So what I mainly want to do is just post a string of like 52 confetti emojis, because this was definitely the best single piece of reporting on data centers I've seen anywhere. But I'm going to attempt to push past that urge and highlight the most actionable part of all of this, which I think (as you point out) what the entire dynamic reveals about *thymos* — and specifically, Silicon Valley's complete absence of both skill and interest in cultivating it. I don't think that phenomenon is by any means exclusive to SF; in many ways, we're simply entering the third decade of the 'Unwinding' Packer talks about as we've sorted and polarized the macrosocial/macroeconomic forces that shape America out and away from most of America. The Bay is simply one such force.
But what I think causes data centers to be such a irresistible lightning rod is that they are *mechanically enabled* by this exact dynamic in a way that other forces aren't; the need for land elsewhere is inescapable, the need for electricity from elsewhere is inescapable, the need for information from elsewhere is inescapable, and the impact *on* people elsewhere (totally independent of any direct usage of the technology) is not only tremendous — it's repeated over and over and over again by the most visible Winners of the current 'system'.
Anyway: this was a stellar piece of journalism. Thank you for producing this.
thanks Zac, this is such a kind note! I def agree — it’s kind of remarkable how perfect a symbol data centers are for that chasm — and I still need to read The Unwinding…
Hahahaha. Well until you can make it through Packer's absolute masterpiece of a journalistic artifact, may I entice you with a vastly less expansive followup to your piece here? :D https://zachill.substack.com/p/a-few-small-repairs
"But I'm going to attempt to push past that urge and highlight the most actionable part of all of this, which I think (as you point out) what the entire dynamic reveals about *thymos* — and specifically, Silicon Valley's complete absence of both skill and interest in cultivating it."
This is a really good point to highlight. In some ways they have actively cultivated the exact opposite of the 'thymos' concept in their AI arguments and discussions. I think it's one of the greatest corporate failures of communication in the past 50 years, and there have been a few!
Yes, totally! It presents indeed as a complete failure to internalize such a thing is even necessary - in part IMV because the tech portion of the Bay has become such a transplant city, and in part likewise because dealing with mammoth volumes of money (I mean this non-conspiratorially as myself a participant in this whole world) is just part and parcel of the regular course of business. Both of these I think are exceptionally alienating as compared to the median experience of life:
And I think the 'City Council Meeting' is the one place ordinary people feel the playing field is level enough to push back against this type of massive wealth and resource disparity. Politicians haven known this for eons, Silicon Valley is just figuring it out.
Thank you so much! I have a sneaking suspicion I will unable to resist the compulsion to keep writing about this particular gnarly nationwide brouhaha.
This was a super helpful read because even though people talk about specific points of contention like water usage, noise pollution, etc., those are a facade. It really just comes down to the same ole problem: people far away from huge entities don't trust the huge entities, and the huge entities haven't done a great job enabling such trust. Thanks for your work!
Funny, reading this piece, I was reminded of the beginning chapters of the Grapes of Wrath:
"The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it."
A hundred years later, swap "bank" for "tech" and the emotions rhyme.
Your point that larger promises can produce deeper suspicion has a revealing counterpart in Ohio. Regulators approved an AEP tariff requiring data centers to pay for at least 85 percent of their contracted capacity, even if they use less, on contracts lasting at least 12 years. After approval, AEP's large-load forecast fell by about half, suggesting that much of the earlier projected demand had not represented firm commitments.
The Foxconn project was especially sad because it was extremely clear, even at the time it was announced, that it was a brazen empty attempt to curry favor with the Trump admin. Nilay Patel at The Verge was following the whole thing closely from the jump, and it always reeked of BS.
Even sadder when you remember that the same state government that went all-in on Foxconn also cancelled high-speed rail to connect Chicago/Madison/Milwaukee that was fully funded by the prior admin.
Amazing amazing article. I was Co-Editor in Chief of UMich's student newspaper while Saline data center stuff was kicking off (and when the University was trying to build another data center nearby in Ypsilanti) and I think this captures the Michigan sentiment very well.
I cannot overstate how much I think the communication point plays a role in this — like "Nothing??" seriously??? Totally agree on Will's point that there's a sort of denigration of locals and general cockiness but I wouldn't say that its just big tech companies. It extends to many of the people in charge of making the decisions about their construction (i.e. UMich administration, Whitmer, etc). They make these decisions FOR these communities instead of WITH them. Probably the most significant factor in anti-Ypsi data center backlash (where a water-for-data-center moratorium was just passed) was the lack of transparency.
I do think a lot of the anti-data center people (especially the more leftist ones) are a little bit closed minded and that there is a way that these can be beneficial to these communities, but I think its the responsibility of the pro-data center crowd to articulate their case well, seeing as they wanna break from the status quo. It's really troubling that we might lose on great benefits to society (drug discovery, diagnostics, materials discovery) because of poor messaging.
totally! I actually felt like the local govs handled transparency and comms so poorly that it was probably very possible to build a data center right with just a little more public engagement.
This reads like a classic illustratation of Sheila Jasanoff's "civic epistemology:" the culturally embedded ways the public decides which knowledge claims, and which claimants, deserve trust. The NDAs, expedited reviews, redacted power estimates all serve to provide a clear answer to "does this actor behave like someone who can be held to account?" which is a more significant question than simply "are these numbers right?." Treating skepticism as ignorance or a problem of misinformation is to fail to recognize this.
I think Sheila's "technologies of humility" are very relevant here, the questions in need of an answer are: who will be hurt if assumptions are wrong? who benefits? and how can we know?
Awesome piece! This is the kind of journalism I come to Substack for.
It's fascinating that we can love talking to ChatGPT but hate the infrastructure that makes that possible. It's almost as if people have decided chatbots are good, AI is bad. It's also really interesting that this protest is uniting people across the political spectrum. Almost as if in the long arc of politics, we're coming back together around a common 'enemy' of sorts.
All politics are local they say, is it possible that datacenters and AI is the spark that takes us back to this after enduring a period where politics have been anything but?
Even more fascinating when you consider that data centers are not just for AI! People love them some tiktok and shein and doordash and don't pause for one moment to think about how all of these things are possible.
Perhaps the industry erred when deciding to call things "cloud computing" as it made everything too ephemeral for normies.
I grew up in Caledonia, and most of my family lives there, Mount Pleasant or Racine. I really enjoyed this reporting. You captured the post-Foxconn sentiment perfectly.
Most people I know in Wisconsin, including most of my family, think that politicians are all bought and sold by big corporations. Temporary construction jobs and one time bonuses for teachers are not going to cut it. People find bribes offensive.
I work in tech and people describe AI as empowering us all to be builders. That might be true, but most people’s experience of these data center developments is fundamentally disempowering. “This is the best you’ll get, be grateful for the opportunity to escape the permanent underclass for a few extra years until we train AI robots to do HVAC jobs” is not compelling. I expect this resistance not only to continue, but to get worse.
This is some A+ “boots on the ground” journalism, as well as stylistically resonant writing. We need more original reporting like this about AI. There’s a lot of sophisticated takes about AI on Substack, but not a lot of true news gathering. Well done!
Also — please publish your full conversation with Abdul. Would be helpful to a lot of voters.
As your reporting highlights, data centers are increasingly discussed as though their only function were to support AI. Often overlooked is their essential role in modern healthcare, including the secure storage, processing, and timely retrieval of electronic health information.
I actually noticed a bunch of the anti data center folks were pretty good at distinguishing AI from more traditional internet data centers for hospitals and such
The thoughtfulness of local communities is the saddest part of what gets overlooked by the out of town developers (I say this having grown up in these communities and also working in renewable development). Yeah there are nimbies, but mostly it's thoughtful folks looking out for their communities.
Great piece. I sometimes imagine what might have been, if there were a genuine national attempt to grow a sense of pride and unity in the AI buildout along the lines of the Apollo missions. I would be very interested to read the rest of your interview with Abdul El-Sayed.
this is incredible, genuinely eye opening reporting. amazing job dude!! I've also now spent the evening wondering how leslie knope would respond to data centers...
Beautiful reporting Jasmine! I loved the combination of nuanced on the ground reporting with your own takeaways. It seems very clear that AI could be rolled out in a way that is beneficial to localities, but also that people are skeptical they will do so. There is low trust in both the government and capitalism to create the ideal scenario, and the backwater deals aren’t doing any favors. AI companies and the governments propping them up are directly causing the populism they fear by not being trustworthy with the roll out.
So what I mainly want to do is just post a string of like 52 confetti emojis, because this was definitely the best single piece of reporting on data centers I've seen anywhere. But I'm going to attempt to push past that urge and highlight the most actionable part of all of this, which I think (as you point out) what the entire dynamic reveals about *thymos* — and specifically, Silicon Valley's complete absence of both skill and interest in cultivating it. I don't think that phenomenon is by any means exclusive to SF; in many ways, we're simply entering the third decade of the 'Unwinding' Packer talks about as we've sorted and polarized the macrosocial/macroeconomic forces that shape America out and away from most of America. The Bay is simply one such force.
But what I think causes data centers to be such a irresistible lightning rod is that they are *mechanically enabled* by this exact dynamic in a way that other forces aren't; the need for land elsewhere is inescapable, the need for electricity from elsewhere is inescapable, the need for information from elsewhere is inescapable, and the impact *on* people elsewhere (totally independent of any direct usage of the technology) is not only tremendous — it's repeated over and over and over again by the most visible Winners of the current 'system'.
Anyway: this was a stellar piece of journalism. Thank you for producing this.
thanks Zac, this is such a kind note! I def agree — it’s kind of remarkable how perfect a symbol data centers are for that chasm — and I still need to read The Unwinding…
Agreed! "A law repugnant to the Constitution, is no law at all." - The Great Chief Justice John Marshall (1803)
https://republia.substack.com/p/the-right-to-instruct-our-representatives
Hahahaha. Well until you can make it through Packer's absolute masterpiece of a journalistic artifact, may I entice you with a vastly less expansive followup to your piece here? :D https://zachill.substack.com/p/a-few-small-repairs
"But I'm going to attempt to push past that urge and highlight the most actionable part of all of this, which I think (as you point out) what the entire dynamic reveals about *thymos* — and specifically, Silicon Valley's complete absence of both skill and interest in cultivating it."
This is a really good point to highlight. In some ways they have actively cultivated the exact opposite of the 'thymos' concept in their AI arguments and discussions. I think it's one of the greatest corporate failures of communication in the past 50 years, and there have been a few!
Yes, totally! It presents indeed as a complete failure to internalize such a thing is even necessary - in part IMV because the tech portion of the Bay has become such a transplant city, and in part likewise because dealing with mammoth volumes of money (I mean this non-conspiratorially as myself a participant in this whole world) is just part and parcel of the regular course of business. Both of these I think are exceptionally alienating as compared to the median experience of life:
And I think the 'City Council Meeting' is the one place ordinary people feel the playing field is level enough to push back against this type of massive wealth and resource disparity. Politicians haven known this for eons, Silicon Valley is just figuring it out.
Aiight yeah - I had to follow up about this. https://zachill.substack.com/p/a-few-small-repairs
Really great follow up. Nails the problem to a board.
Thank you so much! I have a sneaking suspicion I will unable to resist the compulsion to keep writing about this particular gnarly nationwide brouhaha.
This was a super helpful read because even though people talk about specific points of contention like water usage, noise pollution, etc., those are a facade. It really just comes down to the same ole problem: people far away from huge entities don't trust the huge entities, and the huge entities haven't done a great job enabling such trust. Thanks for your work!
Funny, reading this piece, I was reminded of the beginning chapters of the Grapes of Wrath:
"The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it."
A hundred years later, swap "bank" for "tech" and the emotions rhyme.
If it has a metonym, it probably fits.
Your point that larger promises can produce deeper suspicion has a revealing counterpart in Ohio. Regulators approved an AEP tariff requiring data centers to pay for at least 85 percent of their contracted capacity, even if they use less, on contracts lasting at least 12 years. After approval, AEP's large-load forecast fell by about half, suggesting that much of the earlier projected demand had not represented firm commitments.
ah interesting, thanks for sharing - yeah I think the tariffs are a good idea
The Foxconn project was especially sad because it was extremely clear, even at the time it was announced, that it was a brazen empty attempt to curry favor with the Trump admin. Nilay Patel at The Verge was following the whole thing closely from the jump, and it always reeked of BS.
Even sadder when you remember that the same state government that went all-in on Foxconn also cancelled high-speed rail to connect Chicago/Madison/Milwaukee that was fully funded by the prior admin.
Nobody wants high-speed rail when airline flights are so inexpensive.
Amazing amazing article. I was Co-Editor in Chief of UMich's student newspaper while Saline data center stuff was kicking off (and when the University was trying to build another data center nearby in Ypsilanti) and I think this captures the Michigan sentiment very well.
I cannot overstate how much I think the communication point plays a role in this — like "Nothing??" seriously??? Totally agree on Will's point that there's a sort of denigration of locals and general cockiness but I wouldn't say that its just big tech companies. It extends to many of the people in charge of making the decisions about their construction (i.e. UMich administration, Whitmer, etc). They make these decisions FOR these communities instead of WITH them. Probably the most significant factor in anti-Ypsi data center backlash (where a water-for-data-center moratorium was just passed) was the lack of transparency.
I do think a lot of the anti-data center people (especially the more leftist ones) are a little bit closed minded and that there is a way that these can be beneficial to these communities, but I think its the responsibility of the pro-data center crowd to articulate their case well, seeing as they wanna break from the status quo. It's really troubling that we might lose on great benefits to society (drug discovery, diagnostics, materials discovery) because of poor messaging.
totally! I actually felt like the local govs handled transparency and comms so poorly that it was probably very possible to build a data center right with just a little more public engagement.
This reads like a classic illustratation of Sheila Jasanoff's "civic epistemology:" the culturally embedded ways the public decides which knowledge claims, and which claimants, deserve trust. The NDAs, expedited reviews, redacted power estimates all serve to provide a clear answer to "does this actor behave like someone who can be held to account?" which is a more significant question than simply "are these numbers right?." Treating skepticism as ignorance or a problem of misinformation is to fail to recognize this.
I think Sheila's "technologies of humility" are very relevant here, the questions in need of an answer are: who will be hurt if assumptions are wrong? who benefits? and how can we know?
Awesome piece! This is the kind of journalism I come to Substack for.
It's fascinating that we can love talking to ChatGPT but hate the infrastructure that makes that possible. It's almost as if people have decided chatbots are good, AI is bad. It's also really interesting that this protest is uniting people across the political spectrum. Almost as if in the long arc of politics, we're coming back together around a common 'enemy' of sorts.
All politics are local they say, is it possible that datacenters and AI is the spark that takes us back to this after enduring a period where politics have been anything but?
Even more fascinating when you consider that data centers are not just for AI! People love them some tiktok and shein and doordash and don't pause for one moment to think about how all of these things are possible.
Perhaps the industry erred when deciding to call things "cloud computing" as it made everything too ephemeral for normies.
I grew up in Caledonia, and most of my family lives there, Mount Pleasant or Racine. I really enjoyed this reporting. You captured the post-Foxconn sentiment perfectly.
Most people I know in Wisconsin, including most of my family, think that politicians are all bought and sold by big corporations. Temporary construction jobs and one time bonuses for teachers are not going to cut it. People find bribes offensive.
I work in tech and people describe AI as empowering us all to be builders. That might be true, but most people’s experience of these data center developments is fundamentally disempowering. “This is the best you’ll get, be grateful for the opportunity to escape the permanent underclass for a few extra years until we train AI robots to do HVAC jobs” is not compelling. I expect this resistance not only to continue, but to get worse.
totally! thanks for your pov
This is some A+ “boots on the ground” journalism, as well as stylistically resonant writing. We need more original reporting like this about AI. There’s a lot of sophisticated takes about AI on Substack, but not a lot of true news gathering. Well done!
Also — please publish your full conversation with Abdul. Would be helpful to a lot of voters.
Great piece.
As your reporting highlights, data centers are increasingly discussed as though their only function were to support AI. Often overlooked is their essential role in modern healthcare, including the secure storage, processing, and timely retrieval of electronic health information.
This is particularly true for Wisconsin
I actually noticed a bunch of the anti data center folks were pretty good at distinguishing AI from more traditional internet data centers for hospitals and such
The thoughtfulness of local communities is the saddest part of what gets overlooked by the out of town developers (I say this having grown up in these communities and also working in renewable development). Yeah there are nimbies, but mostly it's thoughtful folks looking out for their communities.
Do you know if it the size of the data center? Or more "hospitals treat patients, AI does <insert negative action>"?
I have no sense of size between the types, just that if you want the tax exemption in WI it needs to be at least $50,000,000 of investment.
Jasmine, I feel like your reporting on data centers is the missing axle for the 2026 midterms. This was a rich and informative read, thank you.
Great piece. I sometimes imagine what might have been, if there were a genuine national attempt to grow a sense of pride and unity in the AI buildout along the lines of the Apollo missions. I would be very interested to read the rest of your interview with Abdul El-Sayed.
Phew! Quite a read but now I know a little bit more . Thank you
This is an amazing article, Jasmine. Kudos for taking the trip and for the excellent writing.
This is why I am HERE on Substack. We can no longer get this quality of narrative about an ostensibly complex and divisive topic.
Definitely restacking!
this is incredible, genuinely eye opening reporting. amazing job dude!! I've also now spent the evening wondering how leslie knope would respond to data centers...
Beautiful reporting Jasmine! I loved the combination of nuanced on the ground reporting with your own takeaways. It seems very clear that AI could be rolled out in a way that is beneficial to localities, but also that people are skeptical they will do so. There is low trust in both the government and capitalism to create the ideal scenario, and the backwater deals aren’t doing any favors. AI companies and the governments propping them up are directly causing the populism they fear by not being trustworthy with the roll out.