Leah Feiger: Yes. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez AOC have introduced the Data Center Moratorium Act, which would halt the construction of modern AI data centers until real national safeguards are in place. In many ways, this sounds like a very baked leftist problem, but shockingly, it’s quite bipartisan. There are people on all sides who are getting involved because their constituents are reaching out and asking, “What are you doing on my behalf? What are you doing in my backyard? How is this benefiting me? How is this hurting me?” So I think what shocked me the most was that it was bipartisan.
Zoë Schiffer: It’s engaging because I feel like this is just my speculation, but based on how OpenAI has been talking about data centers, it really came to the forefront on the first day of the Trump administration, sort of supporting gigantic data center projects. I thought: I’m reading Chris Lehane, the company’s global affairs director, who previously held a senior position at Airbnb and previously worked on political issues, because he and OpenAI might have thought it would be really beneficial for the company. It was like the message of the first American version, baby.
Leah Feiger: We give work to everyone.
Zoë Schiffer: They simply misread the moment. They didn’t realize how toxic this problem would be. And now it’s very arduous to change their position when they issue press releases every time a modern data center appears. Now I’m like, “Oh, oh, we have to keep this to ourselves because people really don’t like it.”
Brian Barrett: And the thing is, they can’t undo it in any way until they can put data centers in space because they need computing power.
Zoë Schiffer: Which, by the way, will be really arduous to achieve.
Brian Barrett: If not, impossible. Zoë, is there a chance that there is such internal opposition, right, electricians say, “I don’t think so.” Corporate employees say, “Hey, we don’t like data centers either.” Is there any chance that this will change anything in terms of the trajectory of these expansions, these companies and spending?
Zoë Schiffer: I would be very surprised. I don’t want to say absolutely not, because we’ve seen examples where all the eminent people at Google got together, rejected Project Maven, some of the censored search projects for China and the like, and actually stopped these launches.
Brian Barrett: Very quickly, Project Maven was working with the Pentagon, right, using Google Tech for the Department of Defense?
Zoë Schiffer: Exactly, exactly. So yes, this has happened before. This may happen again. I would say two things. First, the pushback we saw from hourly workers was minimal when looking at the overall workforce. They bring thousands of people. I’ve heard they pay much higher rates than people in this position typically receive. So I think in an industry that has historically needed a lot of work, there will be people willing to work on these projects, and then we’ll hear compact pockets of pushback and pushback, which again is newsworthy and essential, and it won’t be anyone, but I still think they’re capable of employing thousands of people. I would also say that at the corporate level – although we are starting to see more and more pushback and stronger opposition from corporate employees to what their companies are doing – the level is still much lower than it was around 2018.