Pennsylvania is a Swing-State Case Study for Data Center Politics

0:00Your film is now ready to be shown. Good morning. I'm Justin Hendrix, Editor of Tech Policy Press. We publish news, analysis, and perspectives on issues at the intersection of tech and democracy. Pennsylvania offers a particular case study in which to consider the political battle over data centers that is playing out across the United States and beyond. A new report from Data and Society called the AI Factory, Data Centers, Power, and Resistance and Late Industrial Pennsylvania draws on a year and a half of field work across the state. It examines how booster cell data centers by invoking Pennsylvania's industrial past and why so many communities aren't buying the promises made by industry and politicians. I spoke with two of the reports authors and with an organizer helping to lead the push for a data center moratorium in Philadelphia about its findings. My name is Maya Wollachan. I am the program director of the Trustworthy Infrastructures Team and Data and Society.

1:03I'm Anna Kudelina-Dessi's newness and I'm a postdoctoral fellow on Maya's theme to just worry for the first person to join the team at that end society. I'm Hannah Sassiman. I'm the executive director at People's Tech Project. We're based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And we're going to turn our eyes to Pennsylvania during this conversation and catch up a little bit about what's happening there, but also look at the results of this report that Data and Society has just put out called the AI Factory Data Centers, Power, and Resistance and Late Industrial Pennsylvania. I feel like I've been following this project for some time. I've been kind of around it, had the opportunity Maya to talk to you, of course, and have you on the podcast, even in recent months as we've kind of been studying this issue alongside you. But I want to just start off by asking you about the title, where it comes from. I know you've borrowed this from an activist, the AI Factory. What does this phrase mean to you? Yeah, it was such a great turn of phrase that came up in one of our early interviews with an organizer

2:10who's been doing incredible work around the state. But yeah, the rest of the report was really trying to kind of connect data centers to this long history of industrial sort of reimagination in Pennsylvania. It is a state that has meant so much to the country and to this sort of global economy for the contributions and coal and steel and iron and many other things. And that idea of the Factory is still really present in this conversation around AI. We were very lucky that when our interviewees really made that connection, I believe that full-close something like, you know, this here is an AI Factory. It is as extractive as mining instead of mining for coal or mining for tokens. And I think that has really played out in many of the interviews that we had over the two years that we were crossing the state. I think when a lot of boosters come to town and they sort of pull on these ideas of industrialization to try to kind of win favor for this idea around data centers and AI,

3:11what it pulls on for people is this deep history, you know, mining of steel and for many people that is not so much about the future, but that's about the past and that's about, you know, in some ways, some very traumatic experiences of the past. And this might be a place to bring in Hannah too, but I think of Pennsylvania as a place that is kind of contested, you know. I often feel like it's the number one swing state whenever we talk about American politics, you know. And as you say, like it is somehow stuck between kind of past and present. There's so much history and so much runs through the state, but maybe bring us up to speed. You know, what's the picture right now when it comes to data centers in Pennsylvania? What does that look like? Well, I'm sure Mayan and I can add a lot more, but I think just sort of building on what you laid out. There was a storied announcement. I believe last year from our governor, governor Josh Shapiro, he's in the middle of running for a re-election for his second term.

4:12And the announcement was, I think he did it in the middle of the Lehigh Valley, which is a traditional sort of eastern side of the state, industrial part of the state, like Alentown and places like that. And he was ready to say that they were going to bring $20 billion worth of investment from Amazon into the state, building, starting with two data centers. I believe one in Salem Township and then the other, like basically on the other side of the river from Trenton. And that was supposed to be the harbinger of tons and tons of data center development. And he was also fast-tracking permitting. He was making it possible for many different communities to try to get these data centers. And these were often in places where there had been like brutal disinvestment over decades and generations. I believe the Salem Township one is in an area where the last sort of major hospital had closed a couple of years before, for example. So that's an interesting sort of sense of the contradiction.

5:15But I think to answer your question directly, there is a robust, organic, deeply activating, incredibly diverse resistance to this kind of development in big cities, like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in smaller cities and towns like Harrisburg, like Eury and in the more rural counties of the Commonwealth, because there is a lot of clarity about in relationship to the sort of union beauty that built the infrastructure of the working class of this state about what these data centers actually offer and promise. What they offer and promise isn't much. In most places, they're situated near water that would be prioritized for the data center rather than prioritize for communities. The jobs that they offer are only in relationship to the construction jobs during the building, but after they're up, there was an estimate done by the Philadelphia Planning Commission.

6:19And we can talk more detail about the organizing beautiful, diverse resistance to data centers in my city. But the Philadelphia Planning Commission found that for every 5,000 square feet, there would only be one job. And so what they, and then there's obviously a deep impact on everyone across the Commonwealth that relies on a variety of the electrical grid and infrastructure, they've already been impacted not just from data centers built in Pennsylvania, but also in Virginia, so in Maryland, in sort of the PJM territory, where there's been about a decade of data center mass boom expansion, starting and centering in Virginia, that's impacting the electrical rates of our residents. Here in Philadelphia, in the south eastern part of the state, the PICO, which is the major sort of electrical company, had to grant an amnesty basically of $10 million last year. And I think they're doing something similar this year for community members who just couldn't afford their electrical bills. So they like literally had to offer charity for those own bills. And so what we're finding is is that the promises that the governor, the promises that Amazon, the promises that Microsoft, which is actually trying to reopen three mile island, the being nuclear reactive reaction site, which was the cause of the biggest nuclear meltdown disaster in the United States history.

7:34What they're finding is is deep resistance, not just to the electrical costs, not just to the lies about development, not just to the water damage, but also around what's happening inside those buildings, like there is a lot of deep concern about what AI is doing to our kids, AI is doing to our families, AI is doing to our democracy. Our report as well, of course, we're talking about Pennsylvania, but in the report Pennsylvania kind of emerges as a microcosm of America, because the status center fight is happening in other states as well. And in the second part of our report, we explore in the app how industries in Pennsylvania, but in other parts of the US as well, they're trying to really convince folks to welcome them into their spaces by leveraging nostalgia. By trying to tell the stories of a different in the history of era by trying to appeal to especially, you know, blue collar families, I'll remember the good times when you had a stable job as you know factory is exactly what Hannah is saying.

8:38And then when the data centers in place, yeah, we are seeing other reports about the deployment numbers and they're not too many. And just to highlight this fact that we focus in Pennsylvania, but also because Pennsylvania allows us to tell a bigger story about the country, there's a new report by the data center watch that came out about the second quarter of 2026. So there are a lot of projects that have been blocked, but there are new reports showing to you that beyond Pennsylvania, this is happening in different parts of the US. And when Pennsylvania versus a microcosm of this larger opposition to data center, we can also see that the strategies is in Pennsylvania and in different states are pretty similar in terms of appealing to this industrial past in terms to say that data centers and AI kind of a continuation of this industrial that this golden day is in the American industrial is. And so you went and spent a lot of time there, Maya, understand you know multiple kind of weeks, trips and cost different parts of Pennsylvania that if three different regions that you targeted doing what you do ethnography talking to people, you know, studying this phenomenon, you know, with this particular social sciences approach.

9:54Let me just ask you a little bit about the kind of myths that you heard that were being relied on some of the kind of messages that the industry is trying to reach people with what did you hear as you kind of listened for, you know, what what the industry is trying to tell people at Pennsylvania. It's true. We were out in crossing the state from the week right after the presidential election. It was quite a fascinating time to still be there as everybody still had their science in their in their windows and, you know, confetti on the ground in some places all the way up until 2026. So we saw a really some significant swings, but also some really huge sign points in the sort of development of this data center narrative. We were in town just about every time that Trump was in Pennsylvania. We, you know, followed a bunch of industry conferences. We got to, you know, get into a few of them to kind of see how the cell developed over time.

10:54Oh, we found is exactly what sort of noted here that, you know, we say in the report that they were lying on sort of three big buckets of ideas. There are many under them. But the first is this idea of industrial nostalgia. And they pull on that in some ways that are really dissonant with the ways that Pennsylvania understands itself now. You know, we understand Pennsylvania as is purple leafs day, this sort of blue collar imagination that arrives at reelections season. But in that time since the industrialization, the biggest unions in the state are those that you care work there are, you know, municipal workers are not necessarily, you know, the builders and construction workers that are being pulled on for this kind of industrial build. However, they are the ones that are showing up on the stage all the time through the narratives that Trump superior on many other sort of industrial leaders are naming when they talk about what data centers could mean. So that vision that like very fitness that that nostalgia is a really, really key part of that sort of myth making around around the state.

11:57The second is that, you know, it's not necessarily unique to Pennsylvania, but it is, I think there are some local flavors that, you know, the vision of AI today has taken on such a profoundly nationalistic turn. You know, we are in this AI race were supposedly, you know, trying to be China whatever that might mean to those who are, you know, designing that kind of narrative, but that one is distinctly pulling on this history in Pennsylvania that is around war, you know, so many of those industries that we think of when we talk about that industrial in the sound job are really, you know, building a war effort they were building the the tanks that were showing up in World War two, the steel showed up in all of those. And all of those war efforts and so you know trying to kind of pull people into that national is that at this particular time is a really is a bit of a faulty argument we have a quote in the piece from a journalist that we spoke to who had gone to one of those community meetings where this kind of idea of war was showing up all the time in the AI argument.

13:02And they had spoken to a veteran who showed up at that municipal meeting and that veteran is saying well, I actually wasn't war so what is it that they're talking about like these aren't necessarily soldiers that were sending away like that is not the kind of rhetoric that is going to convince me to say like I'm getting you know give up all my water in my land, you know, sort of what fight are we are we trying to win here. But then the last one I really like fits really neatly into a bunch of these is this poll on the unions and this is a bit of a tricky one you know has been noted you know some of the labor numbers that we're seeing for data centers are really, really thin however we did speak to a bunch of folks from the building trades as part of our work who would say you know even if this is a bubble we have a really precious moment of time to you know expand our ranks to expand our apprenticeship programs. And so it's a really sort of you know take advantage of this even if it's going to be really short lived and we see that these kind of this alignment between you know nationalism industrialism and labor is kind of crafting this narrative around what AI is supposed to me to Pennsylvania.

14:12And so I think that's a really good thing to have in the past two years that we have been on the road. Those things have been you know really pulled apart for Pennsylvania's you know I'm a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and as a public university in the time that we have been on the road. Seven Penn State campuses have closed down we had a crisis with the funding for SETTA for transportation we've had healthcare costs climbing you know astronomically and so really kind of trying to sell people on this version of the future that is based on the community. And so I think that's a really good thing to have in the community and I think that's a really good thing to have in the community. And so I think that's a really good thing to have in the community and I think that's a really good thing to have in the community. I don't think that's a really great thing to do with water transportation and we've had healthcare costs climbing you know astronomically and so really kind of trying to sell people on this version of the future that is based on the past in the present is not even serving but it should be serving is a very faulty way to sort of whip people into alignment around this issue. I'm from Brazil originally and you know for the longest time at home,

15:15When we talk about big tech, the companies are all from the US, right? In Europe as well. In Recall, the US really dominates this scenario. Why won't... When we were talking about social media, of course, TikTok is an outlier because it's not a US industry. The US made. But it's very interesting to know how this critique is very predominant in the US as well. There is no pride in saying that the big techs are mainly American companies. And it is something very interesting to observe on the ground. There is no pride in saying, oh, these big corporations look. They make billions of dollars. Look at their stocks. Look at how much money they make. There is no pride because there is no sharing of the pie. These folks are not seeing the distribution of wealth. Those people are just making... Seeing the money being made, they wash the news. They know how much these companies are property. But they do not see any of the ad being translated to benefits for them or for their communities.

16:18And being in Pennsylvania was very interesting to you because the new date, right, was huge. If you walk in Pittsburgh, if you walk in parts of the states, they have these beautiful buildings. You have these memories of a different industrial time where, okay, there was a big disparity. I'm not saying there was a big disparity. But I'm just trying to say that there was a different approach of industries to the community. At least the buildings were beautiful. You know what factor is here, what factor was there. And not the tech companies that are trying to hide their presence in town. It's very hard to figure out what companies were. It's very hard to know what companies behind this data center, there's zero interest in giving back to the community. Even when it comes in terms of architecture, in terms of design, in terms of, like, it should be proud that we are here. So it's just very interesting to observe this complex situation where Americans are not

17:18proud of the big tech companies in American industry as they were of other industries. Like we've knocked thousands of doors like across the country in Philadelphia working with one of the projects that we oversee called the Philly Tech Justice Collective and with a base building group that is in South Philadelphia and the neighborhood called Gray's Ferry Named Philly Thrive. They formed in 2019 when the largest refinery on the East Coast, the PES refinery blew up and they ran an incredibly beautiful campaign with, like, working class, mostly black, generational neighbors to close it. But when we knocked their doors and we continued to work incredibly closely with them, we would ask the neighbors a question, which is, like, in the place where they are trying to maybe build a data center, which is in the same industrial district where the refinery exploded, called the Bell Weather District.

18:19We would ask them, what do you want to build instead? Like, what do you want there? Like, just to sort of tie these questions together. And first of all, a lot of neighbors said, no one's ever asked me that question. And then the second thing that they said was a ton of extraordinarily beautiful ideas. Like, we need another grocery store that supports the community. The only major grocery store is over a very busy road called Gray's Ferry Avenue. And then when another piece of industrial build collapsed, a garage that was being built for the children's hospital right over the river, the entire neighborhood. Like, first of all, that was a deep tragedy. And three workers died and that neighborhood had been fighting that garage. But also, it completely cut off access for many days to the grocery store, the only grocery store. And so, folks want a grocery store, folks want a library that's close by. Folks want a community center where elders who are very isolated get to come together. They want a place where their young people can get trained in tech or get trained in different

19:19jobs that let neighbors actually be the center of the local economy, rather than 15 guys on roller skates keeping a bunch of servers cool. And that community is now deeply resisting not just a data center in South Philadelphia, but also another proposed potential site in Northeast Philadelphia and fighting for a more Torium. Like, my colleagues in comrades are at City Council literally right now wearing the same shirt, like no data centers in Philly getting ready to testify on the relationship between block AI surveillance cameras as a resolution calling on the Harrisburg government to ban them and other automated license plate raiders across the state. And they're also going to be speaking about the hope for a more Torium. And so, all of that said, like, what we have is a relationship between a latent, brimming mass of people, whether they're deeply rural from the big cities or somewhere in between, whether they're black, brown, white, whatever their economic classes, all of us saying

20:22notism. They're saying no to a kind of development that is deeply predatory. And the question is, particularly in this political moment, you know, Anna was just speaking about how the, you know, in Brazil, the impact of the sort of global web of all of these big tech companies and how they extract data, how they, you know, have workers doing piecework to, you know, code things, official recognition, how those companies extract and expand across the country. Like, we have a big responsibility to rein them in here in the United States. The question is in a place like Pennsylvania, as you were noting just in the perennial swing state, along with many others, in other states across the union that are facing these contradictions, folks who have not taken political action together for years, joining in with people who are at the front lines of taking political action to say no to data centers. The question is, is what are they saying yes to you? And if we can actually really connect very deeply with those movements, including with organized labor, I came out of SCIU health care Pennsylvania, worked there for many years

21:23in new organizing, like how do we connect with the vision for durable long term family sustaining union jobs that don't destroy our communities or support a tech oligarch that is undergirding authoritarianism, but instead build something that can create that sense of hope and pride that Anna and Maya were seeing as they walk the streets of Allegheny County, and you don't just see the ghosts of these industrial giants, but you also see the legacy of what organized people fighting together for workers' rights and for community rights have built. And so that's one reason why I have a lot of hope. And I'm excited about this report because I think it really lives at that dialect, not just about what people don't like, but what about what people are hungry for, which is I think one of the reasons they're fighting so deeply for their communities, when data centers, when ICE detention centers, where Fawc cameras come to town. Maya, did everyone you meet across your various interviews and the work you did opposed data centers and their community was there sort of a subset to not just from the building

22:28trades who were willing to negotiate, compromise or saw some benefit to the community? Yeah, we have actually quite an interesting spread in some, some unexpected ways. I think we have heard some research about this that for some people their real interest is in energy and on great improvements. And one of the things that was kind of being teased out over the course of our two years, we don't know yet where that has layman, but it seems like there was a bit of an argument building around, well, perhaps this could be an opportunity to improve our energy grid because that influx of money is coming in and we have to expand capacity if these data centers are coming online. I would say that's certainly one group of folks we talked to. We also had some folks in community who would say, well, this nuclear plant has been here for a long time and I have the diner next to nuclear plant and people haven't been working and maybe this is an opportunity to get

23:30them back in the building and get mainstreamed up again. We tried to return back to these places over time to see how those narratives started to develop and change because at the outset, there were early people who were thinking about the data centers, but I think for most folks, we were looking at the big money, that big announcement was $90 billion coming to the state of Pennsylvania. That is a really hard thing for many municipal leaders to turn their nose at and say, we are better than the kids still let's say, but I think as Hannah and Anna are winning too, that big organizing soil that started to become about things other than the money, I think, started to demonstrate all sorts of other alternative paths. One that I think has been interesting and I hope there's more attention to this is the data centers and this pitch was trying to say something very particular about economic development in places that have been really disambusted. They're saying, you all don't have money for your school system, you may not have

24:33money for your hospital system. We can give you that or we can give you, as in Amazon's case, they threw $20,000 to a Barra community center or a community theater. They're like, ah, here's one small total. And donations to the Boys and Girls Club. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. It's very, very, very small, sort of like compensatory amounts to kind of say, look, too, we can be community development partner. And I think, increasingly, I want to review some of those ideas that are animating the things that are not just dissent, like building trade saying, we want to expand our ranks, we want folks to have jobs that can allow them to buy house and go to school and all those things. I think in the course of that two years, we've started to kind of seize the alternative ways to get at that conclusion, which I would argue that most everybody wants. The folks who were not necessarily saying, you know, boo on this data center, I really want my diner to succeed. I would argue,

25:39being able to run your business, that's something that I want to ever kind of say, like, oh, you should have the opportunity to do that. I think, you know, what we sort of seen in some of the responses, real opening and political imagination to say, you know, if that's what we want at the end of the day, for everybody to have a life of dignity or our water and air and land are able to support us moving forward or we have a healthy diversified economy where we are able to access healthcare and education, all these things. We can find other ways through that. And I think, you know, we even start to see some of the folks that we've talked to early on in our research period. I think, really start to expand. I wouldn't say certainly that everybody's super anti-data center, but I think there has been quite a healthy conversation between all of these healthy conversations and really important organizing between all of these different factions to build something more complete than I think we could have ever imagined when we started. Yeah. And I think Maya is speaking directly to something that is in our report, but it also all the publications that are chambered out,

26:43that is the economy of the communities. And right now, there's a lot of effort from local organizers and communities who are learning about data centers before they get the communities. But this is recent. Before that, communities were learning about data centers once they started building, once they already had all the permissions. So this aspect of autonomy is super important. And more than just being yes or no, I were getting started with favor. Like people want to talk. They want to be part of the conversation. They want to be part of the decision making. And one of the threads of our report is, we are at this moment in American history. The American 250, right? There were all the celebrations. That America is kind of in a crisis of identity in relation to the industry. People not to involve with the industry that has to find the country for so long. People were posing wars. And data center industry arriving in your county

27:47or in your township without asking for permission. Companies that in other countries, people companies are dead in global south, not in America. So there is this element of like, what is America here? If the companies are not really in us as, you know, participants in this conversation, this is me, the employee, why in my community. So there is this element of autonomy that I think that comes up in this discussion of are you against or in favor? That is more, I think the question is more how can we develop this together? If this is so essential to the economy of the country or even to the identity of the country as a disindosable bar house. You know, there is a line of the report that that is talking about data centers is kind of the symbol for all things. And you know, we have been having this conversation many in some way is sort of about political economy and dignity and sort of right to right to democracy in all these ways. And there also is the kind of AI of it all that I think has shown up in some interesting

28:51ways throughout this. You would ask folks in our interviews like, you know, we're talking about the data center. How do you feel about AI? How does AI show up in these fights? And you know, we have answers all over the map, you know, many of the, you know, group chats that have to be a part of it, you would see like AI imagery about the next protest. So it's coming up, you know, in a couple of weeks. It's a really, I think that a lot of people arrive at this particular intersection of data center, economy, politics, whatever. Either with a really strong analysis about AI or like in some ways, a little bit of a disconnection, you know, we've heard from some folks that it's like, you know, probably AI is inevitable. But like, I really don't want to see you. So it is a bit, it can be a bit confusing, but I think we're starting to see, you know, these ideas really start to firm up as people try to, you know, I think get around this very for any issue that is both personal, it's political, it's, you know, maybe it's sometimes even just contained within the

29:54confines of your workplace, your workplace is forcing you to use cloud and all sorts of ways, you know, there's lots of zones at which we could be finding this. But yeah, it's complicated. I can say that, you know, not just in Philadelphia, but we've done a bunch of outreach and meetings and door knocking and community work in Eastern Washington state in five different communities that align the Columbia River Valley there in Memphis and also outside of Memphis in Vic County. We have a whole group going to knock doors in Atlanta with the People's Campaign also formally known as the People's Campaign to Stop Cups City. Like, one thing that we're finding is a lot of grounds on what is AI. Like, I remember one door I knocked in Philly, there was a grandma, it was during a giant northeast snow storm, there was a foot of snow on the ground, 12 degrees outside. And she came out to a porch and I was talking with her and I asked, like, how long you lived here, did you hear about this rumor that they're trying to build a data center down there? We talked about that for a little while. Then she took out her phone and she showed it to me. She said, Hannah,

30:58is this Robocall that I'm getting right now? And the 12 other Robocalls that I got today. Is that coming from these data centers? And I said, yes, ma'am. And she let me inside. We talked for about 45 minutes. Like, people can see the relationship between how AI is and the companies underneath it are trying to extract more and more and more value, usually from people in a state of vulnerability, like senior citizens, getting their data sold online, like, cooked inside these places and predatory AI bots coming for them. Like, all of that is, you know, something that people are grounded in. They're grounded in how young people are getting less and less opportunity to compete in the economy because of what AI is doing and how social media is changing how they intersect with each other. When we were knocking doors in Memphis, a lot of the folks were very, very clear on the relationship between Elon Musk, who is the, you know, with his Grock and his SpaceX AI

31:59company is built Colossus and then clocks us too. And he's trying to build more data centers both in Mississippi and in Southwest Tennessee. They were clear that there was a big relationship between Musk and Donald Trump and the, you know, the political class in Shelby County and like how, whether or not people could have the basic access to good food, good jobs and a good future, that they had fought for generations. I remember we were knocking doors in box town with Memphis communities against pollution and with Tennessee for all and a bunch of other groups down there. And when I came up to a porch and it was a Sunday, folks were chilling out after church and I was, and they were like, well, what are you here? What are you asking us to do? And I said, can you sign this petition to Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris asking him to shut down the illegal turbines that Elon Musk is using to power his data centers and that are deeply polluting the air in Southwest Memphis, a community that is dealt with a massive amount of pollution over generations,

33:00over generations of environmental racism in an industry. And what they told me, they're like, that's not going to do anything. What we need to do is we need to all go march on his office. And so, I think what we're finding here is folks who are not just clear in what they want and what they deserve, but what it will take to make it happen. And what it's going to take to make it happen is both participation and sort of the general basics of the democracy and it might be a democracy that's under deep threat and even in decline. But even when authoritarians come to power, it's actually incumbent to use those tools pretty deeply. But we're also meeting to go deeply beyond those things. The kind of policymaking that I'm a generational actor with, like I'm someone who came up, my very first campaign was fighting in Congress to expand community radio, you know, like fighting at the FCC. The incremental kinds of things that we fought for and demanded have a lot of grounds and a lot of things to learn from and we're at a very, very different moment. So, one thing that I'm grateful for the report that Maya and Anna and others did is it talks with nuance

34:04about those contradictions. Again, it's not just what people are fearful of or are trying to fight in relationship to their communities. It's what do they want instead? And so, if we are brave enough to not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, like because I think that there's a lot of actors out there that are trying to play like it's the old world, like what community benefits could we get from these data centers or how could being in a coalition that just tries to extract resources and doesn't try to go with what the people and the people want know, the people are saying now. Like if we, like, and there's many groups working on that with a lot of power, like not just data in society, we see great leadership from the data center working group and media justice, and climate justice alliance and many others. But if we're brave enough to actually follow what the people are saying, we're not just going to stop data center development at a moment when it actually could have and already is having an economic impact on the IPOs of these companies and their ability to sort of maintain the sort of fictional economic bubble that they've created

35:05about any kind of value inside the mass of AI that they have. We're not just going to do that, but we're going to have an incredibly richly organized group of people that is suddenly no longer blind to the way in which tech is sort of leasing the economy with a set of brass knuckles, like, you know, making stuff so much worse. And so that's what I'm really hungry for. I've want to kind of come to some of the policy considerations in the paper. You say, you know, that policy interventions just slow down the process of data center development not speed it up. That's the kind of, you know, I suppose bottom line here. You talk about slowing down approvals, banning NDAs and ending subsidies. So that's my question is this. You know, there's a range of different approaches that states are taking to data centers. It does feel to me that across the country, more or less, the states are moving towards the direction of your recommendations. You know, there's a lot of movement to either end or reduce subsidies. And of course,

36:11this issue of transparency in NDAs has been a motivating one for, you know, many, many legislative solutions as well. But I guess thinking about Pennsylvania and how it relates maybe to its neighbors or to, you know, other states with which it's competing for economic opportunities. You know, some states will take a harder line. Like, for instance, here, where I sit in New York, you know, others will throw up on the doors. So I don't know. I mean, how do you feel like these, these kind of policy suggestions sort of sit, you know, in that kind of competitive dynamic between states that are kind of, you know, looking for economic opportunity or trying to compete on some level for jobs and investment. Yeah. And I think this one is such a tricky one because it is you know, we hear that. We actually heard that quite a bit from the folks who we spoke to or observed from industry, you know, these moratorium are not useful because they're just going to go to the place that's least protected. And maybe though I would argue that I feel then

37:14if we are all in agreement, at which many of us are that the speed at which the sort of conditions of a race that are sort of forcing everybody to pay attention in some way to this argument. And I would say we got to go higher, we got to go bigger with what we think of as sort of slowing down the role for the role of data centers and being land developers, economic policy makers, destructive, destructors of our democracy. Like, I would argue that is a really strong threat that requires a coordinated response. So we don't get into this as much into the paper and about sort of the scope buyer, which we imagine that being most effective. And sort of why we land in this place that says we just need to be slowing this down in whatever jurisdictional capacities that we have in order to do that. And maybe one point to this that I think has been discussed other other reports we've got at this piece, but to hit on Pennsylvania briefly, you know, part of the reason

38:17that this Pennsylvania becomes very attractive for something like this in addition to the Marcellus shale that is certainly producing a lot of polluting energy to support this data center push. Is that Pennsylvania has so many stranded assets from past industrial revolutions? You know, we have coal plants, we have nuclear plants, we have steel structures that are being sort of reused for something like this. And I think we have not had to hold these companies to account as much for the risk of creating yet another generation of stranded assets. We have so many people in the report talk about, you know, we live amongst America's trash from past that generations of this work. And so when we talk about kind of the stakes of what it means to slow this down, if what they're selling is we're going to these places that are invasive of investment and we're going to provide an opportunity to do that. They have not likewise provided security anything that says we are not going to siphon yet another generation of resources,

39:21money, opportunity from these same places and leave them with another generation of trash. I feel that is a real urgency that needs to attend to and why we would argue in many cases to say without some real clarity about what that means, what the stakes of that mean because they are economic and they are as well as Hannah and Anna noted questions about democracy, dignity, you know, what it is we might want alternatively then we need to slow that down and whatever it takes to do that, yeah, you all have my support. This is a bubble. The GPUs inside the data centers have planned obsolescence built in. The energy and the water that they need is not renewable. We're already starting to see Wall Street pull out. There was a recent report showing that the amount of tax breaks that the state of Georgia offered for data centers absolutely dwarfed any revenue that they brought in. The revenue isn't sustainable. There's way more falling like this sort of contradiction that you're laying out Justin, like if it doesn't go here might it go elsewhere,

40:22that's what states are mostly doing is to trying to incentivize these companies there by robbing themselves of the revenue they need to sustain their basic systems and it doesn't create not on effects for jobs. There was in rural communities in particular that there aren't other benefits that come after the data centers are built. The promises of revenue for communities are mostly lies. They're mostly gold rush opportunities from incredibly immoral developers just trying to throw lots and lots and lots of potential permits out and trying to get to a place where they can build wherever they can. I think it's important for communities to remember they actually have the upper hand. They're on the right side of history. Their anger is shaping what is politically possible. We're only seeing more and more elected officials from both parties come along. We can just come out and say we have a positive vision for what the economy can be here and we

41:22don't have to fall into the trap of saying that this is a get rich quick scheme for municipalities and states across the United States. Yeah, I just want to add that regardless of moratorium being enacted in practice or other policies being enacted in practice to his low data centers, the narrative effect is huge and AP the associated press called in article from August 18 data centers as like a toxic politics during the election season. So you have just a pure in the syruin in the governor who was really trying to bring data centers in and now he's kind of like not supporting them as much at least publicly trying to appear to an all-gents that is mad at data centers and what they bring or not bring for the community in Oregon as well where I did my PhD research in a codec super in favor of data centers and now elections are coming. Oh, all of a sudden data center industry is so bad my goodness, right? So I just want to point out

42:24to this aspect of narrative regardless of moratoriums being enacted or not in different places at the narrative level of the storytelling level they are powerful and they are shifting political campaigns ahead of the elections. There is this level too that even that company is all being following the rogue AI stories that came out in the past weeks and now AI companies themselves are begging for regulations we are very sorry for them but you can see that the storytelling is very important here and political candidates are changing their narrative because data centers, toxic politics companies themselves are afraid that this might mean regulation for them so they are trying to influence regulation to benefit themselves but there's something happening because of the conversation about moratoriums even if moratoriums are not actually being acted. I think one of the interesting things about this report because you've been at it for so long you have been able to witness how the public discourse over data centers has changed how it started

43:31you know the kind of education process that many communities have gone through and I would say also journalists and politicians and everyone involved has gone through you know it's been a learning experience for the public as much as it has been you know something that we've been experiencing as a kind of you know set of kind of industry priorities that have played out over time. Where does that learning experience go next? What are the questions you think that people have that you think we need to figure out as a community as researchers as journalists also as advocates to answer what are the questions that people are still asking? I think the question that is always incumbent on an organizer when they see a problem like what a community is facing a problem and try to solve it is we need to stoke that uncomfortable feeling of curiosity like people need to be able to ask why like why is this happening why did they target us whether we win a campaign

44:31and then we say okay now that we've blocked or slowed down or paused this kind of predatory development then they need to be curious about what was it that helped them win what are their neighbors hungry for what do we want next if they lose that campaign and that's just as important a question why did we use what are the entrenched political forces whether they're municipal county state or federal whether they're corporate or there's other factions that were coming up against us the question is why and then the other question is is and this I think has to do with something that I've been hungry for my entire life which is how now that something that has been invisible the idea of technology as unfettered progress has been complicated I think durably and potentially permanent in an entire generation of people they now have the opportunity to ask the question what do we want instead what would technology mean if it was connecting us rather than extracting us if it was helping us learn rather than deporting our neighbors if it was helping us build sustainable long-term

45:33environmentally and community just jobs and development rather than predatory ones and so that might all seem high in the sky but to me it seems incredibly practical it seems like an opportunity that is that's time has come and organizers like me and all of the folks I work with the people's tech and many many other organizations beside are incredibly excited to be moving not just from these no campaigns to campaigns of yes and to campaigns of what is this new organized base able to do in relationship to the multi-valent movements for humanity in this country there is so much potential in this idea of what yes means I'll call out our colleague Celeste who worked at Pesna this project who you know sort of introduced these sets of questions at the end of all of our interviews that was about you know what would you do instead if all of this money 90 billion dollars

46:33was going to anything else like what would you put it towards what would you want Pennsylvania to be in its most perfect world and we heard so many things about you know this is the most beautiful place in the planet we have 80,000 miles of rivers and streams that is a significant part of the state of the Commonwealth what would it mean to reinvest in our environment in the way that we did not just a generation ago after Colin Steele you know went under in the first place you know that was tremendous effort to reinvest in the beautiful environment of Pennsylvania and find other regenerative ways to be a Pennsylvania we had folks say you know I would want a train that takes me to Harrisburg I want to train that takes me to Eerie like you know there's only one train we have taken a many times that goes across the state from Philly to Pittsburgh it leaves at 10 you get to Pittsburgh at or maybe 12 you get to Pittsburgh at 8 p.m. is once a day going back the other direction

47:33you can't find it but like there's you know there are really critical things that if we actually care about the dignity of all people that the ability for all people to thrive we would invest in them and so I think that there really is an opportunity to really kind of focus again on the things that are at the end of that long pitch that will often be don't we want better health care well why don't we use AI to do that well people don't have us that stuff like why don't we just invest in better health care when we just invest in better education and we have all the tools to be able to do that and all the imagination I think to make that possible the additional thing that I will plug is that actually on the 2nd of October we are going to be in Pittsburgh for a community centered AI summit that brings together some of the groups that Hannah has talked about so many the different types of interviewees that we have for this work and so many other different types of actors in Pennsylvania and beyond those of you who are not in Pennsylvania we truly welcome you into

48:34the space either in person or by livestream and part of that afternoon is going to be designing a community action plan for infrastructure you know what would it actually mean for instead of meta amazon facebook whatever to be dictating what the future of Pennsylvania is why no we actually put our own hands to go very dry to come up with something more generative and what can we do if that were actually in the right place at the right time so we're hoping that we you know by the end of the year will arrive at some really generative visions for what we could be doing alternatively but I'll share it to Anna to close yeah no this is a very good question you know let's show what comes next right this developers or big tech companies trying to get into some communities have a deep misunderstanding of these communities and the people residing there either they are very naive or they are not paying attention to what's happening on the ground those people are actually very smart

49:35they know that the US is the richest country in the world the economy is incredible but they're not ripping the benefits of any of that at the same time that they're being they are being asked to sacrifice to make the country stronger to make the country richer to make the country right continue to be as powerful as it is they don't care about that they want to be able to know when they pay checks coming they they don't they want to leave without knowing if they'll have money to buy food or not I don't know there are so many people who they go bankrupt because of a medical emergency right people are aware of this this country is very rich and we are not receiving the benefits of any of this and we are asking to sacrifice a lot in the name of this national good so I think which industry comes off the data centers they are going to be a folks asking the same questions how is this going to actually translate into benefits for us how is this well going to be shared and we are going to really not be suffering and just in our experiencing basic needs so that's

50:38why we also say that it's more than just data centers more than just tech more than just AI it's about a life with dignity in the richest country the world for listeners who want to learn more about this report that can find it by googling the AI factory data centers power and resistance and late industrial Pennsylvania you can also find it a link put in the show notes and please also check out people's tech project and no data centers in Philly for more information on Hannah's work I'm grateful to the three of you for joining us thank you so much for having us this is wonderful thank you you that's it for this episode I hope you send your feedback you can write to me at Justin at tech policy dot press thanks to my guests thanks to my co-founder Brian Jones and thank you for listening

51:43tech policy press