If you’re against AI data centers, the joke’s on you.
It fits a broader narrative pushed by President Trump in the run-up to the midterm elections that the Democratic Party has been taken over by left-wing extremists . The vibe shift caught Silicon Valley flat-footed . Key to lofty valuations being assigned to the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI is the assumption of massive growth—growth that can only occur if more data centers are opened to build and fuel AI’s expanse.
And even though the anti-data-center revolt is unusually bipartisan, according to polling, Trump waded into the debate this past week.
If it wasn’t already clear which camp the Trump administration was in, his Justice Department this past week sided with OpenAI in its legal battle with the New York Times over a copyright dispute. To counter those concerns, the pro-AI crowd in recent days has pushed back with arguments apparently aimed at appealing to rural America. In a CNBC interview, Lutnick laughed off the water issue, calling it “propaganda by our adversaries. Those findings included images similar to what OpenAI had highlighted.
“Rules of law that make it significantly more difficult to develop a robust AI industry in the United States therefore threaten national security and give a competitive advantage to foreign adversaries who are not so encumbered,” the Justice Department told a federal judge Tuesday. In June, OpenAI said it had banned two clusters of ChatGPT accounts likely originating from China. It said they were being used to support an “apparent covert influence operation,” including creating social-media content claiming data centers were increasing electricity prices. Albert Zhang, part of OpenAI’s team identifying misuse, later clarified during a company event that they weren’t trying to claim all data center debates originated from foreign actors, noting some of the suspected posts they found had very few views (“like three views”). “It was important for us to disclose this particular operation because it says a lot about the intent of” China “actors and maybe an indication of other operations that may be running across the U.S.,” he said. (In a statement Friday, OpenAI said people have real concerns and “it’s our responsibility to earn their trust.”) Then late last month, Elon Musk’s social-media network X published its own findings after investigating suspected Chinese influence operations.
On Tuesday, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman suggested in a podcast that new data centers were more efficient than almond farming, while the next day Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pointed to how much water cattle consume.
