Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) recently signed an executive order placing a one-year moratorium on all new data center developments. As someone from Oswego, New York, a small, historically underinvested Rust Belt community upstate, Hochul’s moratorium ensures that the benefits of the artificial intelligence boom in my hometown are dead on arrival.

In addition to New York’s executive order, more than 10 states have proposed bills tantamount to a complete moratorium. Locally, municipalities are acting even faster, with at least 116 local moratoriums imposed across the country. There is also a growing appetite to get involved at the federal level, with Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) AI Data Center Moratorium Act.

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