subtle, he was not.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote Monday morning on Truth Social.
“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”
And Trump wasn’t finished.
“If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame,” he warned. “China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”
The president’s argument is straightforward: artificial intelligence requires staggering amounts of computing power, that computing power requires data centers, and whichever country builds the infrastructure first gets an enormous advantage in the global AI race.
Trump wants that country to be America.
But convincing Americans to put one of these things in their backyard is becoming a considerably tougher sell.
Data centers can contain thousands upon thousands of computer servers and consume enormous amounts of electricity. Cooling all that equipment can also require substantial water resources.
That’s produced an increasingly bipartisan backlash in communities worried about electricity bills, water consumption, noise and the sheer size of the facilities.
And Trump is walking directly into it.
Recent polling cited by The Washington Post found 61% of Americans opposed construction of a data center in their own community — including 47% of Republicans.
That’s not exactly MAGA country begging for more server racks.
Vice President JD Vance addressed the political problem Monday and conceded that residents have a legitimate complaint when these projects make their electric bills go up.
“I think probably 99% of the backlash to data centers has come in areas where building a data center means higher utility and higher electricity for the people on the ground,” Vance told reporters.
His solution?
Make the data centers bring their own juice.
“If you build a data center, you should be putting power back into the grid, not taking it out,” Vance said.
That’s also the approach Trump has been pushing.
Last week, the president argued that data centers should build their own power-generation facilities, with excess electricity flowing back onto the grid.
“They’re going to build their own electric producing facility,” Trump said. “And that electricity that they have left over is going to the grid. It’s going to lower the cost of electricity.”
The White House has been promoting a Ratepayer Protection Pledge under which large data-center operators — rather than ordinary ratepayers — are supposed to fund the new generation and infrastructure their projects require.
The administration said in July that more than 200 additional utilities, developers, cooperatives and states had joined the effort, bringing it to roughly 80% of the electricity delivered to American homes and businesses.
But the politics remain tricky.
Republicans as well as Democrats are increasingly confronting resistance from voters who don’t necessarily share Washington’s enthusiasm for having giant AI facilities move in down the road.
Trump, meanwhile, is arguing that saying no carries its own price.
The data center goes somewhere else.
So do the construction jobs.
So does the tax revenue.
And, on a much larger scale, Trump argues that surrendering America’s AI infrastructure advantage would hand China exactly what it wants.
“The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them,” Trump wrote.
That’s the Trump sales pitch in a nutshell:
Don’t want the giant humming computer warehouse?
Fine.
Somebody else does.
DBS WIRE SOURCES
- ‘Let Data Reign’: Trump stands firmly behind controversial data centers — ABC News
- Trump says data centre critics ‘want to end up backwards and poor’ — Financial Times
- Trump says voters who oppose data centers will ‘kill the Golden Goose’ — The Washington Post
- President Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge secures American AI dominance, protects consumers — The White House
- Trump pushes hard for data centers, insists opposition will make you ‘backwards and poor’ — Mediaite
