The United States is leading a global data center boom. Investors are plowing some $7 trillion into the infrastructure necessary to support AI development, with 40 percent of that investment happening here in the United States.
This boom in data center investment is so pronounced that many analysts argue it’s propping up an economy that’d otherwise be wobbling under the strain of tariffs and high borrowing costs.
Some skeptics credibly argue that the money flowing into AI research and the physical infrastructure needed to support it is a bubble that will eventually pop.
Unconvinced by the skeptics is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), who seems to believe that data center investment will generate large profits, produce technological innovations, and drive economy-wide productivity growth.
Therefore, he wants to shut it down.
In a video posted to Instagram, the socialist senator called for a federal moratorium on data center construction until our politicians can figure out just what the hell is going on.
According to Sanders, the development of artificial intelligence and robotics technologies powered by data centers “is moving very, very quickly, and we need to slow it down.”
He warns that the current boom, if left unchecked, could well end up enriching already wealthy billionaires investing in the technology, leading to job automation and powering a distracting and alienating technology.
A “moratorium will give democracy a chance to catch up with the transformative changes that we are witnessing and make sure the benefits of these technologies work for all of us,” Sanders concludes.
Given general bipartisan support for “winning the AI race” and the amount of growth being generated by data center investment, it’s unlikely that any such moratorium will come to pass.
The fact Sanders is proposing it anyway is reflects just how much anxiety he and other members of the socialist left feel whenever capitalism is working.
Whether it’s driverless cars or choices in deodorant brands, Sanders cannot stop worrying and learn to love it when capitalists make productive investments and give consumers what they want.
Any economic growth that is not planned by the bureaucrats and approved by the electorate is inherently suspicious and perhaps downright malicious.
Sanders’ call for a data center moratorium is to prevent investment in this infrastructure from yielding productive fruit.
He’s worried that investors will reap profits from data center construction. Those same profits would be a signal that their investments were a prudent use of capital that’s driving real growth in the economy.
Likewise, the job automation Sanders worries about would be another sign that data center investments were well-placed. A primary purpose of capital investment and technological innovation is to shift more labor off the backs of human beings and onto machines.
So while a moratorium is unlikely, Sanders’ call for one should be concerning all the same. The senator has found a veto point that could be used to kneecap the AI industry or to force it to pay out to politically connected interests.
Even high-tech industries outsourced to the cloud need to take up some space here in the real world. Hence the huge drive for data center construction.
Getting data centers built requires getting data centers approved by local and state governments that have wide powers to regulate land use—and, therefore, to say no to new data center development.
There’s no shortage right now of jurisdictions eager to attract new data center investment.
But if skepticism about the industry grows, or if data-center-friendly areas get built out, one could easily imagine more hostile state and local officials deploying the land-use process to impose conditions and extract concessions from these projects.
Indeed, should the data center boom prove not to be a bubble, the temptation to extract rents from highly profitable tech companies might prove overwhelming.
One of the reasons that cell reception is pretty good across all of America is because Congress in the 1990s imposed limits on local governments’ ability to restrict cell tower construction via their zoning codes.
If there are senators eager to restrict rather than encourage a new industry, one can only wonder what the local planning board is thinking.
