Tangle - The data center pushback grows.

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

In recent months, opposition to data centers has increased across the United States, prompting both Republican and Democratic politicians to oppose the facilities and some states to pause new construction. While some political leaders, including President Donald Trump, remain supportive of data centers, the topic has become a major issue ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, often linked to concerns about societal disruptions brought on by artificial intelligence (AI). Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle’s podcast membership!Suspension of the Rules.Isaac, Ari, and Kmele had a lot to talk about this week. From Kmele “having a moment” on CNN to mail-in voting changes to CBS’s coverage of Abdul El-Sayed — plus a good guy of the week from the Pacific Northwest and a brief check-in on the Iran war — this week’s Suspension of the Rules is jam-packed. Watch it here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: Do you think we should keep building data centers? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Ari Weitzman and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to Tangle, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking in a little bit of our take. That take today is coming from me, our managing editor Ari Weitzman, and it's Thursday, September 3rd, and it feels a little crisp, doesn't it? There's a little bit of a back-and-forth behind-the-scenes tension. between me and our executive editor, Isaac, Saul, about whether or not September is fall. On Isaac's side, he's favoring the astrological definitions of the season where September 21st is the beginning of fall,

and I like the meteorological definition, where September 1st is the definition, but either way, doesn't really feel like it's in full swing yet. So just keep an eye out for what we're going to say at entangle, because we're going to be the Ponsatoni fills of fall. You will know it. when we determine that the season is upon us in full blast, it's just not quite there yet. But the winds of change are not only coming for us in our weather, but also in our politics.

Today we're talking about a stiff breeze of anti-AI backlash that is sweeping the country right now. And it's battering my position on data centers. I'm going to be revisiting the things that I've thought and said before in my take today. but before we get into the latest arguments, I'm going to be revisiting the arguments that I've made before in my take, but before we get there, we're going to do the same thing we always do.

We're going to tell you the basics of the story with the left writer saying. At the end of it, we've a little bit of information about the Luddite movement in the late 19th century, and then two stories we almost covered this week. So let's get it started by sending it over

to Audrey to introduce our topic, and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Ari. First up, we have today's quick hits. Number one, Three people, including the suspect, were killed during a shooting in a Minneapolis apartment building. Five others, including two police officers, were also shot. Number two, the House voted 212 to 206 to reject a constitutional amendment,

capping the Supreme Court at nine justices. The vote required two-thirds majority to advance. Number three. A plane carrying Secretary of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne Mullen, made an emergency landing after experiencing engine failure. officials have not announced what caused the engine failure. Number four. President Donald Trump signed a continuing resolution to extend the government's current funding through December 11th, averting a shutdown at the end of September. Number five, a federal judge temporarily blocked an August executive order that would narrow eligibility for birthright citizenship for some children born in the United States.

The order specifically targeted children born to alien enemies or parents that engaged in birth tourism. One poll from earlier this year found that 71% of Americans oppose local construction of data centers, and even 63% of Republicans oppose them, which is probably why Politico reports say that vulnerable House Republicans are urgently pushing for new legislation on reining in data centers ahead of the midterm elections. But Donald Trump, in his infinite political, strategic wisdom, has realized the best way to solve Republican's data center problems is by shaming the voters who oppose them. On Monday, he said that anyone who opposes data centers in their community just, quote, wants to end up being backwards

and poor. In recent months, opposition to data centers has increased across the United States, prompting both Republican and Democratic politicians to oppose the facilities and states to pause new construction. While some political leaders, including President Donald Trump, remain supportive of data centers, the topic has become a major issue ahead of the 20th. 26 midterm elections, often linked to concerns about societal disruptions brought on by artificial intelligence or AI. For more context, data centers contain servers, storage systems, and networking equipment that process and store digital information. In concert with advancements in AI, demand for data centers has increased, and AI companies have sought to build new facilities

to support the compute power needed to offer their services reliably. A March 26th, Gallup found that 71% of U.S. adults oppose new AI data centers in their areas, with many citing concerns about the facility's resource use and environmental impact. Conversely, proponents argue that environmental concerns are overstated and highlight the benefits that data centers offer to local economies. However, as public opposition to the building projects has grown, states and localities have begun enacting moratoriums on new construction. In July, New York Governor Kathy Hockel, a Democrat, ordered a one-year pause, and similar measures have been proposed in several other states.

Heading into the midterms, candidates from both parties have highlighted their opposition to data centers. According to Ad Impact, 8% of all campaign spending on broadcast television in July went towards data center or AI-related ads, and 99% of campaign ad spending on the subject went towards critical ads. In August, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to AI companies, calling data centers a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle and noting that Democrats' had effectively leveraged the issue in key races.

President Trump has maintained his support for new construction of the facilities. On Monday, he wrote on Truth Social, quote, The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. China could not be happier with this anti-data center movement, end quote. Relatedly, the social media company X said on Thursday that it had discovered and suspended approximately 200 accounts from a suspected bot farm in China that were posting critically about data centers in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy.

Today, we'll get into the latest in the data center's debate with views from the left and right and then managing editor Ari We'll be right back after this quick break. First up, what the left is saying. The left opposes data center buildout, with some saying it's a winnable issue for Democratic politicians. Many argue that messaging campaigns will not sway public opinion. Others compare data center resistance to past populist movements. In MS now, Zishon Alim called Trump's position on data centers a golden opportunity to win. The president's own party is in a panic about a growing national backlash against data centers and has been scrambling to create distance from them. Yet there's a good chance that the

GOP's about face will be overshadowed by the president, who has exponentially more power to define the party's reputation. He also has the ability to pressure and criticize other Republicans for diverging, from his pro-data center preferences. This in turn leaves a tremendous opportunity for Democrats to respond and win on the issue of data centers, and their best bet is to coalesce around moratoriums on building them. The good thing about moratoriums is that they are not grounded in opposition to developing AI, per se,

nor are they entirely impractical about the need for technological development. What they do is ask for AI development to be subjected to the democratic process and not imposed on the public in the world by purely profit-seeking businesses keen on eluding account. ability. In Gizmodo, AJ Dellinger said, Silicon Valley is losing the Vibes War. Donald Trump, who was refused to back away from data centers, said this week that data centers could use a little public relations help. To address the issue, OpenAI has put up job listings for community engagement leads in Ohio and Georgia, tasked with trying to reduce risk of opposition to data centers.

The answer offered by Big Tech and his backers is not to back off, but rather to find a better sales pitch. The idea is that these poor, uninformed citizens have had their heads clouded with misinformation, maybe from China, and if we just set the record straight, public opinion will turn around. Companies have tried sending representatives. They've been greeted with heckles, booze, and guillotines. They have fed city council members talking points only for those council members to get voted out of office. It's not messaging that the tech industry is losing on so much as it is vibes. There's no turning that chip around with messaging blitz because what people object to runs deeper. Something about the technologies they are being exposed to that are invading their space

and their privacy feels off to them. They've heard the messages and seen the outcomes. You want to tell them they're wrong? In the nation, Chris Lyman argued, Trump can't stop the populist uprising against data centers. The opposition to data centers in red states has grown so strident that President Donald Trump intervened on behalf of his benefactors in the AI industry. In a truth social post on Monday, Trump sought to browbeat his followers into submission. It didn't go over well. This statement is insane when one typical reply on the traditionally Trump idolizing platform. No one wants the austerity represented by water rationing, spikes in electrical bills, and general resource plunder to wipe out the quality of life in the places where you live and work. When you squint a bit at the Data Center

uprising, its economic message is of a peace with the 19th century populists crusade to rein in the brutal takeover of the American countryside by the twinned forces of the railroad and oil industries. Now, as then, legislatures are the plaything of the monopolists remaking the country into their own image. The populists sought to break the stranglehold of plutocratic governance by founding their own independent party. It's an indictment of our duopolyistic status quo that neither party, as a principled matter of political economy, can afford to divorce itself from today's tech oligarchy. That's it for the left. Now, what the right is saying. The Wright supports data center investment, with many arguing that the U.S. needs to keep up with foreign competitors.

Some criticize politicians for agreeing with voters on misplaced concerns. Others sympathize with public concern while supporting the buildout. In City Journal, Sean Regan wrote about what the data center backlash could cost us. Halting or slowing down data center construction would mean deliberately constraining the infrastructure behind one of the most important innovations of the 21st century. If data centers become too hard to build here, American companies could grow dependent on foreign computing capacity to train proprietary models or conduct cutting-edge research. Government agencies could find themselves renting computing capacity from geopolitical adversaries.

It's easy to imagine Washington later spending enormous sums to resure that capacity, just as it is now doing with critical minerals. America must not make the computing power fueling these innovations artificially scarce. The challenge is to build enough of it while addressing legitimate local costs and making sure that host communities share the gains. But the AI industry and its supporters need to do a better job explaining that data centers have much more to offer than just these local benefits. AI's biggest promise lies in much broader, more universal applications. Cancer treatments, personalized medicine, faster scientific discovery, better manufacturing,

and economy-wide productivity gains, to name a few. Chatbots and AI slop are just a distraction. In reason, Tosin Akintola suggests. candidates are backing voters bad arguments. Americans really don't like data centers. According to a recent poll from HeatMap Pro, 75% of Americans would oppose a new data center being built near where they live. And as the responses from a March Gallup poll show,

opponents of these facilities think data centers are noisy, bad for the environment, and bad for property values. Other commonly cited concerns include the data center's exorbitant water and electricity use. These would be valid reasons to oppose data centers if they weren't weren't unfounded. Yet true to form, politicians are trying to capitalize on the misdirected public fury. After calling Texas the epicenter of AI development last November, Governor Greg Abbott recently mounted an about face to slow data center build out in his state. In August, Abbott escalated his campaign, directing two utilities organizations to audit all data centers and the process of connecting

to the state's electricity grid and pause all new construction until the audit is complete. Data centers are clearly unpopular, but accepting the flawed arguments of the industry's critics and introducing harmful legislation to ban the technology is tantamount to accepting mob rule. In Town Hall, Eric Erickson argued two things can be true at once. Foreign entities have ceded the opposition to data center growth in the United States. China, in particular, through its control of TikTok and other influence outlets, has relentlessly worked to stop the American AI advantage against China. Also, at this point, much of the opposition is organic, bipartisan, and growing.

Americans are deeply opposed to data centers. They are wrong and short-sighted, but my view is the minority view. We should start by understanding the problem. Dario Amade, the CEO of Anthropic and Sam Altman, the proprietor of Open AI, are two of the worst spokesman for AI in data centers to exist. Dario Amode has all but said AI is going to take your job, kill your family, destroy your future, and the government needs to shut it all down. but AI is also a good thing.

In the post-COVID world, American trust and institutions is low. The secrecy and feeling of powerlessness against giant corporations feed that distress and amplify opposition. Americans need to get this right, but I am hard-pressed to blame skeptics when the loudest pro-AI voices

are the CEOs who cannot help but scare you. That's it for what the left and writer is saying. Now I'll pass it back to Ari for his take. I'll be up front. I'm starting to change my mind about data centers. So this is the third time in six months that I'm talking about this issue entangle. I've consistently been unconvinced of the arguments against data centers, which has then put me on the side that says we should keep building more of them. However, I've also never really

been convinced by many of the arguments on that side either. Consumer-facing companies like Microsoft, meta, or even Allbirds, the shoe company, and it's true, they're investing in AI, they're doing that, they're building data centers, that's not going to help us out-compete China in anyway. Furthermore, building a new data center in your town isn't going to turn it into the next Loudoun County, which is the richest county in the country in northern Virginia. Instead, I've argued that the reason why we need to level up capacity is to meet consumer demand. But today, as I attempted to reconstruct that argument, I found each point collapsing like a sandcastle built on the incoming tide.

Here's what that failure to build, that argument looks like. Let's start with the internet. It runs on remote data centers and services that power the internet increasingly rely on AI. Therefore, we need more data centers to provide that AI. Here's a quote from the digital marketing firm, Big Red Jelly. McKenzie's 2025 Global Survey found that 88% of respondents said their organizations regularly use AI in at least one business function. That post was found to be 100% generated by AI.

And that's a little uncomfortable, isn't it? Yeah, but still, the future isn't always comfortable. And existing in a modern world means accepting modern tools. Companies use AI to help their businesses, and if they continue to do so, then we're simply going to need more data centers. Roughly 78% of businesses have integrated conversational AI into their processes, and the AI industry is projected to grow by 19.6% every year until 2033.

According to a recent study by Pew, as of August 20th, over a third of pages on the internet since the release of chat GPT show signs of AI authorship. And, okay, that actually feels pretty bad. Maybe that's something we don't want to keep doing more of. I don't know anybody who looks at those numbers and says, yeah, that's good. We're increasingly exporting our lives to digital spaces,

and now we're filling those spaces with Slot. Slop splashing around our ankles, growing higher, reaching our chins in its warm, thoughtless embrace, that's good. Let's do more of that. I don't know anybody who says that, but still, that's the growth projection. So we should that, sorry, the industry investors should build out new data centers to meet consumer demand. Maybe you are saying you can't possibly foresee yourself or your company using AI more than you currently do. But many of the companies you use as a consumer or professional are projected to scale up. If you use the internet and exist in the interconnected world,

you just need some place to process in house off-site data. Newer, more modern data centers will make the internet better overall. If you use Amazon or store your photos on Google or watch Netflix, you'll want better and faster data centers. And if you want those services to stay reliable and process faster, new hyperscale data centers are not being built to do that. Sorry, they are not being built to do that. Is that right?

Yes, new data centers are not being built to replace older ones. As it turns out, tech companies aren't planning to take current centers offline, and data center capacity is set to double by 2030. But still, companies need these new data centers to power important, cutting-edge new tools. Meta, for example, is building out data centers so rapaciously that it can't wait for the project to complete and are printing server racks for its AI in Tense in Tennessee. That's not what I wanted to reference, sorry. I mean meta is building out data center staffed by robots. Nope, sorry, that's also the wrong PR story. Let me try that again. Meta is building out a new

5 gigawatt data center to provide artificial intelligence services that their customers are demanding, AI generated ad campaigns, customer service chatbots, and tools to help AI generated content. Look at the evidence that demonstrates consumer demand for these things. Gen Z empirically hates AI ads. Most consumers prefer human customer service to AI bots, and only 7% of respondents say AI generate and marketing makes them trust the brand more. Okay, so to sum, the tech industry is justified in building more of these data centers, the power new products that Americans are increasingly showing they do not want.

Okay. Yeah, that's not exactly. compelling position. All right, so I will sheepishly admit that my previous line of argument just doesn't hold up. But still, I don't find the most popular argument against data centers to hold up either. To put it bluntly, the environmental concerns about these facilities are way overstated. Data centers are about as loud as a normal conversation. They release only a marginal amount of atmosphere carbon, and their water concerns are grossly exaggerated to the point of total public misunderstanding. I'm less concerned about the impact data centers will have in the environment,

then the impact data centers are already having on environmentalism. Whereas our most pressing environmental issues are petroleum and coal power plants, loss of biodiversity, plastic pollution, deforestation, and clean air, I find it almost impossible to have a conversation about the environment today that isn't in some way about data centers. They're barely a blip on the radar for carbon dioxide emissions, yet they're eating up all the oxygen in modern environmentalism. That leaves me in a strange position.

I don't think the logic supporting data center expansion holds up, but I don't think the argument against it holds up either. Instead, I think another third argument is currently convincing me against building out more data centers. Let's revisit Loudoun County, the richest county in the country, and the one with the most data centers in America. Earlier this summer, one of its data centers suddenly went offline, and caused a temporary grid disturbance across the entire eastern United States.

There were no rolling blackouts, and our grid stabilized just fine, but that disturbance felt like a warning shot to me. We're building out systems, logistically and economically, that assume these data centers will be there. And if we keep building on that assumption more and more, if and when these facilities go away, we're going to be left overextended and over-leveraged in a sector that doesn't appear to be set to deliver on its astronomical promises.

I normally say that the private sector is free to pursue its ventures, and if it fails, okay, that's its prerogative. But right now, there's just too much writing on this one issue to be laissez-faire about it. There will be no other Loudoun County. Its largest is singular, owing not to AI data centers, but to data centers that are 20-plus years old. They're currently reaping the returns and investments made at the dawn of the internet, when the county was the center of the government's investment in fiber optic technology in the late 1990s, not profiting from more recent ventures.

Asking us to accept this rate of construction is asking us to accept that AI is going to be more transformational to our daily lives than the Internet. I don't think that's a position that I accept. Most of you have used AI tools, and you've seen the public relations initiatives from Anthropic and Open AI, and you probably see what I see. This technology looks much closer to its ceiling right now

than it is to a vertical acceleration. And yet, construction in the space is training future exponential growth as a given. I'm not a lot of, I think AI has already given us a lot of phenomenal applications. We have professional tools that can help us parse through mountains of legal briefs, it can detect skin cancer, can unfold novel proteins. These are all innovations we should feel great about. But I'm not sure I still believe that building more and more data centers will help support a brighter future. Instead, I think they're helping to prop up an ever-expanding bubble.

And when that bubble goes pop, it'll take years of work and billions of invested capital with it. All right. That's it for my take on data center, so I'm going to send it back to Audrey for the rest of the pod. We'll be right back after this quick break. Thanks, Ari. Next up, we have a deeper look. For most of human history, goods were produced in homes by skilled craftsmen and women. But that all changed in the 1760s, when British, invention, James Hargreaves, created new machinery that sped up textile production, and James Watt improved upon the steam engine. As more inventions made it possible for goods to be produced more quickly, entrepreneurs like Edmund Cartwright set up the first factories that used these

innovations en masse. This period of rapid technological change became known as the first industrial revolution. Mass production of textiles and other goods increased throughout the 19th century, but not all Britain supported the change. A group of textile craftsmen who felt that the new machinery was taking their livelihoods rioted against the rise of factories and new technology. They banded together and would destroy machinery in cities across Great Britain by night. These craftsmen called themselves Luddites, after their mythical leader, Ned Ludd. Their protests began in about 1811. In 1813, in an effort to quell the violence, many Luddites were put on trial and hanged for their crimes.

Though Luddite protests would briefly revive in 1816 after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, industrialization would continue apace. The term Luddite has since survived to describe anyone opposed to technological advancement, including advancements like artificial intelligence. Next up, we have The Road Not Taken. Two topics nearly made the cut for the newsletter this week. First was the U.S. Postal Service whistleblower who claimed that the agency is attempting to secretly implement parts of President Trump's executive order on mail and voting despite

legal challenges, raising concerns about whether the new system will be in place for the November midterms. It's an important story, but we covered Trump's executive. order last week, and we wanted to allow more time to learn about the veracity of the whistleblower's allegations. Second, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll's resignation over reported clashes with Defense Secretary Pete Hegsa. Driscoll's departure and the growing number of firings and resignations in the military will likely be a main topic of ours soon, but we felt it was prudent to wait for more reporting on the circumstances of Driscoll's departure before weighing in.

Finally, we have our Have a Nice Day story. Carl Wilson spent years driving trucks past I-90 in Osborne, Idaho, watching Elk get killed trying to cross the highway. He set out to turn and abandoned bridge to nowhere, half demolished decades earlier by a mining company, into a wildlife overpass, rallying neighbors, businesses, and state agencies behind the idea. Wilson died in December 2022 before the project was completed.

However, Kirsten Voorhees, a civil engineer who'd survived her own collision with a deer at 16, promised him she'd see it through, and she did. With $645,000 in grants, the retrofit was completed in August 2025, and trail cameras have since recorded elk and deer using it safely. For he said, quote, I told him, you have my word.

It became a blood oath. Good, good, good has the story, and you can find a link in the show notes. That is it for today's podcast. If you would like to support our work, head over to retangle.com, where you can buy a newsletter subscription, a podcast subscription,

bundle membership that gets you a discount on both. We will be right back tomorrow, but in the meantime, this has been editor Audrey Moorhead. On behalf of Isaac, Ari, and everyone else, have a great day and peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kovac and associate editors Audrey Moorhead and Bailey Saul. music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.

To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.