Meta warns midterm results will make US data centre projects harder

Democratic victories in the 3 November US midterm elections will make data centres “a lot harder” to build, Meta president Dina Powell McCormick said at the WSJ Tech conference on 4 November, TechCrunch reported. Her warning concerns the local consent on which Meta’s planned AI infrastructure projects depend. She said the industry had “not done as good a job as we needed to explain the benefits of these investments”.

The 3 November vote reached local projects

An NBC exit poll found that 56% of voters considered AI and data centres a “crucial or major factor” in their congressional vote, Time reported. Democrats spent more than $100 million on broadcast advertisements portraying Republican opponents as too close to Big Tech and data centres, and won many of the races in which those advertisements ran. The poll records how voters described an issue’s importance to them, while the local ballot results bear directly on construction.

Data centre bans or moratoriums passed in jurisdictions including Edgewater, Florida, and Bloomington, Illinois. Voters also recalled the mayors of Piqua, Ohio, and Yukon, Oklahoma, who had previously supported data centre projects. Those outcomes put different decisions in different hands: a construction restriction governs future projects in its jurisdiction, while a recall removes an elected official who had backed development.

The politics do not divide neatly by party. In Wisconsin, Republican Tom Tiffany attacked his Democratic opponent over data centres. The Democrat, David Crowley, moved towards tighter restrictions in October and won. Ali Mortell, research director at the progressive firm Blue Rose Research, told Time that concern about energy bills, noise and environmental effects was more salient to voters than existential concerns about AI. She said opinion of data centres had worsened among voters of both parties.

In Texas, AI Affairs reported that election wins had put data centre expansion under closer scrutiny. Powell McCormick said Meta has five projects of one gigawatt or more planned, including one in Texas.

Meta’s five planned gigawatt-scale projects

Meta has data centres in 23 US states, Powell McCormick said. Five projects of one gigawatt or more are planned, including one in Texas. She described data centre construction as difficult already and said she expected projects to receive more review, including consideration of whether constituents want them. For a company planning facilities at that scale, her account places the community’s view alongside the technical and commercial work of building them.

Powell McCormick drew a connection between opposition to a physical facility and public attitudes towards AI. Residents can object to a data centre in their community, she said, while their concerns may also reflect how they feel about the technology it supports. She argued that the industry must demonstrate the value both of its local investments and of AI itself. That is a broader task than securing agreement on a site’s electricity bill.

Developers’ promises to cover higher energy bills had softened opposition but won few supporters. Mortell said voters were poorly placed to trust assurances from technology companies and politicians. Powell McCormick’s proposed answer therefore meets a practical objection: terms that limit a project’s costs to neighbours may address one complaint without persuading people who do not want the facility built.

Powell McCormick’s terms for local consent

Powell McCormick said Meta pays for its own electricity, directs tax surpluses generated by data centres towards teachers and first responders, and keeps the workforce local. She also identified bipartisan support as part of the approach Meta uses to reach agreements with communities. These are Meta’s account of its arrangements, rather than conditions attached to every project under consideration.

AI Affairs reported that OpenAI had pledged to pay its data centres’ power costs and seek local input. Powell McCormick’s description puts Meta’s electricity payments within a wider effort to secure acceptance for construction. Her expectation of closer review also means that officials and residents may have more occasions to judge those commitments before a project proceeds.

Meta is seeking a return from the computing capacity behind its AI investments. Powell McCormick said the company was receiving calls every day from parties interested in leasing capacity it had built, and described leasing it as a possible route to revenue even if its consumer AI ambitions develop differently from its plans.